Libertarianism for Me, Authoritarianism for Thee | Hacker News Reader

Libertarianism for Me, Authoritarianism for Thee

americancompass.org

67 pointsOutofthebot40 comments

I'm reminded of Frank Wilhoit's one-off blog comment[1].

[1]: https://kottke.org/21/02/conservatism-and-who-the-law-protec...

Gold, thanks for the reminder, still the best definition of conservatism I’ve come across.

“poorer Americans have been subjected to over regulation, an increased state and police scrutiny, under the theory that individual liberty is collectively corrosive.”

That seems like the thesis of the blog post.

I don’t think “over regulation” or lack of individual liberty are the main problem. We’ve been socializing the bad and privatizing the good for a long time now, and now none of our remaining institutions are trustworthy anymore. Regulations are one of the only tools we have to hold corporations accountable, and we’re not using them for that because capitalism doesn’t incentivize accountability.

The phrase "regulation" implies that the regulators--the State--are ethical actors. They aren't. How many more examples of that do we need to see before people believe it?

The dichotomy of "regulation" vs. "lack of regulation" is a false one. Neither work because too many humans are fundamentally unethical and non-trustworthy, leading to inevitable low-trust societies such as the one the West is experiencing right now.

We need to reject globalism in favor of localism. Local government is fundamentally more accountable to their constituencies if for no other reason than the physical proximity. I can always leave my house, walk or drive a few miles, and protest at city hall.

> The phrase "regulation" implies that the regulators--the State--are ethical actors.

Why would it imply this? Regulation is a political object, not a moral one. Regulation can be good or bad (as evaluated by a moral system, dealer's choice) without collapsing in on itself.

Political systems thrive for reasons that are mostly orthogonal to their moral nature, chief among them being whether their individual institutions survive administrations and the people within them. Trust is a function of the perseverance of those institutions when they are also perceived as good; it has nothing to do with globalism or localism.

My theory is that America needs to reverse some amount of globalization as its influence wanes. We’ll lose some of the cost benefits - it’s very cheap to source labor from third world countries - but we’ll gain from local production, perhaps meaning costs go up but wealth circulates more readily. Whether that’s a very inspiring idea, I can’t say.

But I’m unconvinced local politics are any better than national politics. We don’t seem to have any trouble traveling to Washington to protest.

This is much more complex and much less related to globalism than to us monetary policy. Using the dollar as a global fiat is certainly beneficial but it also means others are very interested in selling things to US to get dollars and buying from US means some dollars get out of the immediate circulation. Which is better, who knows, but it’s a specific policy decision by US and _not_ the concept of globalization, that has the consequences described.

Please, do not generalize. Life in Finland is much different from life in Italy and in Milwaukee. Low-trust societies are not inevitable in the West and there are clear examples. There is a marked difference between “glibalism is wrong” and “we overdid this capitalism thing (again) in our country”

So to be clear, black communities want fewer police in their neighbourhoods? That sounds like a testable proposition… and one that’s false by a large margin: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-sha...

I read it differently.

I think they would prefer different laws, rather than fewer police. Or different (more relaxed) enforcement of certain laws, especially for things which really aren’t that serious (e.g., many “possession of X” crimes).

While I agree entirely with the premise, particularly:

> poorer Americans have been subjected to over regulation, an increased state and police scrutiny, under the theory that individual liberty is collectively corrosive

I'm not sure the author does a great job explaining how "elites have gotten richer off the profits of a business community unchained and under regulated" is connected, or why the implication seem to be we should equally over regulate and scrutinize the elites just like we do the poor. Couldn't the implication also be just as equally valid that we should de-police and de-criminalize the situation for poor people, just like "us elites"?

I'm not sure I disagree, it's just that the article seems to assume the the readers political position. If I have to choose between Libertarianism for all or Authoritarianism for all, I think I'd come down on the former, not the later, and this post seems to be missing that crucial direction.

At any rate, not to make a long comment longer, but I'm strangely reminded of an article about the late night cartoon "Aqua Teen Hunger Force":

> They represented a kind of dystopian future that had, by the turn of the millennium, become more and more plausible: a shabby suburban nightmare filled with boarded-up strip-malls and cheap franchise restaurants, covered in garish advertising for products that no longer exist. [1]

Having lived in one of these places - San Antonio has plenty of areas that look very much like the photos in this article or the shabby suburban nightmare described above - What you -do not- get the sense of is the maliciousness of wall street. What you get the sense of is having been entirely forgotten. You don't need to invoke the callousness of capitalism to explain cold empty cities filled with pavement and mean police - that simplifies things to the point of stupidity.

