The politicians likely remember the scandal from the 1980s of Regular Joes being torn apart by aggressive IRS agents. Saying "hiring more IRS agents brings in more money than they cost" is incredibly gauche to anyone who remembers it.
And targeting "regular joes" is a terrible way to make money. The vast majority of govt income comes from the wealthy, in particular because wealth distribution is so unbalanced.
This is the crux, and I've never seen a good Libertarian defense against this. Someone will always fill the power void.
My question would be: without government intervention, what incentive do mega corporations have to allow unions to continue? What prevents them from making their own rules, which prevent unions? Since these same companies are behind the efforts to dismantle unions, it seems that removing government would just remove the middle man, making it easier for companies to abuse workers, dismantle unions, etc.
So far as I know, pure free-market capitalism always tends towards monopolies or oligarchies absent some level of intervention. It is simply too hard to be a well-informed consumer, and we consumers prioritize our short term convenience over societies (or even just our own) long term benefit.
Look into the concept of regulatory capture. The Dodd-Frank regulations that went into place are a great example of this. They were sold to us plebes as a way to protect us from future banking failures. Except the regulations were basically written by the big banks and forced the small banks out of business. They have actually increased the risk of future crisis by consolidating the industry. Here's an article about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/04/14/has-dodd-fra...
I'm not a big fan of the laws as we have them, but sure, i'll play along:
> How would Lockheed Martin, GE, Disney, etc. look?
...I'm not sure they'd look substantially different. LM would still only be in competition with a few others because of high barriers to entry. GE...I lack even passing knowledge to speculate. Disney would lose out on a lot of merchandizing money, but once someone in a field like animation or entertainment got ahead, they'd have an easier time attracting both customer AND talent, which provide a feedback loop to their benefit.
> how would Comcast look?
...of my many, MANY complaints about Comcast, I don't know that copyright or patent issues show up. Comcast isn't what they are via govt monopoly (so far as I know, though they have of course abused govt power) but because the cost of entry is so high that there are few competitors. Even when there ARE competitors, they choose not to compete (see recent admission that comcast and time-warner don't even compete pre-merger).
> Look into the concept of regulatory capture
Not qualified to even speculate - let's just say I have some skepticism but don't reject your claims.
All in all, it seems like you are arguing that the govt creates monopolies. I won't argue against that. BUT my claim is that you have MORE monopolies in (certain) unregulated markets. I can very well be wrong...do you have any evidence to that point?
Not to be too cheeky, but do you have any evidence to support your claim that we would have more monopolies without government intervention?
If you look back through U.S. history, how many monopolies has the government actually broken up? Not many. And I don't think anyone can seriously argue that the threat of antitrust action by the government is what has limited the existence of monopolies.
On the flip side, the government has created or protected thousands of monopolies. As the parent mentioned, virtually every city in the U.S. has granted monopolies to local service providers. On a grander scale, U.S. policy has long perpetuated monopolies for the likes of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel by imposing tariffs on foreign goods and raising barriers to entry through licensing and other regulatory hurdles.
It seems self evident to me that for at least the last 200 years U.S. governments in total have done far more to foster monopolies than they have to dismantle them.
I just posted elsewhere in these comments on that, but basically: Hearst, US Steel, Microsoft, plus lots of potential abuse that is prevented. (You're implying that tariffs supported the US Steel monopoly - I won't argue. But it didn't create the monopoly, and it didn't create the market abuse)
> And I don't think anyone can seriously argue that the threat of antitrust action by the government is what has limited the existence of monopolies.
I certainly will. I've watched Microsoft dance about (including funding Apple) when they were scared. Before them IBM did the dance. BSD exists because AT&T was prevented from selling UNIX directly. I see Google doing the dance, and Amazon is in the wings. Syngenta was going to merge with Monsanto, but didn't, and not because they suddenly thought it was a bad deal. Bayer and Monsanto are now looking to merge, and they are figuring out what businesses to spin off to avoid being stopped by monopoly concerns. You can go through the big mergers over the past 20 years (at least) and see how they've worked to avoid being hit with govt restrictions.
