Bernie Sanders is a self described democratic socialist who has become fairly popular among young liberals. He is technically independent, but he is running for the Democratic Party nomination. I disagree with most of his economic policies (as I will outline below), but I'm glad that he is at least open about his stances, and he often correctly identifies problems with the current system.
The Policies:
Going through his website, his own promotional material, we have the following headlines:
Real Family Values
Create Decent Paying Jobs
Income and Wealth Inequality
Getting Big Money Out of Politics
Climate Change and the Environment
A Living Wage
As headlines, these might be things I could support in sentiment, but not in practice.
Real Family Values
Bernie Sanders uses 'real family values' as things like mandatory paid vacation, sick leave, and other benefits.These are not the responsibility of the government to provide workers. This is something that workers should negotiate with the employers themselves. How can the government know how much vacation each worker needs or wants? Furthermore, with medical leave, he proposes that it be paid for by an 'insurance' program like Social Security. Government programs are not insurance, and it would not be optional, it would be mandatory.
Many of these policies focus only on the workers' side of the equation, with out recognition that the employers are people too, and have to look out for the interests of the consumer. Suppose a key employee gets sick for an extended period of time. Okay, they now have paid leave. The project that they were working on is sitting around waiting for them to get back. The project is on a tight deadline. What is the employer to do? If this is a key project, and required for the future profitability of the company, then a replacement needs to be hired to do the work of the person on leave. Now, when they get back, what happens? One of them is redundant, and should be fired (or reassigned in the wider economy, if that makes you feel better). The worker is not entitled to pay from an employer without the corresponding exchange.
All of the proposals under this heading are additional regulations on what people are allowed to negotiate with employers. In my ideal world, employees would be able to freely negotiate these terms without the need for a government program or system to require the terms of the employment contract.
Create Decent Paying Jobs
This is a typical view of both the political Left and the political Right. He advocates for a large spending program to build infrastructure and employ young Americans. He doesn't go into the details of what this would mean exactly, but it is a government intervention into the economy which will lead to more problems down the road.
He does correctly point out that the official unemployment rate is inaccurate, since the official numbers ignore the people who have given up looking for work, or those who want more hours. The solution is not, however, to spend other people's money to have people doing what no one cares enough about doing. At least part of his program will include job training, which is less than useless, since it will be paying people to teach other people how to do jobs no one else wants. If they did want them, they would be paying already.
It is conceivable that there are some people who would benefit from these job training programs. The problem is that it is essentially the broken window fallacy. The gains that we see are at the cost of actions we don't see. We can't see how the teachers and instructors would be spending their time if they weren't employed in this government program, and we don't see how the taxpayers who are paying for them would otherwise spend the money.
Income and Wealth Inequality
I've touched on this before, but it bears some repeating. Income inequality is not important. At all. The problem is that the poor are poor. If they are getting even poorer, that is an even bigger problem, but the richness of the wealthy is not at all a problem. There is some degree that this is a complaint about how the world is not fair, and how the rich and the poor should be closer together. In addition to the complaint being about how life is not fair, there are no reason to think that government intervention would improve the situation. In fact, I think that the government intervention has made the problem worse. It is government intervention and regulatory capture that leads to these problems in the first place, and if the banks had been allowed to fail and go through bankruptcy, maybe we would need his plan to break up the banks,
Getting Big Money Out of Politics
Here, I think is one of the worse misinterpretations of the First Amendment that is the problem on the Left, and one that I would hope Bernie Sanders understands better than he is letting on, since he is an independent.
First, I will give him due respect for advocating for a constitutional amendment rather than just overturning the ruling, though he is advocating for that too. But the problem with these ideas is that while money might not quite be speech, money must be spent to make speech effective.
He goes into a little more depth with his interview on Vox, where he gets into ideas that could get very dangerous for democracy, even more than he thinks ours is in danger from the oligarchy. His first idea after reversing the Citizens United decision is to at "at least make sure that candidates who are running will have as much money as their opponents." This might sound okay at first glance, but consider these questions:
Who determines a candidate?
What kind of paper work is required?
Can anyone become a candidate?
Is there a limit on the number of candidates in each race?
Will it be restricted to official political parties?
What if the candidate is religious? Will the state fund the campaign even if it is a religious one?
What about independents?
These are all questions need to be answered about publicly funding candidates. The power is shifted from the voters to the people who pick the candidates. This has already happened to a sad extent because of ballot access laws that impose additional requirements on candidates outside the two party system. Public funding of elections will only exacerbate this problem.
His other idea on this vein is not as bad, but seems somewhat redundant. He thinks that a $100 tax credit for donating to any candidate as a way to 'democratize' the election funding process. It is better than the previous idea, since it doesn't spend taxpayer money on candidates, but my $100 contribution is already a vote. If I'm giving $100 to a candidate, I'm voting for them, and paying them $100 to help convince other people to give their vote to them. At that point, you could basically hold the elections as fundraisers, and each person has 100 votes to spend on the candidates of their choosing. It seems a little redundant.
Climate Change and the Environment
Here, he claims that we need to move away from fossil fuels, and use government funds to 'stimulate' the economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This doesn't address part of the problem in that the traditional energy companies receive other government subsidies. The way to solve the problem is not to add additional stimulus, but to take away subsidies from the traditional system.
Living Wage
The debate about the minimum 'living wage' is an interesting one, but it again gets into a question of entitlement of the workers. Workers are not entitled to a living wage. Also, the living wage is different in different areas of the country. A national minimum wage doesn't make sense, since the living wage in New York City will be much higher than in Podunk, Anywhere. Personally, where I am now, I can live quite comfortably on $10 an hour full time. That is significantly lower than the living wage that he proposes.
