Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal (1968)
mises.org
mises.org
The fun revelation is that business dresses itself up as conservative, then pursues its own ends of profit. That's the entire definition of bourgeois. It is worth highlighting as in many ways, the free software movement is a very conservative one, from the point of view of the way code was shared in the beginning of its history: That is, you asked the programmer who wrote the code you were interested in for a copy and usually got it gratis as the money was made in selling the equipment. The change of label to liberal-radical came later when business started to realize that software, itself, was a sell-able product.
The point I'm making is that choosing a side in any two party system is always artificial. Any party affiliation should be viewed as one of convenience. This explains why Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democratic Party and why both Paul politicians aligned with the GOP.
From my standpoint, the only winning play for the individual is to decide what is important to yourself, acknowledge that it will change over time, and remember not to get caught up in the game being played. Your "side", or party affiliation, in fact, should change as your interests change.
In other words, don't be proud of your party, and don't overly-identify with said party.
Amen.
While I'm inclined to believe that an adversarial Congress is beneficial to the nation on the whole, the zeal with which most Americans seek to categorize themselves into "in-group" and "out-group" members is discomforting.
Scarier though, in my opinion, is how quickly the politicians are to capitalize on that polarization, which offers instant and immediate demonification of whomever takes the opposite view; and so long as the parties work like this, nobody notices that so much of the parties' political platforms are not internally consistent, or are even highly hypocritical.
Having been swayed by good arguments enough that I felt the need to make sense of it, I was able to divine a set of 'first principles' that I endorse, and policy choices that align with those principles tend to be ones that I approve of, no matter who, or from which party it originates.
Of course, being a political chimera makes for often difficult discussions.
I still show up for the primaries, as I want the chance to choose who I vote for when I get to the general election. However, such a system makes it impossible for me to consider political office (beyond school board) as my primary declaration is a matter of public record, meaning that I would not pass any test of party purity.
What I really want is stacked-rank voting in the primaries and in the general election. I think it would be interesting to see how the general public, used to a Coke vs Pepsi choice, handle a spectrum of choices where you don't have to Pick Only One.
As for parties, I change parties multiple times a year to get the best possible vote I can. Sometimes that means I'm voting for a particular candidate, or set of policies, but sometimes also simply against... and yes, it would completely disqualify us for any public position that couldn't be voted into as an Independent.
I wonder what it would take for the issue to get real traction though, as the more and more polarized American society becomes, the more entrenched the two party system feels. Any fracturing of the system is certain to benefit somebody disproportionally at first, and it seems like the timetable for actually making a real push towards it would take longer than the state of public opinion, so nobody moves towards it because nobody knows who will get the advantage by the time it happens.
If we accept that the two party system wishes to perpetuate itself, second only to a more monolithic one-party system, then the conclusion seems foregone, but perhaps I'm just being pessimistic. Either way, the parties themselves have shown resistance to warring factions within the party, despite how much they both claim to prefer a competition of ideas.
Can anyone explain how this statement makes any sense for a supposed libertarian at that time? Any way you look at it, the Soviet Union 1) suppressed freedom and 2) espoused militarism. I'm puzzled why it seems to get a free pass here.
Their military still might have been a match for USA military, because keeping armaments manufacturers wealthy was never their purpose in the way it was in USA. Fortunately that test never came, perhaps because USSR believed much of the same hype we believed in USA. The Soviets were constantly afraid of what USA might do, and nearly every action they made was a response to that fear. Thus it was the actions of USA that drove the cold war.
The phrase I'd like to examine is "free pass". What constitutes a "free pass"? Would we consider allowing people on the other side of the earth to live as they will to be a "free pass"? How about not attacking those who have never attacked us? Would not spending more than the rest of the world combined on our military deserve the classification of "free pass"? We anarchists are so stupid, please explain it to us.
[0] http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/map-russian-empire-1...
