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Comment by thomasmallen | Hacker News Reader

For impatient types like myself:

Proposed flaw #1:

That is basically the first flaw of libertarianism: If you shrink the government down to nothing and have corporations in control then you won’t have a rule of law.

Proposed flaw #2:

That leads me to the second flaw of libertarian economics: efficiency. ... economists use the term “efficiency” differently than programmers.

You see, most libertarians think of efficiency as “Fast! FAST FAST FAST!” They think it means lean and trim companies all working to gain the maximum profit with the least effort necessary.

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Of course, at no point does Mr. Shaw prove that libertarians think this way, but that would put a stick in his spokes, I suppose, and boy, is he riding quickly down the hill of psuedo-political invective.

And as for flaw #1, libertarianism is not in any way, shape, or form, anarchy. Rather, libertarianism preaches that the government should be as small as practical.

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There is a hypocrisy in libertarianism à la Mises. When you read his hyper-logical texts (wich should be appealing to the HN crowd btw), he claims that we should remove any sort of ideology from our political and economical systems. Reason and logic only should govern our lives, and it is the duty of economics to aim at this goal.

Sure, sounds attractive !

But there is a big assumption here, and it is that libertarianism is special and different, it's not an ideology like marxism or catholicism. It's THE way. It is the only path to reason and logic and science, because when we reduce the role of the state, we reduce the part of ideology in society. Therefore it must be the less ideological system of all, the most logical, and thus the the right one.

Of course, liberatarians turn out to be just like any other political sensibility. They agree on broad things that makes them look like unite only because they are a tiny minority in the political landscape. But like any other sensibility, you reach a point in the debate where their own camp is split up in two and they will fight each other, etc. It wouldn't be the case if it wasn't an ideology, and they would all agree on core issues like the private/public fire stations, or even health wich should be considered like any other good for some, but not for some others (I can tell because I have some libertarians friends). The above comments about the protection from plagues are very interesting. It leads to the very interesting history of sewers.

Mises is the reflect of his century when we were too optimistic about science, we believed it would soon answer all the questions even in fields that looked like non-scientific, like human organization. It turned out science is indeed good for changing our lives in an indirect way, but unfortunatly not so good outside real scientific fields. It doesn't answer philosophical questions (if such a science existed, then it would be the right one to follow for organizing human societies).

You cite a single author as a representation of a vast political ideology and quickly drop in some fluff that guides the rest of your comment:

But there is a big assumption here, and it is that libertarianism is special and different...

Libertarianism is a slightly more detailed political idea than convervatism. It represents the desire for smaller government that only acts when necessary. Another core tenet is that you're free to do as you please until your actions infringe upon the rights of others.

>Another core tenet is that you're free to do as you please until your actions infringe upon the rights of others.

That's totally vacuous without defining those rights. A major one for most libertarians is property, but the distribution of property is based on historic things like taking lands from native populations. Who decides who owns what? How far back do we have to unwind things? Why should heredity determine what property you "start out" with? How does a Lockean ideal of "mixing your labor with the soil" to create "property" somehow mean that because some bean farmer on plot of land X farmed beans for 10 years there, him and his descendants now own all the oil under that land that was only discovered later, and not by them?

You're right. Zed is confused.

Libertarianism is NOT Anarcho-Capitalism. Libertarianism advocates that the government should be reduced to the minimum which is necessary to protect the citizens' rights. Anarcho-Capitalism advocates that corporations should replace government.

But that can quickly devolve into arguments as to what counts as a 'right': the most obvious examples being food, water, shelter, healthcare and education. That 'minimum' is an arbitrary line.

You made a very good point. I don't know what to answer. Defining what a "right" is and what it is not would lead to endless discussion.

In any case, I would say that instead of discussing in rather vague terms whether more government is better / worse than less government, it would be sensible to think of what kind of government.

By principle, I believe that goverment bureaucracy and interference should be kept to a minimum. However, I would rather live under a Scandinavian-like government (even though it's big government) than in a Somalia-like anarchy. We all agree on the goals: freedom, prosperity, etc. Sometimes we disagree on how to get there. I vote for pragmatism over ideology.

