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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

Dear Libertarian Types (of which I consider myself one)

Please stop arguing against the Obama strategy. There’s nothing you can do to stop it and its failure (if it does fail) will make your point better than if you wrote a billion blog posts. Beyond that if he does succeed you could write a billion blog posts saying he was wrong and they aren’t going to convince people.

One way or the other it’s out of your hands.

More importantly...you have a bigger problem. Right now there are a lot of people out there arguing that libertarian principles got us into this mess. That is simply not the case and arguing against that is where you should be putting your effort. Because assuming President Obama does fail you’ll want people to be open to libertarian principles in the future.

Fiscal policy is like a game of chess right now and you should be looking three moves down and not at the very next encounter (which you already lost almost 3 months ago)

Sincerely,

Tom

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After '89, there were some who said, "Communism didn't fail because this wasn't /really/ Communism." I answered, sorry, but that's how Communism is rendered.

There are those now who are saying, "Laissez Faire Capitalism didn't fail because it wasn't /really/ Laissez Faire Capitalism." I'm answering, sorry, you had your chance. You can argue on blogs all you want. The experiment has failed miserably.

Europe is going to come out of this smelling ok, and with it, Third-way Socialism, where there's a balance between the market and the public interest.

If anything you could say a mixed economy doesn't work. The problem is the state makes all sorts of problems and then they blame it on free market capitalism. The current situation is widely attributed to the federal reserve's manipulation of the currency. In a Lassez Faire economy their would be no federal reserve.

In Lassez Faire economy anyone who creates a systemic risk discounts said risk by how big they are in relation to how big the system is.

Chile is more Laissez-Faire and it's doing awesome.

Perhaps, but president Bachelet and her government have as highest priority the reduction of poverty, wealth redistribution etc (thank god btw) through direct government intervention, or at least that's what they say every time they speak (I have TVN).

And thanks to them or instead of them (Concertacion governments) Chile has been reducing its poverty levels; pretty much they are the only country in South America with a middle class.

This has nothing to do with anything but I think in a way it's awesome that a country has a president who is: 1) woman 2) single mother 3) declared agnostic/atheist

can you imagine not a president but just any politician in the US like that?

European banks were leveraged MORE then US banks.

Think of Iceland for Marx and Engles' sake!

Greece, Ireland, the UK, etc.

I am not sure what you mean by third way socialism, perhaps you mean the welfare states of western Europe?

Those do work in a particular way that many people prefer. Many others prefer the more free market of the states. I know many west European immigrants that have come to the US to escape the welfare state, and I ain't talking bankers.

More like engineers, scientists and doctors, and believe me Europeans know the social state costs us some of our best.

As an east European immigrant I can tell you, that the communists switched their story AFTER to soviet collapse.

Libertarians like Milton Freedman on the other hand, have been saying the US is farm from true free markets for a LOOOONG time.

I'll vouch for you. I've moved from the UK to Canada (both countries with welfare and universal health care) and I'll never step foot on US soil without travel insurance with an extradition clause, because the US system of health care disgusts me.

I know many people who have moved from the US into welfare countries in Europe. However, I also know many people who have moved out of Europe into the US.

Welfare systems get you good quality for the money, however if you've got the money to spend more (like your example, engineers, scientists and especially doctors) then you're going to want the best quality money pays for. I think the unfortunate situation is that most welfare countries don't have a system far reaching enough to provide everything people want.

I mean the French system is impressive when it comes to child care. I mean you can get daycare for $1 a day. However, from people I talk to there, their health care is rather lax compared to UK standards. However in the UK even the poor can get phenomenal health care, like triple-bypass surgeries, however god forbid you have a child and want to work!

Again what happens when you have a child with disabilities? Well you're royally fucked, you're treated like it's your own fault despite the government wanting you to have children.

I see the benefit of both systems, however personally I like the universal health care. It's rather ironic that I've never stepped foot inside a hospital (I lie, but it was never for me. Once visiting my mum at work - nurse - and the other visiting my dad after he had kidney stones removed) and I barely visited my doctor. In fact I don't even get sick often, I had the flu a few weeks ago, my wife was sleeping like 20 hours a day, I was wide awake the entire time and occasionally had to blow my nose.