1. https://www.avclub.com/the-end-of-aqua-teen-hunger-force-mar...

> You don't need to invoke the callousness of capitalism to explain cold empty cities filled with pavement and mean police - that simplifies things to the point of stupidity.

Capitalism's tendency to move production to lowest cost geographical regions is a significant contributing factor to the problem is it not?

A comment in the recent submission about Rome touched on the idea that civilizations are only rarely bound together and energized by an idea or vision for what life should be. When we have no goal for what we should be, we let things sit idly. Forgotten cities: no great plan for them except a few salves when we get worked up about it.

The American dream was an expansion-economy mindset: new industries meant new wealth meant lots of jobs which will elevate your standard of living. It seems like China is now experiencing their own Chinese Dream, but America doesn’t appear to be anymore. So we need to know what the plan is: are we creating huge new industries, or are we creating a new huge safety net? Are we reinvesting in capitalism or are we transitioning to a luxury economy? If it’s the former, then it’s time to break up monopolies. If it’s the latter, then it’s time to become socialists.

As a libertarian I really like this title's framing, which is pointing out the rank power-hypocrisy that has permeated every level of our society. The ideas of individual liberty are so far removed from the most egregious victims of the authoritarian system, that talking about problems in an individualist framework simply doesn't resonate.

Even in HN threads, where for the most part commenters are not staring down the worst abuses on a day to day basis, talking about issues like unaccountable police in the language of individuality, accountability, and law and order is generally ignored. The carrying narrative is instead "more training", as if simply training criminals better is all we need to get them to stop committing crimes! And while I believe in more humane criminal justice approaches like rehabilitation, yet again it's the worst abusers of the system (criminal police) who get the kind understanding approach, while everyone else is subject to the cruel stick.

I'm certainly not advocating that libertarian approaches are applicable everywhere, especially when applied naively or pathologically (eg the Party). But we have way too much single-perspective thinking about problems in general, and individual freedom is a strong analysis framework for pointing out just how bad this hypocrisy has become.

>talking about issues like unaccountable police in the language of individuality, accountability, and law and order is generally ignored.

>The carrying narrative is instead "more training", as if simply training criminals better is all we need to get them to stop committing crimes!

Dont you agree that individuals are flawed? Some dated kind of homo economicus should't be your model of individuals. So how would you fix eg. the corruption of power, causing police men to overstep?

> Dont you agree that individuals are flawed? Some dated kind of homo economicus should't be your model of individuals

I don't understand your question here.

> how would you fix eg. the corruption of power, causing police men to overstep?

The same way as for everyone else, with incentives based on post-facto enforcement. There's no justification for police to escape being bound by our laws.

You prosecute them personally for say 2nd degree murder, getting rid of "qualified immunity" or other entity liability shield. My point is precisely that the system currently lacks this justice (eg George Floyd's murderers being prosecuted was an unlikely event), and you can't rely on just training cops to be "less bad".

For lesser offenses, there would need to be a finding whether their actions were congruent with written department policy (in which case the department would be on the hook for damages and/or criminal conspiracy), or whether they were not (in which case they would be individual perps as above). But this liability should extend all the way to wrongful arrest/imprisonment, righting corruption like "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" and other externalities that have become routine.

I disagree. Punishment is not a fix. Criminals don't consider "for 5 year prison i will do it for 10, i wont". Negative examples, like a rouge cop being shamed and convicted, is not strictly required, simple training of the cops misbehaviour leading to consequences would achieve the same.

>you can't rely on just training cops to be "less bad"

Neither can punishment. My point is the individuals cognitive flaws that cause mistakes are a weak point of libertarian thinking. Everyone justifies their (bad) actions post hoc, barely anyone see themself as the bad guys and only education for other perspectives can change that.

> Punishment is not a fix. Criminals don't consider "for 5 year prison i will do it for 10, i wont".

