Why libertarianism is a load of crap.

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http://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... te-people/

Libertarianism is rational for rich white people only.
July 14, 2009 — Restructure!

Libertarianism is a political philosophy that is fiscally conservative, but socially liberal—except when it concerns social issues that involve money or property. Stereotypically, libertarianism is self-consistent only in a toy universe abstracted away from the messiness and social inequalities of the real world.

Several years ago, a libertarian introduced to me a flash video that was intended to promote libertarianism. I was amazed to find that the unrealistic abstraction and idealism that is stereotypical of libertarianism was manifested even in the video’s visuals. An unintentional visual self-parody, the video—The Philosophy of Liberty—illustrates libertarianism with abstract stick figures representing people devoid of race, gender, and historical context.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I&[/youtube]

One of the recurrent problems in this video is the confusion between the ideal and the actual. Specifically, the video confuses normative statements with descriptive statements. A normative statement is a statement about how things should be, while a descriptive statement is a statement about how things are. For example, many people, usually white, may claim “Race doesn’t matter”, when race actually matters in the real world. The truth is that race shouldn’t matter for things like employment and housing, not that it doesn’t. Doctors should be motivated by pure altruism and not money, some may argue, but people’s normative statements have no effect on descriptive facts about reality.

The Philosophy of Liberty video makes normative claims about the nature of property, but presents them as descriptive claims. The intent is to convince the viewer that people have a natural right to their property, and to reduce or eliminate taxation and other types of wealth redistribution by the government. Here is an example of a normative claim about property presented as a descriptive claim through the use of “is” instead of “should be”:



This is absolutely false as a descriptive statement. In the real world, people acquired property through genocide, invasion, murder, assault, and theft. The United States invaded, colonized, and committed genocide against the indigenous people of North America. It enslaved people from Africa to quickly build up its nation with little overhead. Most of the valuable “property” recognized in American law belongs to white Americans, but it was acquired by violating the rights of Native Americans and African Americans.

At the same time, of course, the use of force is contrary to libertarian ideals:



If The Philosophy of Liberty is self-consistent, then property that was acquired from stealing land from Native Americans and from enslaving African Americans is illegitimate. However, most (white) libertarians are against paying reparations to African Americans and are against returning the land to Native Americans.

Clearly, American libertarians, who are mostly white, use libertarianism to rationalize their class privilege and white privilege. Libertarianism is an inconsistent philosophy in the context of the real world, and the only consistency among most libertarians is that they are against being taxed. For most American libertarians, if the government taxes rich white Americans, it is theft, but if rich white Americans stole African American labor, time, energy, and talent, it happened a long time ago and accounts should be cleared.

Obviously, the people who currently have the most wealth, class privilege, and white privilege want to support a system that minimizes or eliminates wealth redistribution. If these same people were reduced to poverty through force—such as from a Mexican reconquista or Chinese invasion—they too would demand reparations. From the perspective of those who do not benefit from libertarian politics or are less selfish, libertarian propaganda like this video is a thinly-veiled attempt to help rich people stay rich, based on internally inconsistent rationalizations. When people happen to be on top of the wheel of fate, they search for philosophies that confirm the rightfulness of their place, holding on to them desperately at the expense of self-consistency.

I would really bet that the same criticism works for most ideologies. The reason I say this is because the most idealistic versions of most political philosophies really do have a strong disconnect from reality, while realist versions have unacceptable variations.


No, the author seems to be making somewhat of a descriptive claim here, and the foundation of this is to suggest that property rightfully belongs to current owners in a general situation.


Well, no, the problem with arguing this is false is that the claim presented refers only to the usual sorts of viewers, most of whom never have committed genocide, invaded anybody, murdered, assaulted, or stolen. Saying that some people in the past have acquired property through these mechanisms does not entail that every person has done so, and it certainly does not entail that viewers did not acquire property through labor.