However, I'd bet $50,000 that if I ever moved to the US the day I arrived I'd be diagnosed with a prostate tumor the size of a grapefruit, or some incurable disease or something. I mean I didn't even need braces as a kid, I'm either going to die the healthiest person on the planet or my luck's going to turn so bad so fast I'll be hit by a fragment of a meteorite or something equally absurd.

That's true, shortly off the plane realizing exactly what health care is available for the poor in the US, gave me a decidedly uneasy feeling.

I won't even attempt to defend the US health care system.

Suffice it to say, a much longer topic is the set of laws and regulations that maximize freedom, prosperity AND a high minimum of social services for everyone.

Every doctor I have been to in Austria has been superior to every doctor I have been to in the USA, with the exception of my ENT surgeon, who was a middle eastern immigrant to the US. (He was a top doctor in his field, taught at JHU, invented stuff, etc.)

The doctors in Austria take more time with you, they listen to you better, they come up with more novel solutions, and they seem to know more about other medical fields.

And here's why this is true:

a) free medical education. Yes, FREE. That means people who want to be doctors, can; the only requirement is that they can hold their own academically. That also means that when they complete their education, they are not saddled under $300k+ of debt, and thus are not having to hustle and scrimp for money.

b) a culture of service. Yes, really. Austria has a huge number of social workers -- nice ones, too -- and unlike in the US, there's a very solid mixture of men vs women. People can actually earn a decent living (thanks to socialism) helping other people.

c) a very different situation with insurance (everybody has it) and lawsuits (uncommon).

All of this combines to having a huge number of women doctors, and a huge number of doctors who are in it for passion and not for money, and doctors who are not afraid to just give you an atypical solution or who have to worry all the time whether the patient's insurance will pay for it.

And amazingly, it's cheaper than in the US sometimes, even if you pay out of pocket. I saw a top-rated dentist, got a 360 degree x-ray, he himself poked around in my mouth and proscribed an antibiotic -- and with the exchange rate, that whole thing cost me $180 US. Ha!

It's simply awesome.

I am not one who says "This wasn't really a free market, so it doesn't count as a failure of the free market." Rather, I'm one who acknowledges that all complex societies will have failures -- including systemic failures of this sort. It doesn't conflict with my worldview at all that a "truly free market" could have a catastrophy like the one we are experiencing.

The question is not: "was this a failure of the market?" Rather, the question is: "would intervention reduce, or increase the number of failures?" There has been no credible case made for the profound wisdom and benevolence of government bureaucrats and politicians.

The communists are right about one thing: the lessons of history are not self-evident. We need to use our brains to interpret events, and their causes. That said: unlike communism, which has a history of nothing but failure and poverty, free market societies have a long track record of creating wealth and prosperity for all.

Communism failed in Russia because it took one approach, a very flawed one that prevented technological advancement. The main failure was that they wanted everyone to work, so when the combine harvester came along they didn't adapt it because it would cost jobs. This would have likely succeeded well, if they weren't trying to be a world superpower, because there's a long history back to ancient China, that the more food a culture can produce with the fewest workers then the more technologically advanced they'll become.

Example: Quite literally two people can farm a few thousand acres of corn with modern equipment. One drives the harvester and one drives the truck.

Ironically Stalin actually caused the evolution of Chinese communism which survived it. The reason the Chinese did so well is that Stalin slaughtered most of them, which resulted in them taking in capitalists. This resulted in them understanding how economies work, and not hoping an artificially constructed economy would work. Combined into this is the political unity and a use of very powerful propaganda techniques to strengthen nationality. It's been shown that strong nationality increases a persons support of the government. I mean look at the German Resistance, they had such difficulty getting support in Germany because it was impossible to go against Hitler without going against Germany. Largely the CPC has done the same, you can't oppose them without opposing China.

The real question in the success of communism will be, "Will communism survive when China's nationalism subsides?"

Edit: Can people please stop down-voting something you disagree with, this isn't reddit. I'm merely reiterating something that's been agreed on by modern-historians for a long time. There's multiple systems of communism and the Stalinist and Chinese forms are very different.