Every newspaper, every magazine in the USSR had the "Пролетарии всех стран, соеденяйтесь!" printed above the title. Which roughly means "Working men of the world, unite!" and refers this Marx's quote:
"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!"
Anyways, the point of that quote was not to enrich the newspaper's contents. It was to remind the citizens that the USSR's raison d'être was to bring the world's Communistic revolution.
What human organization with a military arm doesn't do that? And for that matter how are you even defining freedom? The defense of freedom in the abstract is worse than meaningless.
and, awesome how his stance is ultimately self-defeating as any other political direction/movement will embrace the organisation of a big construct. libertarians and anarchists are adorable.
You ask that as if you're referring to two different things.
The government is theoretically accountable to all citizens, and conducts orderly and regularly scheduled changes of power.
Big businesses are theoretically accountable to their owners and no one else.
It's harder to buy votes in government.
To the extent a corporation's home nation has enforced laws and regulations, the corporation must operate within that framework. Try being Microsoft, raise a heavily armed militia in the US and start storming people's homes and threatening politicians, and see what happens to you.
The US Government can easily destroy any big business they choose to. They can attack it from dozens of angles. They can compel compliance to programs the corporations do not agree with, which has occurred to eg Yahoo and others with NSA spying.
There is still no such thing as a a big non-based corporation, one without an actual home country. There isn't a single actual example of it today.
Small governments and small businesses, that can participate in the game but don't have enough power to change the rules of the game.
I mean, you are paraphrasing Animal Farm, (but substituting "individual" for "animal" ) , and in doing so you seem to be, suggesting that, libertarianism(?) claims to treat people equally, but doesn't actually do so?
Please clarify, as right now it just looks like a quip.
I don't understand the libertarian stance either. They are against concentration and misuse of power (big business and government), which I can relate to, to an extent. But at the same time, they seem unwilling to help or even compromise with the other people who are getting screwed (which is often a majority). Specifically, they don't want to support poor in any way, and are often against democracy.
Now I sympathize with the cause, but why should I (politically, economically) help/support person (a libertarian) that is unwilling to help/support me? It doesn't make any sense, in fact it sounds as a fishy proposition, where I am gonna get screwed (though at least I appreciate the honesty).
I'd be happy to hear from libertarians how is this supposed to work - why should I support you? Is your system going to help me when I am in trouble and how? (Or don't forget to downvote me as a signal that you don't want to have a tough but mature discussion about your precious beliefs.)
Here's the first problem: the word "libertarian" is a huge umbrella term that encompasses many different philosophies. Reasonable uses of word go from "fuck you, got mine" all the way to "no coercion, please." I've seen plenty of folks self identify on various parts of this spectrum, so I'm not even including derogatory senses of the word. And of course, many would consider this to be a "right wing" usurpation of the word from traditional leftists. So despite the broad spectrum, one could still consider it wrong in a variety of ways.
With that said, I personally identify close to "no coercion, please." Notably, I largely see this as entirely orthogonal to what it means to help others. In contrast, "fuck you, got mine," is a clear statement that "helping others" is to be looked down upon, and that those who are poor are weak or lazy.
The "no coercion, please" is also easy to conflate with "don't help others" because such a position often entails an argument in favor of defunding or abolishing many of the social welfare programs we see today. Often, this argument is made without any attempt at providing an alternative, so it's easily dismissed by conscientious individuals. However, many of these arguments are not based on the proposition that the poor are weak or that helping others is somehow bad, but rather, that these social welfare programs are predicated on the use of force (as us libertarians see it, which is not necessarily how others see it, because certainly not all people think that taxation is coercive, but I certainly see it that way). Since they are predicated on the use of force, they are generally incompatible with libertarian philosophy. However, the part where social welfare programs help people is, to me, not incompatible at all with libertarian philosophy. For example, there are uncountably many privately run charities in the world. These are of course organized voluntarily, and are therefore compatible with libertarian philosophy.