Actually, most of the most valuable property was acquired through rapid industrialization of the US. While US land is important, the fact of the matter is that the technical and technologically advanced equipment, along with associated intellectual property is in many ways more valuable, and any assumed value of land is really dependent upon the developments that (mostly white) individuals have created. African Americans also didn't really provide the US much current property, and the reason I say this is because while the South used blacks to grow cotton, the South was also economically devastated after the Civil War, and a lot of economic wealth in Southern states, such as Texas, is due to things such as oil and economic growth.


Ok, but two questions:
1) How could we determine proper reparations? The number would always be arbitrary, and one could even reasonably argue that 0 dollars in reparations is fairest given that no existing individual suffering this currently lives, arguing that current fates may be attributed to a lot of other factors to a point where reparations do not make sense, or even that despite the harm that both groups are net beneficiaries of the actions taken.
2) How could we actually determine who should give reparations? Everybody who did the wrong is dead. The property itself is mixed in together with everything else. Actually forcing reparations could itself be perceived as an "initiation of force".

Note, these problems also can cut against the highly rights-based form of libertarianism that is being criticized.


A lot of politics seems to be a post-hoc rationalization of impulses. Even further, most ideologies are mostly full of white people in the US. That being said, a lot of Jews have been major libertarians, but I don't really know where you would want to place them. Jews are not really white, and in the past have had issues due to antisemitism, so I really don't know what to say there. Even further, the average person's ideology is half-baked, so really, most people could easily be argued as "rationalizers" rather than anything else. Heck, I would even guess that your only justification for non-white libertarians would probably have to some sort of class misidentification or even being Uncle Toms of some sort, but public intellectuals of such a tendency do exist.


Well, for most American libertarians, past taxes are also not demanded as reparations either, so there is not an inconsistency in the two positions.


If someone damaged your house, you might demand reparations. If someone damaged your grandmother's house, then the idea seems rather absurd. This is not inconsistent. If someone who is currently dead, damaged your (now-dead) grandmother's house, then the who question of reparations becomes ridiculous.


The problem is that this isn't even "thinly-veiled propaganda". This is political rhetoric for evangelism. It is not written out of the desire to "help rich people stay rich" in all likelihood at all, but rather is likely written out of political conviction. This is no different than any other political evangelism, even in the inconsistencies. Talking about how it is "thinly veiled", really just shows the author to have an ideological axe to grind, as all notions of charity are thrown out with such a perspective.

Look, some reactions:
1) Saying that your opponents are just irrational and self-deluded is pretty bold. In fact, Freudian psychoanalyzing opponents is considered outright very questionable. After all, couldn't this whole matter be reversed to say "The poor are more likely to be on the left-wing, as are professors in fields that lack usefulness for business, as are government employees and union workers, therefore, a large core of left-wing beliefs is itself just a rationalization of anti-market biases often resulting from personal benefits from governmental actions"? I mean, I wouldn't say that, but the argument could be made. In fact, some commentators have already reduced US two party politics to rationalizations. http://www.marginalrevolution.com/margi ... xxxxx.html , http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/09/p ... snt-a.html So, really, I don't see this effort as incredibly impressive.
2) You're criticizing one strand of libertarianism, which is rights libertarianism. The problem is that most conceptions of rights suffer consistency problems of a similar sort as we see absurdities easy to generate, but all ideologies, whether left-wing or right-wing tend to rely on notions of rights. Notions of rights often seem cleaner, clearer, and easier to use in rhetoric, and for this reason, they often are popular, but it hardly invalidates all libertarians to say that a significant portion use a problematic rights framework. There are libertarians that take a more consequentialist outlook, including utilitarianism, ones that just seek more liberty rather than holding to absolute rights, and other similar things.
3) Some of the criticisms are just overblown, as there isn't as much of an inconsistency as the author believes. If there isn't then, the notion of pure projection seems even more ridiculous.

Only rich white folks like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams love the libertarian mode.

ruveyn

Ayn Rand would have us spit on widows and cripples.

"I'm alright Jack, screw you" If you are a loser it is your fault.