The govt even allows you to be a monopoly, all through your own market prowess...but prevents (or tries to) you from using that monopoly to spread into related areas. Absent that oversight completely free market capitalism would have ground innovation to a halt because the barriers to entry in most industries would be crippling. Investors wouldn't want to invest in competitors because it'd be a terrible risk rather than a basic risk.
> It seems self evident to me
Indeed, it is self evident to you. Not to everyone.
I'm not quite as familiar with US Steel, but I do know that one of the primary reasons they became so big was because they were fully integrated through the entire production process. A substantial part of that was controlling the mode of transportation for heavy goods, railroad. That history of rail in our country is wrought with examples of government granted monopolies right from the beginning of the trans-continental railroad.
I know virtually nothing about Hearst, but it was a news/media company right? So that should definitely fall under the same category of intellectual property.
Where do you get that idea from? Nearly every monopoly is the product of government bestowed privilege.
Hearst, US Steel, Microsoft, the various abusive powers across history.
I won't deny that the govt DOES provide monopolies. But absent govt intervention, as soon as someone gets ahead, it's easier to get ahead. "Oh, you want to carry my competitors product? Well, good luck staying in business without my products, or the products of anyone else that relies on me, because I will tell them I'll cut them off if they sell to you." or perhaps there's the carrot instead of the stick: "Oh, you want to buy from them? I'll undercut them by 20%. Sure, that's below cost, but they won't stay in business long with no customers, meanwhile I've got a good bankroll. I'll even buy up the wreck of their company afterward at bargain prices, and make up any difference later when I have no competition to restrict my prices."
Nearly every CURRENT monopoly is from the govt...because in most developed nations that's the only way to get a monopoly without getting hit by antitrust. I remember when Apple was in the toilet - Microsoft kept them afloat with a big stock buy. This wasn't done because MS had warm fuzzy feelings, it was done to maintain the appearance of competition. Were MS not afraid of the govt interfering, they'd have let Apply die, they'd have made (more) deals with OEMs that refused to license Windows to them if they installed Netscape, etc.
Or take Google - They are dancing around trying not to offend European regulators and have been for years. Absent any fear of govts, Google would have no reason not to fully tie their products and advertising. Compete with them and suddenly the engine that powers 60% of customer searches will either not have your products or drop them to page 10. Searches for reviews of your products will somehow highlight the negative reviews. Nearly impossible to prove any wrongdoing if it (1) isn't "wrong" in the legal sense and (2) there is no authority to dig up information.
I don't believe a mythical "informed consumer" will see behavior like that (first - how would they see it? It'd be they said/they said) and punish the abuser. Watch how boycotts against Amazon for their one-click patent fared, or against Blizzard for their treatment of bnetd. (hint: insignificant...and I say that as someone that did both) Or heck, look at how hospitals can successfully hide their prices and have a huge range. The average consumer values convenience far more than fairness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_and_Right:_A_Journal_of_L...
"Our title, Left and Right, reflects our concerns in several ways. It reveals our editorial concern with the ideological; and it also highlights our conviction that the present-day categories of left and right have become misleading and obsolete, and that the doctrine of liberty contains elements corresponding with both contemporary left and right. This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths."
Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago. For example:
• not only has the libertarian party always supported gay marriage but the first presidential candidate was an openly gay man
• libertarians are opposed to the war on drugs
• libertarians opposed the Viet Nam war
• libertarians generally favor regulated legalized prostitution
etc etc etc
Whatever "right wing" is supposed to mean, I doubt it means these positions.
> Whatever "right wing" is supposed to mean, I doubt it means these positions.
"Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc. Right-wing libertarianism generally draw from the Austrian school, and people like von Mises and occasionally Ayn Rand etc.
Compare to left-wing libertarians who generally are anarchists or Marxists when it comes to economic views and views on property rights.
The entire point is that these two camps align with the traditional left and right on economic issues, but are aligned with each other on a lot of social issues and on anti-authoritarianism.
I thought I was pretty clear: "Those who talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" should realize that this is a too simplistic label as Rothbard tried to say decades ago."
