Kos for Kontroversy
I haven’t read Markos Moulitsas’ latest “libertarian democrats” essay yet and I won’t tonight. I’m so tired I’ll be lucky if I get a single Woodward post up. However, Trent McBride has and he accuses Moulitsas of ignoring the libertarian critique of left/liberal “corporate power” complaints. As Trent summarizes:
Persuade me that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation. I’ve never really seen anyone try, though that certainly could be my own fault for not having seen it. The most promising candidate in the comments (or in email) will be awarded a guest post to expound on this issue, along with a used (old but good condition) copy of The Machinery of Freedom.
He quotes some other critics of Moulitsas’ argument with their own, compatible formulations. So have at it, people!
I can conceive of a number of objections, some devil’s advocacy, some I’m much closer to believing, starting with “So?” That is, the fact that the worst abuses by corporations depend on the existence of an expansive state doesn’t in itself prove that the best way to limit those depredations is to limit the state. I happen to think that it is, though my ideas of how to limit it and Trent McBride’s ideas might not completely synch up.
Here’s another: Any state that exists carries within it mechanisms for revising its nature. In the US, mechanisms include amending the written Constitution and explicitly or tacitly reinterpreting the meaning of the existing text. But even if you wrote a “No Amendments EVAR and this is exactly what we mean by ‘the general welfare’ and it applies FOR ALL DAMN TIME!!!!!!” Constitution, in practice you could still change that state by violent revolution or by those actually holding power setting it aside and daring anyone to stop them.
Now on to practical examples. My understanding of US history is that no small amount of the growth of the American state was driven by business itself. I’m thinking particularly of the history of the railroads here, especially the campaigns by the rail magnates to get Congress to cover their expenses after the fact. Ambrose Bierce fought this attempt fiercely, with only scorn and wit on his side.
In other words, while the existence of the managerial state does indeed tempt corporations into getting it to steal for them, in the absence of the managerial state, there would exist corporations trying to create it.
Bribery pays dividends. So long as there is a state, there will be state agents looking to advantage themselves, and there will be people wanting to leverage their dollars with the coercive power of violence, the state’s cherished monopoly.
One response to the above problem is market anarchism. This runs foul of UO catchphrase 37: All governments are gangs, but not all gangs are governments. There will always be someone to bribe into using or threatening violence on your behalf.
None of the above means that I agree with the Kossack excerpt in Trent’s piece that
The fundamental reason that “libertarian†has become “libertarian democrat†is that corporations are becoming more powerful than governments.
First, I don’t believe that “corporations are becoming more powerful than governments.” Second, I don’t believe that corporate power is a bigger menace than government power. (Those are two distinct issues.) I don’t believe that “libertarian”-qua-libertarian has become “libertarian democrat.” This is the flip side of Tom Knapp’s sunny claim that Democrats are becoming more friendly to libertarian ideas, and while I love Tom Knapp, I think the claim is nuts. Belle Waring is becoming libertarian, but that’s only the creme de la creme de la creme of the Democratic Party, not the whey. Lastly and from what I can tell, if there’s a reason some libertarians are realigning toward the Dems, it has nothing to do with fear that “corporations are becoming more powerful than governments.” It’s concern over issues of war and civil liberties. How do I know this? I read my own blog! I also read and communicate with other libertarians who have turned “left” in the last three or four years. I don’t for a second confuse us with libertarianism as a whole, which we can define as “anyone who thinks of themselves as ‘pretty libertarian really.’ ” But we’re the people Kos’ Party has actually attracted, with whatever degree of enthusiasm or reluctance.
A final note: I don’t read the Kos excerpts as analysis. I read them as a sales job. Kos is trying to market the existing Democratic Party to libertarians. I can’t say he’s got the right pitch, but it’s nice to be asked.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 3, 2006 @ 11:01 pm
I haven’t read any of the linked articles yet, including Kos’. But I take exception to “we’re the people Kos’ Party has actually attracted”. Kos seems to be in favor of a Democratic strategy that peels off the Western states. There has indeed been some success for Democrats there recently.
That means that the sales job is really for culturally libertarian-ish people from the West, few of whom probably think of themselves as libertarians. The number of people who say “I’m a libertarian” is so small within the voting population (as opposed to the Internet population) that I doubt that Kos, who is all about winning elections, is writing his articles for them.