As human beings we are born with two conflicting values. One urge is to co-operate and share.
The other urge is to compete and dominate.

That is the human condition.

Libertarianism (like every other ideology) does not work as a pure product.

However, that does not mean it has false principles.

Yes, the fruit of your labor is your property. To take it from you is theft.

However, society demands that we all give something for the common good. Defining how much we should be compelled to give is the tricky bit.

Clearly, progressives might say a vast amount of your "fruit" should be taken for the common good. Libertarians say only the absolute minimum should be taken by force.

That is the essential task of politics. My inclinations is to take as little as possible consistent with maintaining peace and order in the society.

Tax and government are necessary evils. So we should have as little of them as is practical.

ruveyn

[quote="ruveyn"]
That is the essential task of politics. My inclinations is to take as little as possible consistent with maintaining peace and order in the society.
Tax and government are necessary evils. So we should have as little of them as is practical.
ruveyn[/quote

I agree.

Actually, the interpretation of "fruit of your labor" can be contentious. A Marxist would agree with the above statement, but he would interpret "the fruit of your labor" differently. I.e. making a profit that is above "the fruit of your labor" is stealing through exploitation.

We are so close to being ad idem zer0netgain, so close! I really only take issue with a single word in your post: vast.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal. I live in a jurisdiction with universal, publicly funded health care and subsidised post-secondary education (both of which I firmly support).

My total income tax hit from both levels of government is a mere 18% (and I am earning a professional salary). Add in consumption taxes, and that might account for another 7%. Property taxes are about 4-5%. Compulsory public services (water rates, garbage, recycling and sewage, and medicare premiums) tack on another 4 or 5. Grand total: about one-third of my income goes to various levels of government for taxes and compulsory public services.

I do not describe that as vast.

Yes, that's really one of the best criticism's of the notion. If it revolves around a clear conception of property, the problem is questioning the validity of this conception above other notions, and questioning it as coherent. This is not the worst thing, but not a problem.

It seems to me that the Marxist view and the libertarian* view are both incoherent extremes on a spectrum of interpretations of what property truly means.

( * by "libertarian" I mean anarcho-capitalist )

Well, an inherent question (as I do not live in BC), is how competently are your funded services run? What quality do you get? The big fight over it happening in the USA is an abysmal track record of government to do half the quality at twice the price. It's the reason why private sector can outperform government at most everything. I don't mind the concept of a "national health care plan" but I would rather die than entrust such a concept to the care of the U.S. Government.

No, by "libertarian", you likely mean Rothbardian. The issue is that anarcho-capitalism doesn't entail a particular view of property as it is an ideology(like liberalism, socialism, conservatism, etc), not just a single political theory (although, as a note, anarcho-capitalism is a fringe ideology), and David Friedman, one of the fathers of the ideology, more often approaches the issue of property from the notion of economics rather than moral theory.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c[/youtube]

An increasing number of services are now subjected to the "make it or buy it?" test. Increasingly, all levels of government are becoming funding agencies, rather than service delivery agencies.

Health services have always been substantially provided by the private sector, and paid for by a single, public sector payor. I have some issues about how the system is administered, and the fetish for aggregation, but these are quibbles over detail, rather than a wholesale indictment of the single-payer system.

The track record on education is mixed, largely due to resource cuts. If teachers and schools were properly funded, I think our performance indicators would improve.

Infrastructure is invariably privately built, now. Government paves no roads any longer.

Entitlement programs vary according to your lens. Government has certainly succeeded in cutting the welfare rolls, but they have done so at the expense of increasing the problem of homelessness, and with a corresponding increase in property crime.

What I find funny about Libertarians is that they complain about the government taking the "fruits of one's labor" via taxes, but I have never heard one single Libertarian complain about corporations and companies not paying workers what they're worth...

Being realistic here, I bet almost no company in existence pays workers what they're worth (especially now that the economy has tanked). The bosses at the top have the incentive to take as much for themselves as they can. What do Libertarians propose we do about bosses taking the fruits of peoples' labor?...