> However, I would rather live under a Scandinavian-like government [...] We all agree on the goals: [...] prosperity, etc.

Yes, I've totally cut up your point, and I'll take this over Somalia any day. But Scandinavian government (Denmark in this case) couldn't care less about prosperity. Right out of college, you're in the top tax bracket, paying 63% on everything above $64.000 annual income (and just under 50% on everything below). Buying a car? 180% registration tax, and slap 25% sales tax on top of that.

But yeah, we've got worse schools than Portugal and free mediocre healthcare, but most importantly: we have high economic equality.

So no, unfortunately we don't agree on the goals.

With all due respect, compared to 90% of the world's population, Danes are pretty prosperous IMHO.

More than 50% of people in working age in Denmark work for the government or make their living through some sort of welfare program. This means more than half the population of Denmark is prosperous exclusively because of income taken from the productive part of population.

Denmark and most of the rest of Scandinavia used to have a very classically liberal (~libertarian) mind set. It is the work ethic that has maintained much of the prosperity. Many of Denmarks large successful export businesses come out of this period.

As I like to say. Denmark is prosperous despite their welfare state and not because of it.

Absolutely, we are. But Denmark is, along with the rest of "old Europe" going to wake up pretty soon and realize that the half bln. Chinese and Indian citizens that are moving into the middle class these years, are going to send their kid to college, and the white collar jobs are going to go the same way the blue collar jobs did over the past 20 years.

Without a strong focus on wealth creation, instead of the constant preaching to the mediocre and the "good enough", we're not going to have much to show once the Chinese and Indians get started.

In short: Prosperity is not a goal to attain, it's a continuous effort, and we just stopped trying.

A few years ago I spent a Summer in Copenhagen, so I know a tiny bit of Denmark. I remember talking to Danish friends on how ridiculously high the taxes were. Yes, I was amazed that you guys pay 180% tax on cars.

On the necessity of wealth creation, I fully agree with you. I think the Germans, Danes, Swedes (etc) will soon find out that they will have to work a whole lot more than their parents to enjoy the same standard of living their parents could enjoy. It's not a pleasant thought, but then, the prosperity that Old Europe has enjoyed over the last few decades is pretty much an historical anomaly.

I could not agree more that prosperity is a continuous effort. I suppose the old Europeans are just a bit blasé and refuse to look at the facts. The world has changed.

I remember talking to Danish friends on how ridiculously high the taxes were. Yes, I was amazed that you guys pay 180% tax on cars.

http://www.skovgaard.org/europe/denmark.htm

The Danes believe Denmark is the best country in the world, that Danish beer is the best in the world, and that anything they do is better than anywhere else in the world. But however contradictory it may seem, between them, they don't like to see others being successful. Thus, they do everything they can to bring down the brightest amongst them. The communist tax system that has brought the highest overall taxation level in the world is an effective way of doing so.

That is one scary article. I knew Denmark was pretty communist, but I had no idea it was perverted to this point. An eye-opener, for sure.

That article is a bit on the edge, it should be said. But, by and large, his points are valid.

Most importantly, most parties aren't communist, they are "social democratic", definitely very left leaning compared to anything. There is a general (far from thorough) respect for private property, something you wouldn't expect from communists.

If we agree on the goals we can try Social Policy Bonds (http://socialgoals.com/).

Somalia is not an anarcho-capitalist society. In Denmark there is less violation of property rights, so you could say Denmark is more libertarian than Somalia.

The Seasteading project might result in some anarcho-capitalist societies: http://www.seasteading.org/

The classic answers are that a government should protect its citizens from attack (the military, the police) and should act as a neutral ajudicator in contractual disputes (the courts) and that's it.

What about "the poor"? The classic answer is "you will not be prevented from helping them".

It's those 'classic answers' that are the important part of Libertarianism. If you get rid of them then Libertarianism just becomes 'The government should be the size required to do whatever it should do, and be neither bigger nor smaller', which would be completely vacuous.

> what counts as a 'right'

Freedom from coercion, baby. Simple as that.