There is an argument to be made that longer sentences aren't a deterrent, but surely some sentence is a deterrent. Furthermore there is an argument to be made that punishment is not the end all to reducing crime (for example improving people's condition will make them less likely to commit crime), but surely some combination of both is necessary. Either way, it's wholly hypocritical for criminal police officers to get the kind-understanding approach while non-police criminals get the hardline cruel approach. Treat both the same, and then we can talk about where the proper balance lies.

>> you can't rely on just training cops to be "less bad"

> Neither can punishment.

I wasn't advocating for only punishment, rather adding punishment. Without repercussions, you're relying on police officers voluntarily accepting the training. Especially with regards to racism, this seems quite naive.

> My point is the individuals cognitive flaws that cause mistakes are a weak point of libertarian thinking

At this point we're not even talking about mistakes, but willful malice. When police march down a street slashing the tires of every parked car, that's deliberate criminal malice no matter how they try to spin it after the fact.

> barely anyone see themself as the bad guys and only education for other perspectives can change that.

Yes, one strong way of changing someone's perspective is to jail them. If there's no stick, then there's no need to follow the carrot.

I thought libertarians tout smaller government? Are police not part of the government?

Every gun collecting, gadsen flag waving self-described "libertarian" I have met in real life, curiously, also sported things like thin blue line stickers on their pickup truck and was a huge supporter of their local sheriffs department.

wouldn't a key word there be 'gun' ?

I'm always confused why this seems hypocritical.

One can take any large-change political idea - communism, libertarian, anarchist whatever - won't there be a transition? Does even the most hardcore supporter believe you can upend society in a day? That seems straw manning a true Scotsman to me - where if you don't support the sudden, radical change of society you are not a true Scotsman.

You can run the experiment yourself. Sh/would a communist see private land ownership as the first thing to go? Or sh/would it nationalize business? Sh/would a libertarian want police gone first? Or licensing for lawn cutting?

Libertarians should want Taft-Hartley and other wage-suppressing regulations abolished first. They don't because free markets are really just code for making sure owners win and workers lose.

As a self-described libertarian -

I respect the job the police do, and I wouldn't want to have to do it myself. But that is completely orthogonal to holding individual police officers accountable under the same laws as everybody else. Agents of the state summarily executing people is one of the most egregious violations of individual liberty possible - larger than "licensing for lawn cutting" or most anything else. The "thin blue line" flag is a counter protest to the call for police accountability, and it is blatantly hypocritical to call yourself a libertarian while opposing a major libertarian critique.

The internet variety of Anarcho libertarian is quite anticop. Frequently see things like, "a cop will enforce any law up to and including the execution of children".

You meet a very peculiar brand of libertarian.

https://www.lp.org/issues/crime-and-justice/

https://old.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/search?q=Police&restric...

the rural eastern WA / OR / ID ones, mostly.

Libertariansim is about people being able to exercise their rights however they want, as long as that doesn't infringe on someone else's rights. If you believe in that, you need law enforcement to enforce people's rights when someone is infringing on them.

That doesn't seem realistic. Even good faith believers will have disagreements.

Who decides how a disagreement gets resolved? Even if you do contractual everything, what happens if a contract dispute arises? Sometimes contracts are done based on misunderstandings, or someone tries to press an advantage in a way the other party doesn't like.

Beyond all that, the "if you believe in letting everyone exercise rights as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights" sounds a lot like the wishful thinking that goes along with advocating communism. If everyone believes in from each according to ability, and to each according to need, you don't need legal systems and law enforcement, either.

There's nothing odd about that, seeing as how law enforcement and national defence are some the few tasks relegated to the state in a libertarian society. Now if you were talking about anarchists sporting such stickers you'd be right but libertarians are not anarchists. They want as little government as possible, not "no government at all". In other words, there is no incongruity in having both a Gadsen flag as well as some Thin Blue Line piece of marketing material on a truck.

"Defund the police" certainly does sound like a libertarian proposition to me, but people who call themselves Libertarian are much more concerned about government regulation of businesses, and see the police as necessary to insulate them from the negative externalities of late-stage capitalism.

I doubt libertarians would agree with this characterization. Rather, they would probably say some amount of policing is required to preserve our liberties, which—as a liberal and thinking person—I’m inclined to agree with (murder, theft, and oppression long predate any sort of capitalism, so implying that police are a consequence of a capitalist system is silly).