Naturally, this turns the discussion toward "well private charities provide no guarantees to help folks in need." And yes, that is true. But now you've arrived to the heart of the matter: the only way to provide a "guarantee" is to use coercion. (I personally don't think of this as a guarantee, but government institutions certainly have an air of longevity and stability that isn't often associated with private organizations, so I can understand the sentiment.)
I largely see this as a trade off between freedom and security. Freedom means there are no guarantees; folks in need will only get help if there are others willing to give it.
For me personally, I cannot ethically abide coercion, ever. This probably makes me an absolutist. Of course, in real life, my pragmatism takes over. I don't mind being an absolutist in theory. ;-)
Do you support Basic Income? The system of "free market capitalism" is certainly coercive in the way it walls resources off and forces people to play into the system of exchanging labor for money so they can survive.
If "basic income" requires coercive force, then I'm against it.
If "basic income" does not require coercive force, then go for it.
> The system of "free market capitalism" is certainly coercive in the way it walls resources off and forces people to play into the system of exchanging labor for money so they can survive.
If exchanging labor for goods required for survival meets your definition of coercion, then we do not share the same definition. I submit that you can keep your definition. Instead, simply replace all occurrences of the word "coercion" in my comments as "the initiation of physical force (or threat of) by a specific person or group."
I'm happy to support the eradication of social ills that meet your definition of coercion; but I will not abide my definition of coercion in the process.
Anyway, thanks for the reply to my original comment. Like user "solipsism" though, I found your views somewhat contradictory. But it seems very apparent that your answer to my question "would you help me if I am in trouble?" is "NO, if it would mean to coerce the other party to leave you alone". Which is a rather weak ethic in my book.
My answer to that question is: "yes."
I'm not sure how you arrived at your conclusion.
I've encountered this extreme and radical ideology before; it seems you want to take a snapshot of private property ownership /now/ and claim that it is right and just, ignoring injustices of the past and how these things came to be, and then claim that the property rights are inviolable and any violation of them with physical force is injustice. No, the property rights themselves as they exists now are an injustice without the support of the state.
I don't actually. I don't see anything black & white about property. Instead, I view it as a means to attempt to resolve conflict over scarce resources peacefully. I do not believe this requires moral authority or coercive government.
I mean, the presence of coercive government doesn't really resolve any of your criticisms either. Where does it get the moral authority to apply coercion come from? 51% of the population? Why does 51% of the population have a moral authority over the other 49%?
I'll say this to re-emphasize the message I'm trying to convey: I really don't care much at all about property or ownership. Sure, I do believe they are useful constructs to reason about interaction between actors in society, but its particular formulation isn't a sticking point to me. What I care about is: are you trying to justify coercion? If so, then it isn't OK with me. If you have some means of satisfying your "moral authority" without the use of coercion, then great! Let's do it.
Your point about the moral authority of 51% of the population coercing the remaining 49% is an interesting one, but I would answer thusly: you are not coerced at all, in fact you are free to exist without obeying the state. All you must do is avoid taking the state's possessions: don't breathe our air, don't eat our food, don't live on our land, don't drink our water. If you're willing to do this you can live completely coercion-free. It's the kind of choice libertarians love; the illusion of one.
No, it's not. I defined what I meant by coercion in other comments. If your definition is different, then erase all uses of coercion in my comments and replace it with my definition.
You are very clearly using the word "coercion" in a way that is very different from how I'm using it.
I would personally recommend that we end this discussion. Your condescending tone is insufferable.
Taking a position like yours which is so fundamentalist and extreme and simultaneously divorced from reality is admirable in that it is Socratic: you take an absurd position and push others until they realize their own contradictions. But you can't be upset about blowback when you do this since it is intentionally obnoxious; Socrates was executed for being so horribly difficult, all you received was one snarky line in an otherwise long, respectful and thoughtful comment addressing only the substance of your argument, which is honestly far above the par for the course when it comes to average HN comments.
I'll agree this conversation should end.