For a more thorough discussion, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

That's not "simple" at all. Coercion has always been part of human relations. People have conflicting interests, and when these rise to the level of open conflict, there needs to be some sort of coercive solution.

What libertarians propose is that all coercion be in defense of property ownership. This seems "fair" until you realize that "property ownership" is itself a complex historical object. The feudal system is named after a form of property ownership - the feodum or fief. The colonial system created property for Europeans by appropriating it from natives. The system of slavery was also based on a certain kind of property definition.

Saying "don't use coercion except to defend legitimate property rights" is like saying "don't use military force except to defend against legitimate threats." It seems like common sense, but all the complexity of politics is swept under the rug in these phrases "property rights" or "threats". In my view, no one is born with a "right" to property, property is just a concrete representation of the political equilibrium that exists at a certain time.

The problem of property ownership is inherent in any society that (obviously) permits ownership of property.

Most property in the world can be traced back to an original owner, from whom it was stolen (war, colonization and similar events). That original owner might have stolen it from someone else.

But that is a completely different point, that really has nothing to do with libertarianism, or any reasonably capitalist society, where property ownership is permitted. It's my impression that a symptom of a mature capitalist society is that historical property disputes are settled in a sense that can be considered fair. That someone might not accept property rights is an interesting discussion, and it certainly rules out any form of capitalist system, but it doesn't really apply in this discussion.

Nobody is born with a right TO anything, but rather a right to NOT be coerced. The consequence of this is that you have the right to do whatever you want with your property (which includes your body and anything you do with that, i.e. work), as long as you don't interfere with other peoples right to do the same - i.e. coerce them.

One important distinction between libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is how to resolve conflicts that will inevitably be over property. A-C doesn't accept any state-like structures like police and courts, but libertarianism does, and the only people that get to coerce other people physically are the police, answering to the courts.

I think you've missed the central points, which were:

a) Property rights are a form of coercion.

b) 'Property rights' is a wide umbrella under which almost any form of coercion could be justified.

OK. In that case someone needs to explain to me the central points, because I do not understand them at all.

a) Property rights are a form of coercion because all law enforcement is coercion.

b) If the enforcement of property rights justifies coercion, then almost any kind of coercion can be justified if the prevailing property system is chosen correctly. For example, if a totalitarian state were to have a system where everything belongs to the state, including the citizens, then it would have the right to do whatever it wants with its property, and any assertion of personal freedoms would be theft.

a) No, law enforcement is necessary to maintain property rights, and is only applied when that right isn't respected (otherwise there is hardly rule of law) - but a society with no property rights can still have a very brutal police force. I don't see the connection here.

b) If someone is free too coerce anyone he owns, and he can arbitrarily choose who he owns, then he is free to coerce everybody. It's a tautology, but not a very useful one.

a) "law enforcement is necessary to maintain property rights". I couldn't have said it better myself. Enforcement is required to maintain property rights, and enforcement is a form of coercion, therefore coercion is required to maintain property rights, therefore the enforcement of property rights is a form of coercion.

b) The point is that the concept of property rights is mostly vacuous unless you specify which system of property rights you are speaking of. cia_plant was pointing out that what one person considers oppression, another might consider fair use of property. Therefore any state can be considered libertarian unless you specify restrictions on what counts as a valid system of property.

The forces that prevent you from keeping someone else in slavery is coercion. So is the rule that says you're not allowed to walk out into the street and just have your way with someone without their consent. With such loose language, any type of society settlement in which people are born into a system that has rules that apply to them involves a type of coercion.

Since all people need to be cared for until a certain age, all people who survive past the first few days of their lives are born into coercion under a strict meaning of the word. Some would escape by living as hermits in desert land or remote islands that nobody cared to enforce law on. Hell - if you're going to be a pedant why restrict it to human coercion? The weather itself is a form of coercian. As are the laws of physics themselves.

Although in a strict sense you're right, I think you're wasting time. However, I have a morbid curiosity for some things and would be genuinely interested to learn what axe you're grinding.