>..."Right wing" in this context is about economic positions, views on property etc.
Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the average libertarian. (They also don't share the social views of the average libertarian.) That label isn't helpful if it doesn't explain their views - as Rothbard wrote so long ago: "...This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths."
>...The entire point is that these two camps align with the traditional left and right on economic issues, but are aligned with each other on a lot of social issues and on anti-authoritarianism.
The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
It is a too simplistic label for libertarianism as a whole. It is a perfectly viable lable when you want to talk about "US-style right-wing libertarianism" - most people instantly understand roughly what that refers to, so the label serves its purpose.
> Again, I doubt the vast majority of the groups you would call "right wing" would share the economic views of the average libertarian.
Huh? The point is exactly that libertarian groups are found far out on both sides of the spectrum, so what in the world is an "average libertarian"?
> That label isn't helpful if it doesn't explain their views
But it does.
> as Rothbard wrote so long ago: "...This means in no sense that we are middle-of-the-roaders, eclectically trying to combine, or step between, both poles; but rather that a consistent view of liberty includes concepts that have also become part of the rhetoric or program of right and of left. Hence a creative approach to liberty must transcend the confines of contemporary political shibboleths."
And this was exactly the point I made by bringing up Rothbard in the first place: There was an attempt to unify these views of the left and right.
But that still does not mean there is not a firmly right-wing and firmly left-wing libertarianism both when considering primarily economic views and when considering where people self-identify.
> The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
So we largely agree then, but this doesn't change any of what I wrote earlier.
Obviously not. People have a rough understanding of "right wing" - with the election of Trump they think about Breitbart and various "economic nationalism" groups and various authoritarians who want to limit social freedoms like the right to terminate a pregnancy, put something in their body, etc etc. Those groups obviously have nothing to do with libertarianism. Politicians love to label opponents to poison the well: "tax and spend liberal", "reactionary", "far right", etc - such labeling of other people is not useful if you actually want to understand the other person's views.
>...Huh? The point is exactly that libertarian groups are found far out on both sides of the spectrum, so what in the world is an "average libertarian"?
Again, you are using a one dimensional view of political thought when you say "on both sides of the spectrum". Also some of the libertarian positions such as the removal of victimless crimes haven't been fully embraced by the voters but that doesn't mean they are "far out". We no longer have a draft, most people are now more leery of the war on drugs and gay marriage is allowed, so progress is slowly made.
>...And this was exactly the point I made by bringing up Rothbard in the first place: There was an attempt to unify these views of the left and right.
And again - if the people who label, reject that label as being misleading, it isn't a good label (unless your goal is simply to marginalize them.)
>> The point is that using a one dimensional model for political thought is too simplistic and it is simply misleading.
>So we largely agree then, but this doesn't change any of what I wrote earlier.
Well it is good we agree on something, but you continue to use this one dimensional model throughout.
Really? I don't you've made that case at all. My experience is far from that. Maybe that's the case in the US, but in Europe at least the right still encompass a wide range of ideologies that are mostly far more nuanced than that.
> Again, you are using a one dimensional view of political thought when you say "on both sides of the spectrum".
Read again. There is a one-dimensional spectrum that people like assign political movements to, and the main point I've been making in this thread has been exactly that the formation of US style right-wing libertarianism explicitly was an exercise in recognising that this was insufficient, and that while right-libertarians to a large extent are aligned with the "traditional right" in terms of economic views, they rarely are when it comes to social views, and there there is potential for alliances with libertarians on the left.
> And again - if the people who label, reject that label as being misleading, it isn't a good label (unless your goal is simply to marginalize them.)
I don't know what you are trying to say here. I am a left-libertarian. I do use that label, and I don't reject it. I've spoken to many right-libertarians, and they all self-identified as right-wing and libertarians, and don't reject it. I've spoken to many left-libertarians, and they've all self-identified as left wing and seen themselves as clearly separate from the right. I've never met someone who called themselves libertarian who didn't have a very clear idea of whether or not they considered themselves left- or right.
