Hacker News Reader

Comment by badsock | Hacker News Reader

I'd really like it if you'd answer his actual question. My recurring issue with libertarians is that they make very grand claims based on untested, and frankly very simplistic, theory. Real economies have perennially made fools of those who think they operate like simple machines.

View on HN

My recurring issue with whatever you call the sort of person who gets angry and criticises someone like me, is that they never bother to actually go and read with an open and serious mind the vast literature of economic debate available. The sort of literature that makes you realise that a statement like "libertarians make very grand claims based on untested and frankly very simplistic theory" is total, utter bullshit.

Like I said, you can start with Econ 101, and work your way up from there. I don't know why they don't just give it a try. It's more fun to be open-minded than think you know everything already.

To me it is a shame to see people so stubborn and resistant to thinking differently.

You characterize the people who disagree with you as being both uneducated in economics and closed-minded. Have you considered the possibility that there are those of us who are well versed in economic theory, including those favoured by libertarians, and have come to the conclusion that while they're certainly as plausible as any other competing theory, the proof is in the pudding?

Many different economic systems have been tried all across the world and throughout history. Given all of your reading, surely you could point to an example of these theories being tried out in a real economy and succeeding?

If you know of a non-free market economy that works as well in a complex and dynamic society with many millions of people (e.g. communism seems to be ok up to about a village), we are all ears?

As far as I know, there are no successes. Most attempts couldn't have open borders, because everyone would leave.

(And yes, there are lots of other factors, like corruption and the natural resource curse.)

I agree that those who advocate communism always seem to fall back on what is essentially the "Well it's never been tried out properly" argument, which I don't find convincing at all. It also happens to be the argument I hear most frequently from libertarians.

Essentially, claiming that your economic theory will only work once a dramatic, complete, state-wide change as occured is a non-starter. Nations advance by degrees, and if there aren't small moves that can be made towards the goal that provide evidence that the theory is sound, it would be foolish to believe that big moves will fair any better.

I would genuinely like to see examples of where libertarianism ideals have been tried on a small to medium scale and been successful. And if there aren't any, same question as to jasonisalive: why is there such confidence among libertarians that it works in the real world?

I have no problem with what you write here, but must have missed something? Or are you mixing up comment threads?

To me it seems that only you talk about libertarians, while jasonisalive talked about generic economic research.

(Wikipedia confirms my belief that libertarians are quite heterogeneous and it is more of a political philosophy/ideology than about economy anyway.)

Without being an economist, I can tell you that the first few general books in most any education are simplified. I discussed economic models years ago with people writing code for them, it was interesting.

Subjects based on complex data sets without possibility of experiments are hard to verify for people external to the subject. (Famous other cases are climate science and evolution.)

From that, left wing extremists (I don't know anything about your position -- you might argue against "free market", which was the subject here or "libertarians" which you mention?) sometimes write conspiracy theories that all the academics in economy are idiots and/or in a conspiracy.

So let us skip this and instead look at practical results:

If you have a country with low corruption, competent state administration and a capitalist system you might get a good economic development. Otherwise, you will not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com