Comment by Wild Pegasus —
October 3, 2006 @ 11:12 pm
Here’s Kos’ problem: he thinks the government serves voters and not corporations. To that end, he has to have ignored almost every piece of New Left commentary. That commentary has made a strong case that the people in government and big corporations are the same people. That is, there is a class of people interchangeable between the highest levels of government and the highest levels of the biggest corporations. And this class basically runs both the biggest corporations and the government for the benefit of that class.
Kos thinks he can solve the problem by having virtuous regulators. Most libertarians think they can solve the problem by having fewer regulations. But neither one realises that they’re both working for the same goals and must be opposed together.
- Josh
Comment by Gnorgathon —
October 3, 2006 @ 11:58 pm
Jim – has the Democratic party actually attracted you? Or is it just that the Republican party is repulsive?
Comment by Jennifer —
October 4, 2006 @ 1:21 am
Kos thinks he can solve the problem by having virtuous regulators. Most libertarians think they can solve the problem by having fewer regulations. But neither one realises that they’re both working for the same goals and must be opposed together.
That’s a good point. But can you work together, if your goals are the same but your proposed solutions are so different? For instance, libertarians are opposed to affirmative action. So are white separatists. But I don’t think it would be possible for the two groups to form an alliance, even one focused narrowly and exclusively on affirmative action.
Or to make a less inflammatory example, a lot of libertarians agree that health care is a mess: too expensive, and too complicated to get. So do Democrats, but given what the two groups’ respective solutions would be I don’t think an alliance would be feasible even if they listed the exact same problems with the status quo.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 6:56 am
Could I convince anyone to address the nominal topic of the post, which is Trent’s formulation of the corporate/state power conundrum? Wild Pegasus comes closest to doing that so far.
Comment by Wild Pegasus —
October 4, 2006 @ 8:34 am
Jennifer,
In a word: no. Libertarians tried to work with Republicans for a long time, and it got us a big fat squadoosh. There’s no reason to think that working with the Democrats will get us any closer. If you want more liberty, you’re better off making personal arrangements that protect your liberties better. Politics isn’t going to get us there.
Jim,
I thought I did address the content of the post. What more were you looking for? McBride’s correct that businesses become more powerful when allied with the government. What he doesn’t propose is how to keep the governing and corporate classes separate. Indeed, almost every government, no matter how well conceived, becomes a government of the rich, and quickly. The only way to defeat that is through structural measures. Obviously, I propose market anarchism, but intensely local direct democracy among equals – say, in an independent Republic of Vermont – could also do it.
- Josh
Comment by Moleman —
October 4, 2006 @ 8:42 am
Man, do we have to?
I don’t want to be too glib, but there’s really not much I (speaking as a liberal who isn’t a very nimble thinker) can say to someone who is serously convinced that, in the absence of government coercive power, corporate coercive power and abuse would somehow just wither away. We’re not reasoning from even remotely similar bases, to the point where I’m not sure I can even identify half of the points of departure.
The way I reason it out, in any situation where there was no government and no power structures to allow the abuses that a huge corporation wanted to get away with, they’re likely to become the defacto government and build those structures themselves, curbing its excesses only when they cut into the bottom line.
Now, the same “bottom line” argument can be made for government, as well. But my government also at least theoretically serves me, and I can make my voice heard to it. A corporation, especially one that I’m not a customer of? Not so much.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 8:52 am
But I’ve already read most of _The Machinery of Freedom_ … at any rate, I’m low on time to do more than just dash off three-paragraph comments. But I’ll try to boil down what I always write here when this comes up.
Alright, to start with, there really isn’t any such thing as “corporate” power. There is economic power, which at its largest scale happens to be expressed in our societies through the form of an incorporated legal entity. Calling it corporate power invites comparison with the corporate-bureaucratic form of the contemporary democratic state, but I don’t think that’s really the problem.
The basic problem is that people will seek power over other people by whatever means are available. If they have economic power, and a weak state exists, they will bribe or buy a state that will expand their power. If a strong state exists, it will coerce economic entities towards the overall goals of the state, or the individual power of the high offerics of the state. The same goes for every other form of power — you’d expect the same things to happen in an anarchist society with no money and no state; there you’d get gangs. But any form of power will expand into whatever other areas are available.