There is a very clear distinction, generally: Those who favour strong private property rights tends to clearly define themselves as right-wing and favour the Austrian school when in comes to economy. Many of them are extremely hostile to socialism, while most left libertarians considers themselves socialist, Marxist and/or anarchist.
As such the left and right labels here are not hypothetical.
Also because of who people consider viable alliance partners or alternatives to vote for. I would opt for (non-libertarian) social democrats over right-libertarians, for example, and would opt for (non-libertarian) classical liberals over right-libertarians too, because while I agree more with right-libertarians on social issues, I see their economic views as disastrous and immoral and in starker opposition to liberty than social-democratic policies even though the latter involve more government regulation, because of which areas they want to regulate and how.
As such the left/right axis is still deeply relevant, though it's important for libertarians to realise that in specific areas, the most likely ally might be on the other side of the spectrum.
> Well it is good we agree on something, but you continue to use this one dimensional model throughout.
Because it is still relevant, given that it is what people are familiar with and define themselves by, no matter how flawed it is.
In 25 years of discussing this with people, you're the first person to get hung up in this use of left vs. right.
This might be an American vs European difference. I have known plenty of libertarians and I can't think of any of them that would classify themselves as "right wing". As an example any of the libertarian positions I listed in my first response would be anathema to any group that is considered to be "right wing".
>…I would opt for (non-libertarian) social democrats over right-libertarians, for example, and would opt for (non-libertarian) classical liberals over right-libertarians too,
Again, maybe an American difference, but I would have to say that many libertarians I know would consider themselves to be classic liberals. For example, here is a quote from a professor at NYU:
"...I consider myself both a libertarian and a classical liberal. … So there are important differences among liberals and libertarians but I view these are differences along a spectrum. Some are principled (“Never, ever, initiate the use of force”) and some are empirical (“Many public goods can be provided privately”) and some are hard to classify (“The NSA should not collect masses of meta data”). Some people will want to take these differences and harden them into different political philosophies with different names and so forth. But I suggest that libertarians and classical liberals have too much in common for any divorce."
https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/libertarianism...
>> Well it is good we agree on something, but you continue to use this one dimensional model throughout. >Because it is still relevant, given that it is what people are familiar with and define themselves by, no matter how flawed it is.
Since no one can even describe the variable that underlies the left-right line, it is a pretty useless model and in American political campaigns, "right wing" and "left wing" is now simply used as a pejorative to paint someone as an extremist (there are plenty of extremists out there, but not everyone who doesn't register with the 2 major parties is one).
Libertarianism and Marxism are two sides of the same coin: theoretical utopias, if we can just get everyone to agree to play nice!
Well, in the real world where humans compete for resources to survive, people don't play nice. That's a hard biological fact, and no amount of indoctrination or force is going to be able to remove those hard-coded instincts for self-preservation, so it's best to adopt a system that is at least somewhat compatible with it.
That can take a while to fully internalize, which explains why so many young idealists adopt Libertarian and/or Marxist positions for a few years before they end up moving on.
And therein lies the problem. You can hire 10,000 "regular Joe" agents to go after "regular Joe" offenders and make far less than if you could somehow successfully hire 100 genius agents to go after the top 100 suspected cases.
The issue lies in the fact that most people simply are not capable of going toe to toe with some of the best legal tax frameworks money can buy, and so like with all law enforcement the "hard" targets tend to get largely ignored while the soft targets are exploited mercilessly.
That's all I see an IRS hiring program doing - bringing the hammer down on people for rather trivial things, while continuing to ignore the elephant in the room simply due human nature being what it is. They want to show wins, not 6 years on the same 3 billion dollar case.
That depends a lot on your definition of "wealthy" and "regular joes".
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
According to that, the top 1% contributes about 37% of income taxes. On the other hand, the bottom 50% contributes only 2.78%.
I guess a lot of people would consider the 1% to be wealthy, but most of the 1% are actually just doctors. I'm guessing that the real wealthy, those whose income is derived from capital rather than their labour, don't contribute much to federal tax income because of the low capital gains tax rate in the US.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/money/64437383/ird-collects-40...