What's communist at all about the modern Chinese economic system?

I'd say not much. But it depends on your definitions. They are very 'pragmatic' nowadays.

After '89, there were some who said, "Communism didn't fail because this wasn't /really/ Communism." I answered, sorry, but that's how Communism is rendered.

There are those now who are saying, "American Socialism didn't fail because it wasn't /really/ Socialism." I'm answering, sorry, you had your chance. You can argue on blogs all you want. The experiment has failed miserably.

Point being, simply asserting a preferred definition is not a compelling argument. Whatever it was that was going on, it hasn't been working. Making one or another particular economic philosophy the bogeyman isn't going to help, however good it makes people feel to be able to say, "I told you so."

Anyone else find it curious (almost) no one argues that "National Socialism didn't fail because the Third Reich wasn't /really/ National Socialism"?

It's interesting to contrast the utter repudiation of National Socialism after its defeat in 1945 compared to the ongoing romance with Communism after its collapse in 1989...

E.g. On a university campus today, it's acceptable to call oneself a socialist, but utterly unacceptable to call oneself a National Socialist (a Nazi). Considering the horrors of both, the difference in their treatment in American academia today is somewhat surprising.

Yes, strange. The communists had more appeal to the intellectuals.

Of course, the fact that there are socialist countries out there which arguably treat their citizens better than America does has nothing to do with it. [Note: I overstate here for effect, the "in many ways, for many citizens" caveats are left as an exercise for the reader.]

But "National Socialism" was the name because that's what sold at the time; the ideology was Facism.

> Considering the horrors of both...

The horrors of both?

The Netherlands, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Germany, etc., are all horror-ible places to live?

No, you don't get to play with "preferred definitions". here.

In 1989, the companies came in and put an extreme back into balance.

In 2009, the government came in to put an extreme back into balance.

In fact, it has been the government that has been saving a complete collapse of Capitalism by bailing it out. I think no one knows if it will work, but they key indicator here is that Wall St. turned to the government for help.

And look at health care: Americans spend much more than other countries yet the indicators show much poorer performance than those other countries. Socialized medicine has been shown, in the hard numbers, to simply work better.

If it was really "American Socialism" that was failing, you wouldn't be seeing government stepping in everywhere. So, no, it's not about picking a definition; it's about trying (finally) to find a balance.

When I posted my reply, the parent had 21 points. Now it has 16 points. That means it's received at least 5 downmods. Did he do something to deserve being downmodded?

A massive and obvious and smug logical fallacy. Which is annoying.

I never tried to be smug. Why don't you elaborate instead of down voting?

Strategy:

1. Somebody has an idea that might be good.

2. Do something stupid. Give it the same name as #1.

3. When #2 fails because it was stupid, say that #1 is now a failure.

4. Continue doing #2, because if you don't try any new ideas, the status quo is what you get.

I think if someone believes what we, as a country, are doing is wrong they should speak out. The sums and future commitments involved in all of this are absolutely enormous and if someone thinks it is being misspent this is the time to say so.

You are right that there is practically little anyone can do and that politics is usually played several moves down the road. The recent election will be taken as a mandate for whatever is passed and that will be that. That said I still think that if someone believes they should speak their mind.

I don't say this because I'm a libertarian or especially in any given political camp. I just do not want to see political opinion or participation discouraged. I think the long term solution is more people aware and interested in policy and not less.

I would humbly submit that perhaps there are more appropriate forums for speaking up.

Although I have no interest in stifling debate here, I do agree with you that HN karma has little to no influence on policy and does not counter-balance monetary influence on policy makers.

So I hope that the strongest opinions here, regardless of which side they take, are also being citizen-lobbied.

I agree with you that arguing against the Obama strategy is pretty much futile, but I think it's wrong to assume it'll be obvious after the fact whether the bailout made things better or worse, since there's no way to run a controlled experiment.

I think the best strategy for people who think they have a good understanding of the situation to follow Bryan Caplan's advice and state publicly how they will interpret different outcomes.

http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/09/how_would_we_kn...

