Speaking of Catallarchy and Sports
Rainbough Phillips has a good essay about the decidedly non-utopian nature of libertarianism as a political philosophy. Ironically, many criticisms of libertarianism presume that utopia is its test, that if a libertarian system doesn’t produce perfect justice and harmony (as defined by the critic) then libertarianism is a failure. Can you guarantee that X won’t happen in a libertarian society? Not really. Won’t this bad thing happen sometimes? I suppose. Then libertarianism is no good!
This is, needless to say, not a standard to which statist philosophies hold themselves. Today, for instance, the Washington Nationals play their second home game, at the cost of umpty-ump in taxes on local businesses, and down the line quite a few more evicted from their present locales via eminent domain. A philosophy that justifies itself in terms of taking care of the least among us somehow keeps taking care of billionaire sports team owners and agribusinesses, among other fat cats. Won’t your welfare state lead to rent-seeking and vicious paternalism and exactions justified by the sheerest hypocrisy? I suppose. Why? Then your philosophy is no good! Huh? Where do you get that?
Or, to turn to right-statism for a second, Representative James Sensenbrenner (R – Pleasantville) proposes a law that, among other things
Create a new three-year mandatory minimum for parents who witness or learn about drug trafficking activities, targeting or even near their children, if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender.
But Mr. Sensenbrenner, aren’t conservatives always going on about strengthening families, and won’t that law tend to break families up – like, for instance, if you’re a parent and the “drug trafficking activities” are by a neighbor’s kid and you try to work through the issue directly with your neighbor, or it’s a gang known for its viciousness and you’re afraid to stick your neck out but protect your child as best you can regardless, but now you’re out of compliance and it’s off to jail for thirty-six months, leaving your child with at most one parent and one income and very possibly in foster care? Sure it will. Then your philosophy is no good! Come now, be reasonable!
Comment by Franklin Harris —
April 16, 2005 @ 11:32 pm
Of course, Sensenbrenner’s philosophy is no good.
Comment by Iron Lungfish —
April 17, 2005 @ 3:09 am
To play devil’s advocate, a liberal could argue that the examples listed are far from the best examples of liberal philosophy in action. These are mostly instances of corruption and anti-drug paranoia, the former hardly being intrinsic to liberalism and the latter hardly being a key philosophical underpinning of the left. This doesn’t demonstrate that liberalism as a philosophy is flawed, only that liberals as individuals are flawed.
I tried to come up withan apology for Sensenbrenner but generally have failed. He’s an absolute raving nut, though, and this should count for something; his presence in the data skews the curve.
Comment by Doug Muir —
April 17, 2005 @ 5:20 am
Jim, this is pretty weak. No offense. But for a lot of us, the problem with libertarianism isn’t that it won’t protect us from X. In fact, if I were listing my own problems with libertarianism, nothing following that pattern would even make the top five. (Unless you set X to equal “Hobbesian war of all against all”, and I don’t think that’s what you’re talking about.)
So, the first part’s a straw man. And the second — Sensenbrenner et al. — is a rhetorical technique that’s gained the well-deserved name of “dumpster diving”.
Waaaay back when the USSR was still a going concern, I used to read the English edition of Pravda. Most of its stories about the US were true; occasionally, they were quite well researched and written. All were, without exception, about the evils of the capitalist system… crime, poverty, racism, the arrogance of the rich, the grotesqueries of the military-industrial complex.
All true. But…
Dumpster-diving is strangely satisfying, and everybody does it sometimes. But…
Doug M.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
April 17, 2005 @ 7:25 am
I’m sure that there’s going to be enough piling on the other parts of this post, so I’m going to disagree with “A philosophy that justifies itself in terms of taking care of the least among us”. I think that you’re thinking of communism (”To each according to his need, from each according to his ability.”) Liberalism’s basic philosophy is one of maximizing liberty. And yes, income redistribution is up to a certain point (to be determined pragmatically) an increase in liberty, because poverty limits your liberty, and because the marginal value of a dollar is less to a rich person than to a poor person.
Comment by Frank —
April 17, 2005 @ 9:25 am
Comment by Leonard —
April 17, 2005 @ 1:39 pm
Rich – the question is not what liberals feel about wealth redistribution (aka state-sponsored theft), but how they justify it. Jim’s allusion there seems to be to Rawls, who does justify his liberal ideas via his intuitions about the least among us.
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It may well be that robbing from the rich is, in fact, utilitarian (from the POV of the poor, anyway, or even the average). But that does not justify it.
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Since I’m here, I’ll also pick on your idea that wealth equals liberty. I certainly agree that liberalism is about liberty. However liberty is the state of not being coerced by one’s fellows. Modern liberalism has mistaken liberty and wealth. Wealth is power. Poverty does certainly limit your power – your options in life, your ability to do many things. But it is not a limitation on liberty. If you want to use the word “freedom” there, go for it — that one I’ve given up on, both to you liberals (meaning: “power”) and to conservatives (meaning: “democracy”). But not “liberty”. Liberty is the state of not being coerced by other people. The redistributive state is its opposite, for coercion is necessary for wealth extraction.
Comment by Avram —
April 17, 2005 @ 3:17 pm
Leonard, I think the big difference between my kind of liberal and your kind of libertarian is that we don’t define “coerce” quite as narrowly as you do.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
April 17, 2005 @ 3:34 pm
Leonard, some weird formatting issue has left your comment very difficult to read in my browser. But I’ll give it a shot.
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First, on liberty. As always when faced with libertarian redefinitions of words, I can only point to the dictionary. Mirriam-Webster lists four meanings of liberty, the first being the one under discussion:
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1 : the quality or state of being free: a : the power to do as one pleases b : freedom from physical restraint c : freedom from arbitrary or despotic control d : the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges e : the power of choice
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I see no difference between poverty and other limitations on one’s power to do as one pleases, or one’s power to choose, or even on one’s positive enjoyment of various rights. Wealth certainly does not equal liberty, because you can for instance be both wealthy and in jail, or living in a totalitarian state. But wealth contributes to the general level of liberty.
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No one, outside libertarian polemics, really thinks that “liberty is the state of not being coerced by ones fellows”. All laws are coercion by one’s fellows, yet most people do not imagine a state of lawlessness to be one that maximizes their liberty. Nor do the extremely poor congratulate themselves on their liberty to starve.
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Next, robbing from the rich. Property is purely a social construction. Unless you believe in “natural rights” — in which case I can only say that theocracy is impossible to argue against — what you’re really saying when you say that people have a right to their property is that certain types of property laws appear to work. In which case I can only point out that a certain degree of redistribution appears to work; societies with it have a much higher level of general liberty than those without.
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By the way, in a libertarian minarchy, libertarians would tax me and take my property in order to fund a vastly stepped-up law enforcement class dedicated to enforcement of contracts and property boundaries, despite my personal objection to spending money in this way. So let’s not have too much “oh-no-you’re-coercing-me” unless you’re an anarchist.