Many people advocating for the living wage also claim that it is not possible to raise a family on the current minimum wage. That sucks for the kids, but why should the bad choices of those parents be our responsibility? It is a very simple solution: don't have kids. Having kids is a choice, and it is one with many long term consequences. If you can't afford children, make the choice not to have them. If you do have them, then make the sacrifice and work your ass off to take care of them, but don't complain to the people who haven't made your choices for you.
The living wage also runs counter to personal agency. People should be allowed to set their own price for their labor, even if it is below what anyone else thinks is tolerable. The living wage infringes on the rights of both the employer and employee to set the prices of their own services.
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Equal Pay for Equal Work is Incompatible with Free Market Capitalism
The buzz phrase “Equal pay for equal work” is most commonly
associated with the so called ‘gender wage gap,’ that women are getting paid
less for the same work. While there may be a small gap due to discrimination,
it is certainly not the 77% number that is often cited by mainstream reporting.
But that is not the biggest problem with the issue of the phrase “equal pay for
equal work.” The real problem with this phrase is that it is in fact regressive.
If we truly embrace this philosophy, then it will be essentially impossible to
progress, either technologically or socially.
Economic and technological progress hinges on the exact
opposite idea: do the same work for less pay. Even better, many do better work
for less pay. This is the nature of economic and technological competition.
Technological progress strives to lower prices, producing the same goods at a
lower price point. The winners are the ones who provide what consumers think is
the best product for the lowest price. Cutting the price for the same product,
or a superior product requires paying less for all the accumulated labor that
produced the product. This is essentially less pay for equal work.
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding of the phrase. What if we
use another conception of the phrase? Let us examine equal pay for equal output,
equal pay for equal effort, and equal pay for equal time worked.
- Equal pay for equal output: This is the most reasonable interpretation in my opinion, but even in this case ‘equal pay for equal work’ is wrong. In this interpretation, the price of products could never fall, since we can consider the product to be the output. If equal output must be paid the same rate across the market, then computers would in fact be more expensive that the first computers, since they do so much more.
- Equal pay for equal effort: We can consider this to be in some sense to be equal sweat equity for equal pay. This is also wrong, because just because someone works really hard doesn’t mean that their effort is valuable. If we have two people who dig ditches and move the dirt to a more useful location (landscaping or something), and one of them puts the dirt in the wrong location that is just as far away, I think we can see that they have both put in equal effort. One put the dirt in the right location, while the other did not. Clearly, the one who put the dirt in the wrong location should not be paid the same amount as the one who put it in the right location. If we required equal pay for equal effort, we would be forced to pay misdirected effort the same as good effort, which is clearly wrong.
- Equal pay for equal time: This is clearly ridiculous, as if we had to pay equally for equal time, hourly salaries would be the same for every profession ever, where clearly some are worth more than others. Someone who can build a twice as fast as someone else should clearly not be paid half as much for the same house (and faster too).
These objections might seem trivial, but they demonstrate
the significant problems with the mantra ‘equal pay for equal work’ even if we
can clearly define what equal work actually means.
Capitalism, by which I mean the free market, works by
allowing the competition of people to accept lower pay for equal work; by giving
people the freedom to provide services for cheaper than other people.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Secession and the Consent of the Governed
Discussion of secession in the United States is usually tainted by the connection with the term to the Civil War and slavery. This can be quite frustrating, as questions of secession are fundamental to the legitimacy of a government, and the topic can get derailed into talk about the evils of slavery, and how to solve them without war.
I think of the question of secession as being linked with the idea of the consent of the governed. How are they connected? The consent of the governed is the idea that a legitimate government is only legitimate if it has the consent of the people over which the it is ruling. This is fairly well accepted, and is a phrase used in both the Declaration of Independence, and a similar idea is expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." Secession is what happens when a substantial subset of people withdraw their consent to be governed by a particular government, and separate from it.
For the governed people to meaningfully give consent, it must be possible for that consent to be withdrawn. If consent cannot be withdrawn, then a government that turns tyrannical is just as legitimate and consensual as a democratically elected government. So what should happen when a group ceases to consent to the current government? Under democratic ideals, they would vote in a new set of rulers to whom they consent. Now suppose that there is a significant geographic split, and the people in one region want to be ruled one way, and people in another region want to be ruled another way? Should the minority in that case be ruled by the majority from the other region? Or can the minority region autonomously withdraw consent to be ruled by the other region?
I think that the answer is fairly straightforward in the abstract. The people in the minority of the whole country should be allowed to split off from the nation, and choose their own form of government that has the consent of the people who live there, even though that was the minority of the people in the original nation as a whole. Furthermore, the independence of the minority region should not be dependent on the opinions of the majority region. If the minority region wishes independence, then any action by the majority region to stop the secession is seeking to deny the will of the people in that region. It could be viewed as a form of Imperialism.
So what happens if we continue this process? If there is another significant minority in the original minority (now majority) of this new country? Well, I think the same logic applies, and that region should be allowed to break off from the new country to form another country which has the consent of the governed.
Another side to think about consent of the governed is this: What should happen when an individual withdraws consent to be governed by the current regime? They could certainly be the majority of the people that occupy their property (assuming a land owner), so should they be able to withdraw consent unilaterally? If not, then how large a group do you need to revoke the consent? A city? A town? A county? A state? At what level do we draw the line?
I personally think that an individual can withdraw their consent to be governed, and they should be free to do so. The only valid retaliation would not be for the withdrawal of consent, but for aggressive action on the part of the individual. A state, company, or coalition certainly has the right to use the powers of defense delegated to them by the consenting members of that state, company, or coalition.