You should listen to a recent This American Life[1] episode where both Tyler Cowen (anti-bailout) and some other dude (pro-bailout Princeton prof) argue that Obama's bailout constitutes the closest thing to an expierment of Keynes' ideas that we will ever have.

[1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=128...

The point of speaking out should not be to stop the government from continuing it's policies, which is futile. It should instead be to educate people about the flaws in these policies so that when they do fail it will be understood that it wasn't because "they didn't do enough" but because of something more basic.

To merely give in and not continue to speak out would be to assent to their policies.

I agree that we should not look to stop him now but looking three chess moves down the road still requires playing in the present. If we stop proclaiming the truth, we won't even be able to say "I told you so" because we wouldn't have.

However, I think that individual rants will not help much for these other goals anyway. We need a stronger, rational argument for why his plans won't work, and what we can do better.

In response to socialism, Mises did not merely try and say "See, it isn't working" because that kind of response is easily defused by statements such as "it wasn't pure enough". Instead, he wrote a rational argument from first principles about why it wouldn't work. Granted, not everyone has read his book or agrees with it, but it's better than just using evidence of previous failure. It's amazing how good humans are at rationalizing away flaws in their belief systems.

We should do the same thing with the current financial crises. Make clear statements about why it happened and what the best way to fix it is, and then try and get as many people to read them as possible.

As incorrect and irrelevant as academia often is, it has an amazing effect on future beliefs. If we can get the ideas out there, I'm sure that we can make a difference. Maybe not in time to stop the current president, but possibly in time to stop the next one.

IMHO the real failure is that Libertarian Types cannot seem to articulate a vision for the future. The linked article explicitly hearkens back to the 19th century; almost every libertarian proposal I have seen consists of nothing more substantial than rolling back to those times.

Like "true" communism you will never see free market principles fully embodied, and nobody can seem to articulate real-world half steps that don't have severely unpleasant side effects.

I don't understand what you mean by "Libertarian types" not articulating a "vision for the future", because it seems to me that that's precisely what this article is doing; Philip Greenspun suggests a course of action which would be advisable for Obama to take.

If, however, you mean to say that Libertarian principles don't change with the times, I think I can address that. It's because Libertarian principles are just that: they're principles. They don't change per the circumstance, which is what makes Libertarianism such a robust ideology.

And as far as hearkening back to the 19th century, I'm curious as to what's so bad about that? The 19th century was a period of rapid growth for the US. A couple of ugly incidences excluded, things fiscal were generally Good.

Greenspun's suggestion is not a serious one. It is certainly earnest, but it is also impractical to the point of being laughable. Can you imagine an politician, of any ideology, seriously taking this suggestion and lasting more than a few months at it before they are overridden by congress, or the courts, or someone else comes in to give it a try? Its purpose is not honest suggestion; it is instead designed to make Greenspun and those who agree with him feel good about their beliefs, and perhaps convince interested readers to entertain a similar belief system as well.

If you really want to give Obama suggestions, and you really want them to be taken, you ought to make them feasible.

The way forward is via productive compromise and incremental progress -- and that's one of the ways in which libertarianism fails completely: when has any of you ever suggested a small step? Instead you snipe from the margins about the philosophical inequity of it all.

Further along the lines of not articulating a vision for the future:

- The vast majority of suggestions are negative -- what we must not do or change -- rather than positive.

- Libertarian policy is exclusively derived from absolute philosophical first principles with zero consideration as to empirical effectiveness, side effects, or how-do-we-get-there-from-here. It's nice for utopian fiction and useless for the rest of us.

p.s. I like how you brush aside so much of the ugliness of that era as "incidences." Assume I take you at your word that things "fiscal" were generally Good: how were things "liberty" then, hmmm? (A rhetorical question.)

(edit: paragraph breaks missing in a few places)

The argument for three steps down the road needs to go something like this: Government is inefficient, therefore the larger they get, the more areas of your life they will spread their inefficiencies into. Areas where their inefficiency should be of major concern are: their respect for your liberty and freedom.

If you wait to say he's doing it wrong, then people will just say that hindsight is 20/20, won't they?

Amen, brother. Speaking the truth.

Praise the lard

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