I explained our disagreement over terms and suggested a path forward. Instead of responding to that, you ignored it and proceeded to lecture me on how "intentionally obnoxious" I was being. You even went out of your way to trivialize my experience; at least I'm not being executed!
> But you can't be upset about blowback
And you can't be upset when people react negatively to comments dripped with condescension and subtle insults. Do you really think that is an effective way to engage another human? I don't. This isn't me "attacking your tone." This is me saying, "I'm not longer comfortable speaking to you because I believe you've lost the assumption of good faith."
Say what you want about me, but at least I didn't stoop to your level.
I personally fall in the first camp while sympathetic to the moral arguments. I would support basic income as it gets us closer to a libertarian system as opposed to status quo and has an actual chance of happening. Milton Friedman, a key figure of the modern libertarian movement and a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recipient, was also a proponent for similar reasons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman#Social_securit...).
If you're genuinely interested in learning more about libertarianism from a consequentialist perspective, I would strongly recommend the "Free to Chose" tv series by Milton Friedman which is freely available here: http://www.freetochoose.tv/ftc80.php. I was in the "statist" camp for most of my life because I had never been fairly exposed to the other side of the medal and this series is what pushed me to dig more into the subject.
I'm curious -- when you simulate your ideal society in your mind, at what kind of stable state do you arrive? I understand and sympathize with some of the same philosophical _first principles_ you do, but when I play it out in my mind I don't get to a world in which I'd like to live. In fact, the world I end up with is one in which life and liberty are routinely and casually stolen from others -- not by a state, necessarily, but by other forms of powerful self-interested organizations. Gangs, mafias, private armies. Coercive forces.
Of course there will be positively intentioned organizations to attempt to counteract these coercive forces. Unfortunately, they won't be able to compete because they suffer from a huge handicap: they lack the ability to coerce others to their cause.
So that's where it ends up in my mind. Epic failure, for the exact reason marxist Capitalism would fail: human self-interest.
Where does it end up in yours? If you've played this out and it end somewhere good, I think you must have a very positive and optimistic view of humanity.
The only thing I know for sure is that my ethical self condemns coercion. How this plays out in reality isn't at all clear to me.
> Gangs, mafias, private armies. Coercive forces.
Great, then that is inconsistent with my ethical beliefs.
It may very well be the case that a "free" society can only exist when that society embraces it. Certainly, ripping government out of an existing society doesn't make any sense and I don't see how that could end in a desirable outcome without a lot of pain in the middle---which I cannot advocate. My own personal hope is that it occurs peacefully over the course of slow cultural and societal evolution; probably spanning centuries.
For me personally, I am rather content with saying "I don't know." This does not change my ethics.
I was simply asking where you think society would end up if we were to adopt your philosophy. I wasn't making a value judgment about what I imagined you'd say. When I explained that my "simulation" led to a shitty place, I wasn't presuming you'd agree it was shitty, and I wasn't asserting my simulation is likely to be more right than anyone else's.
Sometimes I stretch my neck out and try to have an intelligent conversation with people on here, as I would with friends. It's almost always a mistake. It's like a shark tank in here, everyone trying to prove everyone else wrong, and everyone assuming everyone else is trying to prove one wrong.
Ironically, this is how I felt when I read your initial comment.
These types of conversations are always easier for me in person.
> The only thing I know for sure is that my ethical self condemns coercion. How this plays out in reality isn't at all clear to me.
Jesus! Even you don't know the answer to the question, why on Earth do you think we already know the answer?
> Great, then that is inconsistent with my ethical beliefs.
Nice. But in practice - would you be willing to coerce a mafia member if a friend asked you to? Or if your child would be threatened by gang? Fear from self-preservation aside (we all have it) - does your ethical belief allow for retaliation with coercion on behalf of some other party?
In another comment, I defined what I meant by coercion. Notably, it is the initiation of physical force (or threat of) by some particular person or group.