I think of the question of secession as being linked with the idea of the consent of the governed. How are they connected? The consent of the governed is the idea that a legitimate government is only legitimate if it has the consent of the people over which the it is ruling. This is fairly well accepted, and is a phrase used in both the Declaration of Independence, and a similar idea is expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." Secession is what happens when a substantial subset of people withdraw their consent to be governed by a particular government, and separate from it.
For the governed people to meaningfully give consent, it must be possible for that consent to be withdrawn. If consent cannot be withdrawn, then a government that turns tyrannical is just as legitimate and consensual as a democratically elected government. So what should happen when a group ceases to consent to the current government? Under democratic ideals, they would vote in a new set of rulers to whom they consent. Now suppose that there is a significant geographic split, and the people in one region want to be ruled one way, and people in another region want to be ruled another way? Should the minority in that case be ruled by the majority from the other region? Or can the minority region autonomously withdraw consent to be ruled by the other region?
I think that the answer is fairly straightforward in the abstract. The people in the minority of the whole country should be allowed to split off from the nation, and choose their own form of government that has the consent of the people who live there, even though that was the minority of the people in the original nation as a whole. Furthermore, the independence of the minority region should not be dependent on the opinions of the majority region. If the minority region wishes independence, then any action by the majority region to stop the secession is seeking to deny the will of the people in that region. It could be viewed as a form of Imperialism.
So what happens if we continue this process? If there is another significant minority in the original minority (now majority) of this new country? Well, I think the same logic applies, and that region should be allowed to break off from the new country to form another country which has the consent of the governed.
Another side to think about consent of the governed is this: What should happen when an individual withdraws consent to be governed by the current regime? They could certainly be the majority of the people that occupy their property (assuming a land owner), so should they be able to withdraw consent unilaterally? If not, then how large a group do you need to revoke the consent? A city? A town? A county? A state? At what level do we draw the line?
I personally think that an individual can withdraw their consent to be governed, and they should be free to do so. The only valid retaliation would not be for the withdrawal of consent, but for aggressive action on the part of the individual. A state, company, or coalition certainly has the right to use the powers of defense delegated to them by the consenting members of that state, company, or coalition.
Friday, April 10, 2015
The Marxist concept of 'Property'
Something that I hear Communists say is that they want you abolish private property. This is found in the Communist Manifesto, and I've seen a few Facebook communists claim this. I have no particular intellectual problem with this, until I hear the secondary claim: That they don't want to take away your home or your belongings. I typically hear it as the want to abolish private property for the things that you 'don't need.' A good example would be a second home, or something like that.
The problem with this is that it is inconsistent, and neglects the reason for 'ownership' of even a small amount of property. Suppose we limit each individual to what they need, as the Communist ideal would go: "To each according to his need." What is it an individual needs? Food, water, housing. In this day and age, we consider housing to include electricity, sanitation, and temperature control (heating and A/C). Okay, so if we consider that each person will control their own food, water, housing (own it). How do we get the builder to make that second house beyond his own? He won't own it, since private property doesn't exist, and he already controls his own home.
Suppose we have a small community, with one farmer, and one builder (and we are supposing that the single farmer can feed everyone. I'll deal with the other case in a bit). The builder builds two houses, and one goes to the farmer. Is the builder then free forever to live off of the farmer? What if the builder is no good at farming, or is incapable of it? Is the farmer then forced to work to feed the builder for the rest of the builder's life? Suppose some disaster strikes, and the farmer is injured, and can only work enough to feed himself. Does he still have to provide food for the builder?
Now, that construction was a little naive, and the builder could farm, and the farmer could build. But in that case, why is one entitled to the labor of the other? If the builder builds a second home, why is the farmer entitled to it for no labor? The builder spent his labor to build it, surely he should be compensated for his work somehow. Otherwise, it would be slavery. Similarly, if the builder can't farm, how is he entitled to the work of the farmer? They can certainly trade between the two of them, but that presupposes that there is ownership of the goods being traded. The extra house being traded for food requires that the extra house is owned, as is the food.
Let us also look at the case where the farmer cannot feed both himself and the builder with his labor. If he doesn't enlist the builder's help, one of them will starve. Is the builder the one who gets the food? Well, not if you own the labor and materials that you need. In that case, the farmer gets to keep the food, because he needs it, and only the excess is given away. This puts the builder in a predicament. Why should he build a house for a farmer who will not feed him? In reality, the builder should build his house and then take up farming, but leaving that aside, why should he build that second house for the farmer? He gets no benefit, and starves to death, at which point the farmer can take his stuff (unless the farmer died of exposure).
The problem with abolishing private property is that there is no incentive to reach beyond subsistence. There is no reason to build that second home, since you won't use it. There is no reason to farm the extra food. Any extra labor beyond subsistence has its benefits denied to the individual, and becomes a form of slavery.
The problem with this is that it is inconsistent, and neglects the reason for 'ownership' of even a small amount of property. Suppose we limit each individual to what they need, as the Communist ideal would go: "To each according to his need." What is it an individual needs? Food, water, housing. In this day and age, we consider housing to include electricity, sanitation, and temperature control (heating and A/C). Okay, so if we consider that each person will control their own food, water, housing (own it). How do we get the builder to make that second house beyond his own? He won't own it, since private property doesn't exist, and he already controls his own home.
Suppose we have a small community, with one farmer, and one builder (and we are supposing that the single farmer can feed everyone. I'll deal with the other case in a bit). The builder builds two houses, and one goes to the farmer. Is the builder then free forever to live off of the farmer? What if the builder is no good at farming, or is incapable of it? Is the farmer then forced to work to feed the builder for the rest of the builder's life? Suppose some disaster strikes, and the farmer is injured, and can only work enough to feed himself. Does he still have to provide food for the builder?