I'm not grinding any axe. mseebach said that he didn't see how property rights were a form of coercion. You have explained precisely why they are. You are agreeing with me against him. I am not right in a 'strict sense', but in an absolutely correct sense. What could be a better example of coercion than enforcing a law?

> What could be a better example of coercion than enforcing a law?

Well - gravity.

I mistook your motive. I've read the thread a few more times and see you've been quite specific in your responses.

"Coerce" is defined in the OED as "persuade (an unwilling person) to do something by using force or threats", so I don't think gravity really falls under that definition, except perhaps metaphorically.

[Everybody] is born with ... a right to NOT be coerced.

I was born with a right to not be coerced by gravity?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity

What entity is charged with enforcing my right to non-coersion-by-gravity?

libertarians only acknowledge negative rights; you can't do X to me. There is no such thing as a positive right; you must give X to me.

Some (such as myself) also believe it legitimate for the government to provide public goods: goods which are nonrivalrous and nonexcludible.

Protection from contagious disease falls into this category, for instance.

And that's being known as a "practical libertarian"

No, it's known as being a socialist.

//not that there's anything wrong with that.

This is probably the first time since adulthood that I've ever been called a socialist (I was a socialist for a short time during my teenage years).

I'd actually like to define it as extreme moderatism.

Actually it's being known as "having taken econ 101".

That's where I stand. I want a small government, and I think it's crazy that a government as hulking as ours doesn't provide something as essential as healthcare. On the other hand, I'm against social security and think that a general welfare system will do fine to take care of poor people, young or old.

It's unfortunate that the desire for an efficient government has been tied into the desire for "small government" and libertarianism.

An efficient government is a laudable thing that everyone should want, and so cutting away the fat is a natural thing to do in any sort of political light.

I don't know why libertarians at large seem to claim ownership of this notion.

A part of the reason may be that lots of people make their living off this "fat."

Hence, we need to change up our notion of government as fixed institution to government as agile organization.

And other nations would be licking their chops.

Not sure what you mean by this? I wasn't advocating anarchism. I'm simply saying we need to think of (and implement) government as an agile entity, one that dynamically allocates resources as necessary rather than suffers from "institution creep".

Then I think what you are looking for is very small government -- as in everyone is at least an acquaintance of their leader(s). When everyone knows everyone else in a system, they are able to provide for one another because they personally know what everyone needs and can react quickly without going through seven layers of bureaucracy. When the government's reach grows so large that they don't know their citizens, then they have to rely on formalized metrics and laws to determine how resources should be allocated, and it is that sort of overhead which causes the inefficiency that you speak of. This effect is similar to companies: When they first start out, they are agile and able to outpace their competitors in the market, but once they get too big, they cease to innovate and have a hard time meeting the demands of changes in the market.

Good point, although I think G2C tech can substantially improve communications between citizens and government leaders. This is assuming there's a strong initiative to adopt such tech across the board, and that it's competently designed.

There are plenty of good people working in the civic media area, so there's a good talent pool to draw from.

The revolution of Public Choice economics was to examine the incentives faced by actors in the public sector, instead of viewing public policy as exogenous to the economy as previous models have done.

In the past, if economists discovered an inefficiency in the market, they would say "and the government should correct this inefficiency with policy X". Public choice economists don't ask if governments should do X, but rather will they do X.

It turns out the incentives facing government actors aren't very good. They have much fewer incentives to act efficiently than market actors. It is possible to have competent officials at the head of a small bureaucracy produce good results. However, I doubt this is possible for the United States, which owns the largest bureaucracy in the world.

So, there are real reasons for limiting the scope of government.

Food is pretty essential. Why don't you get the government to provide that too? And water? What about work? People need work - it's a human right! Why stop there? Head on up Maslows. Why shouldn't all people reach the top of Maslow's hierarchy. And if they should - well then surely it's the role of their fellow man to facilitate it through the efficient, modest and even-handed institution of government!

Food is pretty essential. Why don't you get the government to provide that too?

Done.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_Sta...