The whole point of liberal American political theory is to broaden power by pitting it against itself. The mere concept of having a democracy is not particularly American or particularly liberal. The concepts of divided power, minority rights, checks and balances, and so on are — or British, if you prefer, but in a less developed theoretical context.
Therefore when libertarians say that corporations aren’t as powerful as the state, they’re making a category error based on the current historical moment. At other times and places in American history, this wasn’t true. On a global scale, it’s not necessarily true now.
People may retort that since the state is currently stronger, it should be scaled back. But the advantage of the *democratic* state is that it already has checks and balances built into it in the form of elections, and therefore has some at least slight responsiveness to the broadest base of people. Economic power has no such structure. Therefore, while the state should not be overwhelmingly strong, it seems like a good idea to have it be somewhat stronger than economic power.
The tools of liberal regulation are some tools for doing this. Yes, regulatory capture exists — that is economic power’s own check and balance. But regulatory capture is never complete.
Comment by Doug T —
October 4, 2006 @ 8:59 am
I have to admit to being a bit confused here. it seems to me that you’ve aptly stated (with a Libertarian gloss) the counter-argument to Trent: “UO catchphrase 37: All governments are gangs, but not all gangs are governments. There will always be someone to bribe into using or threatening violence on your behalf.”
So you’ve apparently accepted the idea that corporate coercive power doesn’t rest on state power. If the state power exists, coporate interests very well might use it to assist them. But if it’s not there, they can manage just fine with their own private militias. Even if you think Government is evil, it’s not the source of all evil. Taking away state power decidedly does not eliminate coercion, corporate or otherwise. That’s a well-known truth at least since Hobbes.
I also am a bit confused about the proposed mechanism by which the one is supposed to rely on the other. How does Pullman hiring a private contractor (Pinkerton) to beat up union organizers and use violence to intimidate workers show reliance on state power? To pick a more current example, how is Walmart’s continuing fight to prevent unionization of its workers reliant on state power?
Since this truth is stated as self-evident to the point of doubting the existence of any counter-example, I must be either missing something obvious or unaware of some well-known line of libertarian argument.
I also would bet that Kos would define coercive corporate power much more broadly than the typical libertarian. Things like sweatshops, for example, can be seen as corporate exploitation and mistreatment of workers, or it can be seen as the free market in glorious action. Or both.
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Trent’s argument is that the two are not logically separable- corporate coercive power (in the US federal or state contexts) depends entirely on the threat apparatus of the state. In weaker countries, corporate coercive power also depends on the state ‘looking the other way’, as no corporation (aside from maybe the military/security companies like Executive Outcomes maybe) can stand up to even banana republic armies.
….
It would seem to me that your catchphrase is closer to the mark in that after a point, corporations can become like states/governments, though again in that case there is not “corporate coercive power” but plain old state coercive power- the mining company that rules the poor backwoods valley in WV back in the day isn’t “corporate coercive power”, its indistinguishable from state power. There is no functional or meaningful distinction in kind there, though again the only way those old company town fiefdoms worked was with the collusion of the guys in the state house- so it seems that the McBride objection holds regardless of how you look at it- there is no point where corporate coercive power is both (a) distinct from government coercive power and (b) not constitutive of a state in and of itself if (a) holds.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:17 am
Actually, I think the fundamental reason that “libertarians have become libertarian Democrats” is because the Republicans are enthusiastically voting for torturing people. Right now, if a Democrat challenger for the Senate says, “I want to drown puppies”, I would still pull the lever for him, because his Republican opposite number has actually voted in favor of drowning people.
Corporations versus the state is just the usual Internet Forever War between libertarians and liberals. It will go on autonomously until the universe dies its heat death. Markos is stuck writing about that because he’s a liberal talking to libertarians, and he would have to break some fundamental conservation laws not to.
But this moment has nothing to do with corporations versus the state. It has to do with the awful things the CIA and US military are doing, this very minute.
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:23 am
Rich-
The category error is thinking that there is a difference between ‘economic power’ and ‘political power’ later in your comment, if you accept the first paragraph of your comment.
The state is made of the same people as the rest of society; it is folly to think that you’ll get a better outcome from them if you’re not getting a good outcome from somewhere else, and likewise folly to think that a “strong” state is somehow less susceptible to ‘bribery’ than a weak one. A strong state that isn’t is more likely than not a fascist/authoritarian one to begin with.
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:24 am
Neel-
I would agree with you if there were any indication that the Democrats (as a national institution) were truly against any of what you’re complaining about.