Now, that construction was a little naive, and the builder could farm, and the farmer could build. But in that case, why is one entitled to the labor of the other? If the builder builds a second home, why is the farmer entitled to it for no labor? The builder spent his labor to build it, surely he should be compensated for his work somehow. Otherwise, it would be slavery. Similarly, if the builder can't farm, how is he entitled to the work of the farmer? They can certainly trade between the two of them, but that presupposes that there is ownership of the goods being traded. The extra house being traded for food requires that the extra house is owned, as is the food.
Let us also look at the case where the farmer cannot feed both himself and the builder with his labor. If he doesn't enlist the builder's help, one of them will starve. Is the builder the one who gets the food? Well, not if you own the labor and materials that you need. In that case, the farmer gets to keep the food, because he needs it, and only the excess is given away. This puts the builder in a predicament. Why should he build a house for a farmer who will not feed him? In reality, the builder should build his house and then take up farming, but leaving that aside, why should he build that second house for the farmer? He gets no benefit, and starves to death, at which point the farmer can take his stuff (unless the farmer died of exposure).
The problem with abolishing private property is that there is no incentive to reach beyond subsistence. There is no reason to build that second home, since you won't use it. There is no reason to farm the extra food. Any extra labor beyond subsistence has its benefits denied to the individual, and becomes a form of slavery.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Villains of Korra
I recently marathoned the last two seasons of the Legend of Korra. While I understand that it is a kids show on Nickelodeon, I still think that some of the ideas could have been explored better. There is not enough time given to develop the ideas of the villains, or examine what makes the villains wrong, either in their methods or ideology. If you want to watch the series, this contains some spoilers, so I would recommend not reading.
I personally didn't think that much of the first two seasons. The second was so disappointing that I stopped watching, until I heard that the last two seasons were much better. Well, I think one of the reasons that I found the second season so lackluster was that the villain in it had no reasonable justification, or at least as one that I picked up.
The political side of this is that in the first, third, and fourth seasons showcase different political ideals. The first season tries to explore the idea of equality. The equality movement ends up going too far, but the political questions that they raise are not really answered satisfactorily. They end up discrediting the movement by revealing that the leader of the equalists is actually a bender, and therefore a hypocrite. This is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, the first of which, for me, is that it doesn't remove the objections that were raised by other characters.
The equalists do bring up valid points about being ruled by benders, and how benders have power over them, but they cross the line by taking away peoples bending by force. It should certainly be acceptable to resist benders who try to impose their will on non-benders. This aspect is something that I don't think is explored quite enough, since they end up spending time on rushed romance and pro-bending. One thing that was not mentioned that the benders were getting less relevant in terms of actually using bending in day to day activities. Technology was gradually replacing benders in that respect. The modern civilization also limits what benders can legally do, since it is easy for them to destroy property, which is expensive and has to be fixed.
If people are unequal because of birth, whether it is elemental bending, wealth, good genetics, or any other factors, it doesn't give other people the right to take that away, whatever that is. It is not okay for one group to impose their will through violence or threats of violence, regardless of which side of the have and have-nots they are on. If we take away the abilities that make people extraordinary, all that we are left with is a poorer world.
Skipping ahead to the third season, we have anarchists who are trying to free people from oppressive governments. I find that I can agree with them on some things, but definitely not the way that they go about it. I think that part of the problem is that when they espouse the downfall of governments, they don't make a distinction between government and law or cultural practice. This is a common mistake, but they anarchy that they propose is what is usually thought of as the Hobbesian state of nature.
The fourth season is in some sense the flip side of the anarchist argument, though it is not really portrayed that way. The villain in this season showcases what I would consider some of the dangers of Nationalism. There is some value in a united country as opposed to a fractured one, but for it not to be oppressive, it requires the consent of the governed. Unification through force is not only oppressive, but is also causes war, which is one of the worst things that people can do. Nationalists place the nation as more important than the individuals in the nation. The national interest is used as the excuse, but it is just what the leaders view as the most important.
I would have liked it more if Legend of Korra had expanded a little more on the philosophy of the villains, since for three of the seasons, the villains had philosophy that can't be dismissed out of hand, and even for a kids show, we should try to show that ideas could still be good, even if the way that the villains went about it was definitely wrong.
I personally didn't think that much of the first two seasons. The second was so disappointing that I stopped watching, until I heard that the last two seasons were much better. Well, I think one of the reasons that I found the second season so lackluster was that the villain in it had no reasonable justification, or at least as one that I picked up.
The political side of this is that in the first, third, and fourth seasons showcase different political ideals. The first season tries to explore the idea of equality. The equality movement ends up going too far, but the political questions that they raise are not really answered satisfactorily. They end up discrediting the movement by revealing that the leader of the equalists is actually a bender, and therefore a hypocrite. This is unsatisfactory for a number of reasons, the first of which, for me, is that it doesn't remove the objections that were raised by other characters.
The equalists do bring up valid points about being ruled by benders, and how benders have power over them, but they cross the line by taking away peoples bending by force. It should certainly be acceptable to resist benders who try to impose their will on non-benders. This aspect is something that I don't think is explored quite enough, since they end up spending time on rushed romance and pro-bending. One thing that was not mentioned that the benders were getting less relevant in terms of actually using bending in day to day activities. Technology was gradually replacing benders in that respect. The modern civilization also limits what benders can legally do, since it is easy for them to destroy property, which is expensive and has to be fixed.
If people are unequal because of birth, whether it is elemental bending, wealth, good genetics, or any other factors, it doesn't give other people the right to take that away, whatever that is. It is not okay for one group to impose their will through violence or threats of violence, regardless of which side of the have and have-nots they are on. If we take away the abilities that make people extraordinary, all that we are left with is a poorer world.