By this definition, coercion cannot be retaliatory. Retaliatory phyiscal force is no longer coercion precisely because it is not initiatory. Therefore, my ethic does not condemn it. (This does not imply that all forms and degrees of retaliatory force are ipso facto ethical in my book. Keep in mind that I am merely establishing minimal ethical criteria.)
So, if you don't mind - what about lying? What if somebody borrows something from you and they refuse to return it? How is initiating coercion against them bad?
What if someone falsely claims they own the piece of land that you think no one owns? So you give it up, and find out later the claim was false. Again, what about initiating coercion against them?
Frankly, I don't think the condemnation of "initiation of coercion" is a good ethics. Specifically, people can be intentionally misled and that by itself is actually a good reason to initiate coercion.
Also, cannot every coercion be interpreted as a retaliation for something? Does the fact that someone initiated a coercion at some point give the other party right to infinite (sanctioned by you) retaliation? Conversely, cannot anyone facing retaliation defend himself by saying (in attempt to get help) that this is initiation?
I simply think you cannot absolutely reject initiating coercion and accept retaliatory coercion.. You need to have some measure of what is fair, which will fall in the gray area. And this notion of fairness will eventually extend to things like taxes and so on.
I note that most of the questions you have raised are a result of my simplistic formulation. Consider, for example, that I handed you the US constitution and said, "this is the law, use it." It is also a simplistic formulation, with respect to the body of law in the US today. Many of the questions you raised in your comment would be good questions to raise in this case too. The practice of this Constitution (or "ethic" in my case) will, in the process, answer lots of questions. I don't see any reason why this process doesn't apply in my case either.
If all else fails, look to the current system in the US (or most other Western countries) for answers to your questions. With respect to case law, it's a reasonable approximation to my ethic.
It seems that you want to have world black and white, and so you invent new categories to deal with difficult moral dilemmas. But personal ethics is not something coming from a book, it's a result of intuitively answering these questions (by "feel") and sometimes accepting that there is no good answer, or that answer depends on different circumstances.
> look to the current system in the US (or most other Western countries) for answers to your questions .. it's a reasonable approximation to my ethic
Yes and no - that's my original problem. When I ask you a specific moral question, the answer indeed seems quite reasonable. But then you're (very definitely) against things like taxation or state (which are integral part of the Western culture). I would like to understand where this contradiction comes from.
Now that I think about it, the whole business of how libertarianism treats "property" seems kinda morally repulsive to me for a different reason. It seems to me that libertarians treat property as a kind of extension to human body, in a sense that someone losing half of their 1000-acre property forever is a comparable (or worse) crime to a homeless losing a toe to the cold. What I miss here, I think, is a certain "normal" sense of proportion (or even admission that there is a proportion).
Anyway, I appreciate the discussion, especially given you were the only person willing to respond to my original post.
I would do exactly the same if it was a really difficult technical topic. Instead of spending a week writing a 10,000 word essay for you, I'd point you to someone else who has already done it. Feel free to trawl through my comments on HN. I regularly defer to some other source of information. It's just common sense.
The comparison with theology is weird, considering that theology is based on the premise of revealed knowledge about the world. I've not invoked any such construct, so I don't see the similarities.
> It seems that you want to have world black and white
No, I don't actually. I just want to stop legitimizing coercion.
> Now that I think about it, the whole business of how libertarianism treats "property" seems kinda morally repulsive to me for a different reason. It seems to me that libertarians treat property as a kind of extension to human body, in a sense that someone losing half of their 1000-acre property forever is a comparable (or worse) crime to a homeless losing a toe to the cold. What I miss here, I think, is a certain "normal" sense of proportion (or even admission that there is a proportion).
Frankly, this is beyond the scope of my ethic.
For example, if you had read other works by the OP, you would know that there is indeed quite a bit of theory behind proportion.
Your absolutist views on property are your own. I do not share them. I don't care what system of property you invent, even if it means eradicating property altogether. But if your system needs legitimized coercion, then I would find it immoral. It's really as simple as that.