Comment by Bill —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:24 am
But they’re only in favor of drowning bad people…and there are no truly bad puppies.
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:26 am
-added because I hit submit too fast, is that if they were actually against torture they could have used Ye Olde Filibuster and/or voted against it (they do, in fact, have a filibuster proof minority in theory). Yet the only time they’ve filibustered was against *minor federal judgeships*, not even against the Supreme Court nominees where it really matters.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:28 am
Doug T wrote: I also am a bit confused about the proposed mechanism by which the one is supposed to rely on the other. How does Pullman hiring a private contractor (Pinkerton) to beat up union organizers and use violence to intimidate workers show reliance on state power?
IIRC, the Pullman strike didn’t feature Pinkertons fighting union men — it featured US Marshals and 2000 soldiers beating up and shooting trade unionists. The strike happened when Pullman (who ran a company town) cut wages without reducing prices in the company store. His workers went on strike, and many other railway workers went on sympathy strikes, paralyzing the railroad system. President Grover Cleveland declared that this was a threat to national security because it blocked the US Mail, and sent in the Army to break the strike.
The most famous instance of Pinkertons fighting unionists was the Homestead strike against Frick and Carnegie. Frick hired the Pinkertons to fight the unionists, and after a pitched battle the Pinkertons lost and were taken hostage. The state government sent in troops to separate the union and the company men, which they did. The strike was eventually broken through old fashioned abuse of state power — Carnegie had union leaders repeatedly arrested and charged $10,000 bail in order to empty the union’s coffers so that they couldn’t sustain the strike.
Comment by Leonard —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:38 am
Jim, regarding UO catchphrase 37, I dispute it. When you say “all governments are gangs”, presumably you have some meaning for “gang” other than “group of people working together”. Right? Something pejorative? Because otherwise your meaning is “all governments are groups of people working together, but not all groups of people working together are governments.” Which is true, but trivial and not interesting.
My assumption here is that by “gang”, you have a pejorative meaning related to what exists in a dictionary. I.e. m-w.com: gang: a group of persons working to unlawful or antisocial ends. Then the saying is interesting. But it’s wrong.
Now, it is true that all states are gangs, in the sense that by their nature, they deny a fundamental right: the right to free association. They maintain that monopoly of legitimized violence. (You can’t choose not to associate with them; you are a citizen, not a customer.) To deny any rights of your citizens is antisocial; hence, “gang”.
But it is not true that all government must be gangs, unless you hold government as a synonym for state. Anarchists don’t.
This is one of the points of the anarchist critique of minarchism. Minarchism by its nature must contain the seeds of abuse — you can’t opt out, thus, if the state goes south on you, there you are, a subject. In anarchy, at least in theory, it is possible to have a rights-respecting government.
Comment by Nell —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:45 am
Rich: the advantage of the *democratic* state is that it already has checks and balances built into it in the form of elections, and therefore has some at least slight responsiveness to the broadest base of people
And it would have one hell of a lot more responsiveness with some big structural reforms in campaign financing and the way in which federal elections are organized. I’m specifically thinking of public financing, as a way to even up the game between ordinary voters and corporations. This is an area where corporations have been allowed to have waaaaay too much power relative to citizens, and it’s greatly magnified the ability of the economic powers to bend the instruments of state to their will.
Would the libertarians here be more enthusiastic or less if the Democratic Party were to make that kind of electoral reform a big part of its push?
Let’s assume that we get enough new Dems into Congress to roll back the torture / tribunal law just passed, and do so, since that’s the main point of this tactical alliance. (Yes, I know, half those who voted for it are the very ones we’re counting on to regain a majority; but trust me, if the 110th Congress has a Dem majority, those same wusses will reverse themselves. I’m thinking here of Stabenow and Sherrod Brown and their ilk.)
Get-the-hogs-out-of-the-trough electoral and lobbying reform: libertarian attractant or repellant?
{sorry if this is not on-topic enough, Jim; I’m an activist, and one month out I lose a lot of my ability to think in big philosophical terms.}
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:57 am
Government funding itself for determining who gets to be in government- this doesn’t strike anyone as a horrific idea, on the order of “yeah, I could’ve worn a condom, but when’s the next time I’ll be in Haiti?”