Skipping ahead to the third season, we have anarchists who are trying to free people from oppressive governments. I find that I can agree with them on some things, but definitely not the way that they go about it. I think that part of the problem is that when they espouse the downfall of governments, they don't make a distinction between government and law or cultural practice. This is a common mistake, but they anarchy that they propose is what is usually thought of as the Hobbesian state of nature.
The fourth season is in some sense the flip side of the anarchist argument, though it is not really portrayed that way. The villain in this season showcases what I would consider some of the dangers of Nationalism. There is some value in a united country as opposed to a fractured one, but for it not to be oppressive, it requires the consent of the governed. Unification through force is not only oppressive, but is also causes war, which is one of the worst things that people can do. Nationalists place the nation as more important than the individuals in the nation. The national interest is used as the excuse, but it is just what the leaders view as the most important.
I would have liked it more if Legend of Korra had expanded a little more on the philosophy of the villains, since for three of the seasons, the villains had philosophy that can't be dismissed out of hand, and even for a kids show, we should try to show that ideas could still be good, even if the way that the villains went about it was definitely wrong.
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Response to Jon Stewart's Questions for Libertarians
Because it's there. Although it is a few years old now, I think it is a decent starting point for addressing my views to some common misconceptions of Libertarianism. A lot of these topics require a more in depth response than I am willing to do in a single shot, but I've tried to give the basic idea and outline of the arguments here. The questions posed by Jon Stewart are in blue.
1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?
In some sense, yes. Government, or rather the people acting as agents of the government, are allowed to initiate force or aggression, or threaten with force or aggression, in order to get the desired results. Taxes are taken from businesses, and if they refuse to pay, they are shut down. Do people pay taxes from the goodness in the bottom of their hearts? Or do they pay because of the negative consequences if they don't? Government is the only institution that we allow to do this. The worst that a company can legally do is deny you access to the services that they provide, which you are not entitled to anyway.
2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.
True, but for a government to be involved means that other peoples freedoms are being taken away. I say that government road would be one of the later parts of government that I would phase out. As it is now, roads are supposed to be paid for by gas taxes, which are at least somewhat related to usage. The more you drive, the more you have to pay for the roads.
The problem with this is that the land for the government roads has to come from somewhere. This means that the government takes land from private owners, and gives them what the bureaucrats deem to be the fair value for the land through the power of eminent domain. This means that the bureaucrats are infringing on some peoples freedom with the claim that it will enhance the freedom of everyone else. So should the freedom of a minority be infringed upon to enable the freedom of the majority? And that is assuming that the power is not abused, as I think it was in the Kelo v City of New London case, where land was taken from one group of private citizens to give to a different group of private citizens.
Roads, infrastructure, and a social safety net may all enhance the freedom of the people receiving the benefits, but not for those who have to pay for them involuntarily. I'm all in favor of them, if they are paid for by willing donors and workers.
3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?
Do we need to do anything? They invested their time and money unproductively, and could not deliver a product that people wanted. Let them do something else, and let the resources they used be used for something more productive.
4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.
We live in a society, but we are not a collective, and it is important to recognize that society is not the same as government. The government is a part of society, but the society is not the government. When someone says that 'we as a society should...' they usually mean that there should be a government program for it. I think that they are going a bit too far. I usually agree with the 'society should,' but when government is involved, the phrase should really read 'I think my neighbors' money should...' which is a specific way that they think the society should do it.
Each person's success is predicated on the hard work of people who exchange it with them for other products or services. You don't get there on your own, but you don't get it from taking stuff from other people either. You get there by exchanging with other people. The people that are being 'hung out to dry' are the ones that are not participating in the exchange. If they have nothing to bring to the table, then why should we be forced to support them?
And since when do Libertarians not believe in evolution? I'll grant you that there are some that don't, but evolution is not really that important when talking about liberty. In fact, it doesn't matter economically at all. Someone else's belief or disbelief in evolution does not impinge on my freedom unless they try to force it on me.
5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.
No, in a representative democracy, we choose some of our government officials through elections. We are not the government. If you think we are, try to fire the police officer that tries to give you a ticket. The electorate can kick out an elected official, if they can agree on a different candidate, but it won't necessarily remove the non-elected government employees that we find incompetent. The vast majority of government workers are not elected, and most are not replaced with each new elected official.
Also, if you think of the government as the group of people that the society has allowed to initiate force, we can clearly see that we are not the government. We are not allowed to do what the government is allowed to do unless we are a part of it. Just look at the gun debate. Everyone in the mainstream says that the military is allowed to have automatic weapons, tanks, missile launchers, and other heavy weapons, while those should be banned from use by civilians. If we are the government, then why are we not allowed to have all the same toys as the government?
6. Is government inherently evil?
Depends on how you want to define evil, and that is a much deeper philosophical debate than I am willing to get in to right now, and one that I don't think anyone has resolved. But from a libertarian anarchist perspective, yes.
7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.
Perhaps, but there is a distinction in how that organization takes place. If you form an army, is it voluntary? Are the soldiers paid? If so, who pays them, and is that voluntary? Part of the reason for a militia is to have a volunteer defense force in the case of a foreign invasion. There is no formal military required. If weapons are widespread and available to the population, then any occupying force will have to face an armed populace much more capable of inflicting damage on them than the Iraqis were against the US military.
In the case of building a wall or levy, there is nothing stopping local organizations from doing these things. These things certainly don't require federal involvement, and the federal government does not necessarily know the problems that face the local community, or the most effective response to those problems.
8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.
This is an important distinction between those who identify as anarchists and those who identify only as Libertarian. The most common Libertarian statement of value is the Non-Aggression Principle. Most Libertarians will hold that violating this is evil or wrong. The non-anachists will tend to take a 'necessary evil' stance of government, and say that government should be minimized in order to minimize the use of aggression, but that removing it altogether would increase the aggression, as everyone would try to use it.