Finally, I'd also like to note that you seem to have ignored---or at least not acknowledged---my answer to your question. Namely, that being libertarian is somehow contrary to helping others. The entire point of my response was to demonstrate why this wasn't necessarily true, while acknowledging that there is plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree (because there are so many different flavors of libertarianism). The conversation has now devolved into an attempt to have me build up an entire theory of case law for you in HN comments. When I refused, I was compared with theologians. Personally, I don't find this progression of discussion to be in good faith.
I responded to your initial comment because I feel very strongly about helping others, and it always pains me to see a common misconception about libertarianism used to paint all of its adherents under some evil light. (Because I do consider refusal to help others to be a sort of evil.) I love to help others and I know plenty of other libertarians who share that zeal.
I tried to demonstrate this by pointing out the things I truly care about ("no coercion") in libertarianism and how they don't preclude helping others.
> The comparison with theology is weird, considering that theology is based on the premise of revealed knowledge about the world.
Every book on libertarianism I have seen was lot more interested in some sort of ultimate, axiomatic moral truth, rather than empirical evidence that libertarianism works (by whatever criteria) in the real world. Ayn Rand with her fiction is probably the best example, but Rothbard is IIRC not much better. Heaps of theory and little evidence.
> Namely, that being libertarian is somehow contrary to helping others.
I think I finally understand what you're really saying. You basically think that helping others (say, economically) is something that shouldn't be enforced by society. I can see why people (including me) can wrongly interpret that as being against helping itself.
It seems kind of similar to moral view that we have in the West regarding adultery. Most of us find it immoral, but we don't agree it should be punished by law, or that there should be deliberate obstacles put in place in order to prevent it happening (such as separation of men and women). And here too, this can be interpreted by say, religious fundamentalists, that this view supports adultery.
(Originally, I thought you just think that not-helping others shouldn't be punished, but that's a weaker proposition that still doesn't explain why are you against say, taxes.)
I don't think though society can even exist in such framework. I pretty much agree with what wfo wrote you above. Seriously, some empirical evidence for your position would help. It may even be in a form of computer simulation.
Ayn Rand has always put me off. She is more in the "got mine, fuck you" end of the libertarian spectrum IMO. Unfortunately, a significant fraction of other libertarians are that way too.
I've personally always found Rothbard compelling. The axiomatic stuff is just a way to build a foundation, and there's definitely lots of hand wringing there. But you have to start somewhere. Personally, I think it's quite possible to disagree with those axioms and therefore reject any conclusions drawn from them. More to the point, I don't see how this is specifically a condemnation of libertarianism. Any political philosophy relies on some axiom or another, e.g., social contract theory, which purportedly justifies our current system.
> I don't think though society can even exist in such framework. I pretty much agree with what wfo wrote you above. Seriously, some empirical evidence for your position would help. It may even be in a form of computer simulation.
I kindly defer to the very first line in my very first comment:
> I am, at least, philosophically libertarian. But I'm not an activist and don't participate in electoral politics.
I'm not really sure there is much empirical evidence to be found here. The only way to really know for sure whether it will work is to convince a society that freedom is an ideal worth pursuing and then try it. My own personal hope is that it occurs peacefully over time via cultural and societal evolution. It might span centuries.
Once again, I note that we have once again swayed from the original point. You called out libertarians as being against helping others. Instead, you end your comment with, "Ok, fine, I'll just dismiss that and jump straight to: but but but I can't possibly imagine how it will work." So? I don't really know either. Why can't we be content with not knowing stuff? I am. I am certainly content with not knowing how a free society would work. What I do know is that my belief that coercion is unethical is unshakable.
A "philosophical libertarian" is a different animal than a non-activist political libertarian, having to do with whether free will exists. Just FYI. :)
big fan of this ideology, especially personified by the likes of Peter Thiel, who went on record stating that letting womenfolk vote in the US was a huge mistake and has doomed his perfect vision of a society. wonder how his seabase is going?