In discussing the realities of LA, SF, and Seattle with libertarians, most of them want stricter policing as a direct solution to the problems caused by rampant homelessness -- which is a result of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing costs. People with the very most money are free to gamble on the housing market, and to pay people as little as they can get away with. Damn the consequences; those are felt by the people without. No matter that "small government" doesn't consider the size of the sprawling prison industrial complex. Whether or not libertarians would agree with my characterization is immaterial to the reality of the impact of libertarian policies which are tailored in favor of the rich at expense to the poor.

> Whether or not libertarians would agree with my characterization is immaterial to the reality of the impact of libertarian policies which are tailored in favor of the rich at expense to the poor.

I was remarking about your specific claim about the Libertarian perspective and your implication that they’re inconsistent:

> [libertarians] see the police as necessary to insulate them from the negative externalities of late-stage capitalism.

The libertarian belief that a “rising tide floats all boats” might be incorrect, but inaccuracy and inconsistency are different things. Moreover, progressive policies have often been hard on the poor, and socialist and communist policies have been absolutely disastrous. No political ideology is blameless.

The paradox cuts both ways—liberals and leftists purport to want more regulation and bigger government, so presumably we should want more police. Of course, issues are decoupled so a leftist can want more regulation of businesses and less policing and a libertarian can prefer more moderate police reforms while wishing the government were less involved in business and social affairs (I’m a liberal, so I disagree with libertarians, but their ideology is at least as consistent as mine).

Political libertarianism is just absolutist property rights. It's the absolute sovereignty of the property owner. It's "small government" in the same sense as the "state's right" to deem persons slaves: big government stays out of my way as I exercise my rightful power to dominate others.

"That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves." - Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars

Or technically a character from the book.

But I think, that's the point of the article: Smaller government for the part of government which doesn't concern you. But that in turn might look differently for people in different circumstances.

Demographics (to avoid the term "race") affect your view if police or other parts of government are essential or rather part of the problem .

Thank you for your response. I’m curious to know what the utilitarian approach to policing would be. (An approach that is useful or beneficial to the majority?) I currently believe that approach is still a highly decentralized one—Local communities deciding what the best approach is and the freedom to move over to a different community if desired. And I still think that belief aligns most with libertarianism.

As I understand it, libertarians would replace government by contractual relationships. How do those contracts get enforced? How do contract disputes get resolved? How does the private ownership of everything get enforced?

Libertarianism implies a very large court system, and a large police force, to enforce all the contracts and so forth.

I'm a left libertarian w/ some georgism ideas....

I think what we need is a better social contract such that local municipalities get the dragons' horde of taxes... I also think we need a more EU style federal govt..

My ideal country would be 200 city-states (minimum), each governor is also a senator for the Congress. No house. There'd be ten regions in the country which might be like countries... or provinces ... these would simply be loose orgs of governors in an area who elect a President yearly to oversee the group, and speak for them. Each region has it's own military that the fed can conscript IF the region has 60% approval from states.

Fed is basically in charge of interstate commerce, international affairs, national security, etc...

100% of taxes would be required to stay within 100 miles of 'home' for the person paying the taxes... 10% of the total would be distributed among regional and federal levels...

Most things would stay the same organizationally, hopefully states would form their own universal healthcare and welfare programs, and grants for worker-owned companies. No subsidies at all for single-person or regular 'corporations'.

Some states would definitely fall back to more draconic thinking...esp on lines of abortion/gun control... some being pro-choice, some anti-abortion.... but w/ more states in wider areas you can move to a more progressive place hopefully.. like Austin might be a uniquely progressive city-state and Amarillo a more conservative one...

Don't like the one move to the other...

The problem to me is we put everything in D.C. and all our cash there as well, and all they do is spend it on the Military and nothing else gets done...ever.

Both sides are equally stagnate in proposing true/good options..

If we move the higher powers of government to local, and then thin it out as we move up to regional and federal, then people have more control of what really happens in their neck of the woods, and at least some places might have better living conditions and maybe the better places rub off their 'success stories' on the worse places and you get improved living conditions across the board...

Jefferson believed that people shouldn't be patriotic towards USA but towards Virginia, or whatever state... I think if we became more like that...then things might sort itself out.

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