The subsidy programs give farmers extra money for their crops, as well as guarantee a price floor. For instance in the 2002 Farm Bill, for every bushel of wheat sold farmers were paid an extra 52 cents and guaranteed a price of 3.86 from 2002–03 and 3.92 from 2004–2007.[2] That is, if the price of wheat in 2002 was 3.80 farmers would get an extra 58 cents per bushel (52 cents plus the $0.06 price difference).

Also, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIC_Program

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Nutrition_Service

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Stamp

Or, you could argue that the government should be limited to market failures.

Roads, defense, control, vaccines... all have significant effects outside of the markets, and thus their price does not reflect the benefit to society.

>Roads, defense, control, vaccines...

Where do you stop? Surely you'd have to include financial companies? A financial company that makes up 10% of the financial market will calculate a phony 90% discount on any systemic risk it creates: after all, if the system fails, only 10% of that failure will be realized as a loss.

Huh? How do initial property rights get started then?

Maybe his point is that the amount of government required to protect rights is actually quite large. There's a general assumption in Libertarianism that it would be small, and he's disputing this.

This argument is actually interesting, but I didn't get the slightest hint that it was what Zed was really talking about.

It's probably not, but it would make sense of why he describes libertarians as "corporatist". He's driving a wedge between small government and the defence of natural rights, and assuming that libertarians would choose the former over the latter.

If you need proof that Anarcho-Capitalism doesn't work, just play Eve-Online for a year in 0.0 security space.

I too kill people and do a lot of very nasty stuff in video games. But for some mysterious reason, I don't do them in real life.

But for some mysterious reason people does that in real life.

You completely missed my point. At the time I played Eve, success for organizations in 0.0 space in Eve depended on the establishment of a logistical infrastructure. It's economics. I've witnessed groups of players hobbling their own economies and logistics by making short-sighted decisions. I've also seen all manner of scams and Ponzi schemes. From what I've seen in that particular simulation, you really do need the rule of law for capitalism to work well.

Killing people and blowing up ships is completely irrelevant. The game could be about planting trees and picking flowers, and the same principles would apply.

I've also seen real-world governments ruin their own economies by making short-sighted (or just plain stupid) decisions. And I've seen Ponzi schemes in a lot of government plans as well.

In those cases, too, the rule of law is not quite working. The letter of the law is often being obeyed (and there is some debate about even that concerning things like the establishment of the Fed) but the system is being gamed.

What it comes down to is this: is the general populace comfortable enough to engage in open economic activity?

You can see that there is a lot less confidence in the US and the rest of the world, in large part due to various stupid decisions. But this doesn't prove that anarcho-capitalism works. It just shows that corrupt capitalism doesn't work well either.

>"Libertarianism is NOT Anarcho-Capitalism."

Anarcho-capitalists would consider themselves libertarian, and many famous ones are also leading lights of the libertarian movement. Murray Rothbard is clearly a libertarian, and Lysander Spooner belongs to the classical liberal tradition that the libertarians adopt as their forefathers.

The problem is that "libertarianism" is a medium-sized tent. So when you criticize "libertarians" for position X, well some hold that position and some don't.

Also by definition we are at liberty to believe whatever we want. Kind of by definition we don't have any leaders to define what we think, even though many of us read lots of stuff by Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Rand etc.

Me I am definitely a libertarian, classical liberal, randian, anarcho-capitalist and several other labels that I might invent.

But in reality we all have our different ideas of whats important and what isn't. And we do laugh at ourselves about this.

Check out Peter Bagge's great comic about what happen when Libertarians gather...

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28655.html

No, anarcho-capitalism does not say that corporations should replace government. Anarcho-capitalism merely says that government should go away.

90% of everything that government does wouldn't get done at all in a free society, and the other 10% would be done by multiple competing firms.

My thoughts: Most scientists (myself included) tend to prefer models that accurately predict the future: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfascZSTU4o

What Zed describes is in no way libertarianism. What the following to understand exactly what it is (HINT: It's the opposite of Libertarianism.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticytEUvVhQ

Funny, Peter Schiff was totally wrong about the Euro. Dean Baker also predicted the housing meltdown, you're falling into the trap of anecdotalism.

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