This logic can only apply to the anarchist libertarian position though, since it is an absolute prohibition on aggression. Any army must be voluntary, and supported by voluntary donation. Using this argument is dangerous though. If you are willing to impinge on the freedom of some people for the greater freedom of others (eminent domain to build roads, taxation to build infrastructure), what is that but slavery? A lesser form of slavery, sure, but now we're just negotiating.
9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.
Did not work in what sense? We got through the Revolutionary War with just the Articles of Confederation. Also, this is assuming that the nation of the United States is a Good Thing, and that if we were left as 13 independent states, it would have been a Bad Thing. History would have been very different if the Constitution was not ratified, and we had split into 13 separate nation. Perhaps the Civil War would not have happened. Perhaps slavery would have been undermined by the lack of authority of a Federal Government. Perhaps we would have been better off if we had not unified under the Constitution.
10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.
No, I give money to the IRS because if I don't, they might make my life very unpleasant. Hell, even when I do give money to the IRS, it is unpleasant having to worry about all of the monetary transactions for the last year.
11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.
Because a company is accountable to me. My representative is accountable to me, and a bunch of other people who can overrule my opinion. The worst that a company can do is deny me access to their service and labor because I don't pay them. The worst that a representative can do is pass a law that makes something I do punishable by jail time.
12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.
The problems with the healthcare system in its current form started during World War II, with price and salary controls. Employers got around this by offering more benefits, such as healthcare. This alone would have distorted the market with the third-payer problem, but it got worse. After the war ended, instead of simply raising the salary and wage caps, and allowing individuals to buy their own insurance, the government gave tax incentives for medical benefits paid by employers. This meant that it was cheaper for employers to pay for health care than for individuals.
To use an analogy, it is like you and your employer are going to a restaurant. In the old system, before WWII, you would pay for your part of the bill with your salary. During WWII, your salary was capped, so instead of raising your wages, the company would offer to pay for some of your food. At this point, you are willing to spend more on the food than if you paid yourself, since if you don't buy the food, you don't get the left over money. So spending at the restaurant would increase. After the war, the employer is still paying for you food, but has lobbied the government to give tax breaks for the money spent at the restaurant. This means that the actual cost of the food is lower than the nominal price, as they can get some of the money back from taxes. So the employers end up willing to pay more. So the price of the food increases to match this demand.
So who ends up paying for this? The uninsured, the self-insured, and the taxpayer. Eventually the healthcare system got to the point that the person making the cost-benefit analysis was the recipient of the benefits, but not the bearer of the costs, to the point that the costs are greatly inflated. Should it be a surprise that someone without the benefits of the employment system would be priced out of the market?
And that is just on the insurance side. Another part of the problem is competition among different healthcare providers. In order to build new medical facilities, often government licensing is involved. This might not be a problem, but if the politicians are connected with the established medical community, then in can easily become a case of crony capitalism, which hurts patients and taxpayers.
With regards to school choice, yes some people have school choice, but for many people it is determined either by where they live, or if they have enough money to go outside the system. They pay for it either way. The price of housing in good school districts is higher than those in bad districts, so buying a comparable house in a good district will be significantly more expensive. Another option is to pay for a private school, which costs money more directly. In both cases, you are in a sense paying twice, once in taxes, and once directly to the school or for the house.
13. Would you go back to 1890?
No, but I don't think that every single change since 1890 has been a Good Thing. Some of the changes have been good, like the technological advances which gave us the computer, or the internet. Some of the social changes were good, like the declines in racism and sexism. Others have been bad, like the rise of socialism and fascism, which led to some of the greatest armed conflicts in history. I think the two worst ones that come to mind for me are the Prohibitions, of alcohol with the Eighteenth Amendment, and of the War on Drugs starting in the '70s (though there is some legislation on hemp and narcotics in the '30s). We learned from Prohibition on alcohol that it doesn't actually work, but decided to make the same mistake and have the government ban other drugs.
14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?
I don't know that it would be like if we didn't have government. Is our society ready for anarchy? I don't think so. I think that it might take a giant cultural shift for that to happen. As for the specifics, it could be that hovercrafts are the more efficient form of travel if we hadn't already invested in road infrastructure. Or maybe everyone would own an off-road car. We don't know the solutions to all of the problems. No one does. To think that even experts know the most efficient mode of transportation. For example, many people keep pushing for mass transit, but the only mass transit that has made money has been privately run.
15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.
I'm pretty sure those were not really unregulated markets. They may have been slightly deregulated, but not unregulated. Regulations are a messy subject because they distort the market landscape, and increase the cost of doing business. This means that the businesses that are just getting by are going to leave the market. Regulations can also be used as a legal excuse, allowing the company to deny wrong doing because they followed the regulations. The regulations also don't eliminate actual damaging behavior, such as fraud, but rather increase the cost of that behavior.
Also, to talk about people being 'victimized' by a system, the best way to make sure that they can't fight back against it is to regulate it. This raises the barrier to entry artificially, making it harder to find competitors that actually provide the services that the people want. Often times, the reasons for the system being screwed up in the first place is because of a government intervention, as with the case of healthcare.
16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?
Because they thought that unionizing was the best way to defend their interests. I have nothing against voluntary unions. I have issues with unions that use violence and intimidation against non-union workers to protect the interests of the union workers. I have issues with employers being denied the freedom to fire the workers that aren't working.
17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.
Just as I am against unions using violence, I am also against companies using violence or threatening violence. You are not entitled to a job though, so if the company owner finds someone else who is willing to do the job you were doing, you don't have right to get your job back. Don't be surprised if you stop working to go on strike, and end up getting fired.
18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.
The free market cannot enforce segregation without the society as a whole accepting and enforcing segregation. An unlimited democratic government can legally enforce segregation if a simple majority thinks that segregation is acceptable. In the South, segregation was enforced by government by Jim Crow laws, not by the free market. That is an issue with the democratic process, and lack of limits on government interference, not the free market.
19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.
Even if I grant that government may be necessary, how do we hold it accountable, when politicians create rules to prevent third parties, and shape districts to ensure incumbency? What about the bureaucrats who are not elected, but appointed? What about the agencies under them? How do we hold them accountable? More government agencies?
1. Is government the antithesis of liberty?
In some sense, yes. Government, or rather the people acting as agents of the government, are allowed to initiate force or aggression, or threaten with force or aggression, in order to get the desired results. Taxes are taken from businesses, and if they refuse to pay, they are shut down. Do people pay taxes from the goodness in the bottom of their hearts? Or do they pay because of the negative consequences if they don't? Government is the only institution that we allow to do this. The worst that a company can legally do is deny you access to the services that they provide, which you are not entitled to anyway.
2. One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.
True, but for a government to be involved means that other peoples freedoms are being taken away. I say that government road would be one of the later parts of government that I would phase out. As it is now, roads are supposed to be paid for by gas taxes, which are at least somewhat related to usage. The more you drive, the more you have to pay for the roads.
The problem with this is that the land for the government roads has to come from somewhere. This means that the government takes land from private owners, and gives them what the bureaucrats deem to be the fair value for the land through the power of eminent domain. This means that the bureaucrats are infringing on some peoples freedom with the claim that it will enhance the freedom of everyone else. So should the freedom of a minority be infringed upon to enable the freedom of the majority? And that is assuming that the power is not abused, as I think it was in the Kelo v City of New London case, where land was taken from one group of private citizens to give to a different group of private citizens.
Roads, infrastructure, and a social safety net may all enhance the freedom of the people receiving the benefits, but not for those who have to pay for them involuntarily. I'm all in favor of them, if they are paid for by willing donors and workers.
3. What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?
Do we need to do anything? They invested their time and money unproductively, and could not deliver a product that people wanted. Let them do something else, and let the resources they used be used for something more productive.
4. Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.
We live in a society, but we are not a collective, and it is important to recognize that society is not the same as government. The government is a part of society, but the society is not the government. When someone says that 'we as a society should...' they usually mean that there should be a government program for it. I think that they are going a bit too far. I usually agree with the 'society should,' but when government is involved, the phrase should really read 'I think my neighbors' money should...' which is a specific way that they think the society should do it.
Each person's success is predicated on the hard work of people who exchange it with them for other products or services. You don't get there on your own, but you don't get it from taking stuff from other people either. You get there by exchanging with other people. The people that are being 'hung out to dry' are the ones that are not participating in the exchange. If they have nothing to bring to the table, then why should we be forced to support them?
And since when do Libertarians not believe in evolution? I'll grant you that there are some that don't, but evolution is not really that important when talking about liberty. In fact, it doesn't matter economically at all. Someone else's belief or disbelief in evolution does not impinge on my freedom unless they try to force it on me.
5. In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.
No, in a representative democracy, we choose some of our government officials through elections. We are not the government. If you think we are, try to fire the police officer that tries to give you a ticket. The electorate can kick out an elected official, if they can agree on a different candidate, but it won't necessarily remove the non-elected government employees that we find incompetent. The vast majority of government workers are not elected, and most are not replaced with each new elected official.
Also, if you think of the government as the group of people that the society has allowed to initiate force, we can clearly see that we are not the government. We are not allowed to do what the government is allowed to do unless we are a part of it. Just look at the gun debate. Everyone in the mainstream says that the military is allowed to have automatic weapons, tanks, missile launchers, and other heavy weapons, while those should be banned from use by civilians. If we are the government, then why are we not allowed to have all the same toys as the government?
6. Is government inherently evil?
Depends on how you want to define evil, and that is a much deeper philosophical debate than I am willing to get in to right now, and one that I don't think anyone has resolved. But from a libertarian anarchist perspective, yes.
7. Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.
Perhaps, but there is a distinction in how that organization takes place. If you form an army, is it voluntary? Are the soldiers paid? If so, who pays them, and is that voluntary? Part of the reason for a militia is to have a volunteer defense force in the case of a foreign invasion. There is no formal military required. If weapons are widespread and available to the population, then any occupying force will have to face an armed populace much more capable of inflicting damage on them than the Iraqis were against the US military.
In the case of building a wall or levy, there is nothing stopping local organizations from doing these things. These things certainly don't require federal involvement, and the federal government does not necessarily know the problems that face the local community, or the most effective response to those problems.
8. As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? -Who do you think I am?- We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.
This is an important distinction between those who identify as anarchists and those who identify only as Libertarian. The most common Libertarian statement of value is the Non-Aggression Principle. Most Libertarians will hold that violating this is evil or wrong. The non-anachists will tend to take a 'necessary evil' stance of government, and say that government should be minimized in order to minimize the use of aggression, but that removing it altogether would increase the aggression, as everyone would try to use it.
This logic can only apply to the anarchist libertarian position though, since it is an absolute prohibition on aggression. Any army must be voluntary, and supported by voluntary donation. Using this argument is dangerous though. If you are willing to impinge on the freedom of some people for the greater freedom of others (eminent domain to build roads, taxation to build infrastructure), what is that but slavery? A lesser form of slavery, sure, but now we're just negotiating.
9. You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.
Did not work in what sense? We got through the Revolutionary War with just the Articles of Confederation. Also, this is assuming that the nation of the United States is a Good Thing, and that if we were left as 13 independent states, it would have been a Bad Thing. History would have been very different if the Constitution was not ratified, and we had split into 13 separate nation. Perhaps the Civil War would not have happened. Perhaps slavery would have been undermined by the lack of authority of a Federal Government. Perhaps we would have been better off if we had not unified under the Constitution.
10. You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.
No, I give money to the IRS because if I don't, they might make my life very unpleasant. Hell, even when I do give money to the IRS, it is unpleasant having to worry about all of the monetary transactions for the last year.
11. Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.
Because a company is accountable to me. My representative is accountable to me, and a bunch of other people who can overrule my opinion. The worst that a company can do is deny me access to their service and labor because I don't pay them. The worst that a representative can do is pass a law that makes something I do punishable by jail time.
12. Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ..and there are choices within the educational system.
The problems with the healthcare system in its current form started during World War II, with price and salary controls. Employers got around this by offering more benefits, such as healthcare. This alone would have distorted the market with the third-payer problem, but it got worse. After the war ended, instead of simply raising the salary and wage caps, and allowing individuals to buy their own insurance, the government gave tax incentives for medical benefits paid by employers. This meant that it was cheaper for employers to pay for health care than for individuals.
To use an analogy, it is like you and your employer are going to a restaurant. In the old system, before WWII, you would pay for your part of the bill with your salary. During WWII, your salary was capped, so instead of raising your wages, the company would offer to pay for some of your food. At this point, you are willing to spend more on the food than if you paid yourself, since if you don't buy the food, you don't get the left over money. So spending at the restaurant would increase. After the war, the employer is still paying for you food, but has lobbied the government to give tax breaks for the money spent at the restaurant. This means that the actual cost of the food is lower than the nominal price, as they can get some of the money back from taxes. So the employers end up willing to pay more. So the price of the food increases to match this demand.
So who ends up paying for this? The uninsured, the self-insured, and the taxpayer. Eventually the healthcare system got to the point that the person making the cost-benefit analysis was the recipient of the benefits, but not the bearer of the costs, to the point that the costs are greatly inflated. Should it be a surprise that someone without the benefits of the employment system would be priced out of the market?
And that is just on the insurance side. Another part of the problem is competition among different healthcare providers. In order to build new medical facilities, often government licensing is involved. This might not be a problem, but if the politicians are connected with the established medical community, then in can easily become a case of crony capitalism, which hurts patients and taxpayers.
With regards to school choice, yes some people have school choice, but for many people it is determined either by where they live, or if they have enough money to go outside the system. They pay for it either way. The price of housing in good school districts is higher than those in bad districts, so buying a comparable house in a good district will be significantly more expensive. Another option is to pay for a private school, which costs money more directly. In both cases, you are in a sense paying twice, once in taxes, and once directly to the school or for the house.
13. Would you go back to 1890?
No, but I don't think that every single change since 1890 has been a Good Thing. Some of the changes have been good, like the technological advances which gave us the computer, or the internet. Some of the social changes were good, like the declines in racism and sexism. Others have been bad, like the rise of socialism and fascism, which led to some of the greatest armed conflicts in history. I think the two worst ones that come to mind for me are the Prohibitions, of alcohol with the Eighteenth Amendment, and of the War on Drugs starting in the '70s (though there is some legislation on hemp and narcotics in the '30s). We learned from Prohibition on alcohol that it doesn't actually work, but decided to make the same mistake and have the government ban other drugs.
14. If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?
I don't know that it would be like if we didn't have government. Is our society ready for anarchy? I don't think so. I think that it might take a giant cultural shift for that to happen. As for the specifics, it could be that hovercrafts are the more efficient form of travel if we hadn't already invested in road infrastructure. Or maybe everyone would own an off-road car. We don't know the solutions to all of the problems. No one does. To think that even experts know the most efficient mode of transportation. For example, many people keep pushing for mass transit, but the only mass transit that has made money has been privately run.
15. Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80’s and the 90’s were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.
I'm pretty sure those were not really unregulated markets. They may have been slightly deregulated, but not unregulated. Regulations are a messy subject because they distort the market landscape, and increase the cost of doing business. This means that the businesses that are just getting by are going to leave the market. Regulations can also be used as a legal excuse, allowing the company to deny wrong doing because they followed the regulations. The regulations also don't eliminate actual damaging behavior, such as fraud, but rather increase the cost of that behavior.
Also, to talk about people being 'victimized' by a system, the best way to make sure that they can't fight back against it is to regulate it. This raises the barrier to entry artificially, making it harder to find competitors that actually provide the services that the people want. Often times, the reasons for the system being screwed up in the first place is because of a government intervention, as with the case of healthcare.
16. Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?
Because they thought that unionizing was the best way to defend their interests. I have nothing against voluntary unions. I have issues with unions that use violence and intimidation against non-union workers to protect the interests of the union workers. I have issues with employers being denied the freedom to fire the workers that aren't working.
17. Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.
Just as I am against unions using violence, I am also against companies using violence or threatening violence. You are not entitled to a job though, so if the company owner finds someone else who is willing to do the job you were doing, you don't have right to get your job back. Don't be surprised if you stop working to go on strike, and end up getting fired.
18. Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not.. The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.
The free market cannot enforce segregation without the society as a whole accepting and enforcing segregation. An unlimited democratic government can legally enforce segregation if a simple majority thinks that segregation is acceptable. In the South, segregation was enforced by government by Jim Crow laws, not by the free market. That is an issue with the democratic process, and lack of limits on government interference, not the free market.
19. Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.
Even if I grant that government may be necessary, how do we hold it accountable, when politicians create rules to prevent third parties, and shape districts to ensure incumbency? What about the bureaucrats who are not elected, but appointed? What about the agencies under them? How do we hold them accountable? More government agencies?
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