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:59 am
Nell, I’m opposed to campaign finance “reform”, because as far as I can tell it’s really about restricting free speech in order to keep incumbents in office. Take McCain Feingold; it restricts “electioneering communictations” within 60 days of an election or 30 days of a primary. So, right now it’s illegal for me to buy a big billboard ad that says “Torture. Rick Santorum voted for it.” That’s because it would be counted as a hard money contribution to Bob Casey’s campaign, and subject to a $2000 maximum limit.
Public financing would have to have an even broader set of restrictions to work. So I’m against it.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:59 am
Brian: “The category error is thinking that there is a difference between ‘economic power’ and ‘political power’ later in your comment, if you accept the first paragraph of your comment.
The state is made of the same people as the rest of society [...]”
But there is a difference. Someone with economic power has control of economic resources or capital; someone with state power has control over legitimation. It’s also possible to have theological power, the direct power of violence (for leaders who have the ability to command people with weapons, but who don’t have legitimation), etc. All of these things are social fictions to one extent or another, but they work differently, and there isn’t any reason why the holders of different types of power will necessarily all form a single social upper class. Although that does tend to happen in societies without checks and balances, because those with any one of the forms of power can use it to “buy” the rest.
That last is the basic goal of the Republicans, by the way — to increase the social power of money to the point where they can reconstruct a unitary upper class that also draws upon the forces of legitimation, violence, and theocracy. All conservatism is concerned with the retention or recreation of a stable system of social classes.
Comment by Doug T —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:05 am
On Brian’s comment #10–seems like you’re doing a bit of creative redefinition, so that any corporation strong enough to be repressive gets redefined as a de facto state. Not sure I’d buy that as a strong defense of Trent’s position.
Passing over that for now, though, you’ve put forth two cases in which corporate power becomes negative. First when there is no countervailing power or limits on it, so that it becomes a “government.” The second is when the actual government looks the other way.
If you accept that diagnosis, then the obvious solution is exactly Kos’s remedy–having a state to counteract corporate power, which acts to reign in corporate abuses.
The libertarian proposal is an absence of state interference, leading to condition a–corporations become de facto governments, free to abuse that power. On the other side, Republicans want a government that looks the other way and lets corporations do whatever they want, condition b. Only the Democratic party can save us from the two prongs of this dilemma.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:47 am
Brian, your most recent message seems to take the general principle into the realm of tautology. “Corporations CAN do some things states do so when they do they’re really STATES!” How is that not like saying that I can swim, dolphins can swim, so when I swim I’m really a dolphin?
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:49 am
Leonard, I believe “all governments are gangs” is a Rothbardian catch-phrase. Only the second part of the sentence is original to me.
Comment by Leonard —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:49 am
Regarding the question of “corporate” power vs that of government, I think I can make a stab at it.
The standard libertarian critique divides power into two kinds. There is the power to offer to someone something he wants. This is unexceptional, and generally unabusable at least in the minds of libertarians. The left tend to worry that poor and/or stupid people are exploitable, basically because their needs (older left) and wants (newer left) are not subject to their control. “A starving man has no choice” is the old cry. And this is the kind of power that libertarians will never care much about, as a matter of state policy. And it’s the sort of thing that Kos needs to soft-pedal if he wants to have any kind of dialog with us that does not involve hurling of feces through the bars.
And then there is the power to hurt, to offer not to do something someone does not want. “Do it or the lady gets hurt, see?” Coercion. The state attempts to claim a monopoly on coercion used legitimately, but note that it allows many exceptions (i.e., self-defense). And also note that people still do have the power to coerce each other quite easily; but generally we are civilized and choose not to. But the power is there, all the time. And it’s generally stronger the more people you can get together. That is, while I might be able to force you to do my will (being larger and more powerful), you and three other guys can easily make me your bitch. But me and my 10 friends… . And so it goes. Corporations, being large groups of people working together, can easily be powerful gangs. Given that they are the largest agglomerations of people in our society, other than possibly some religions, they are, in that sense, potentially dangerous.
That much I’ll admit. But of course, the mere potential to abuse is not abuse. There’s more to coercion than just physical power; there is also a huge ideological factor. Most people won’t do it without social justification. And this is, I think, another division between the left and libertarians. The left tend to see corporations as amoral entities that are distinct from their employees and owners; who themselves are thought of as amoral to the extent that they are rich and powerful. The social process of the corporation is seen as controlling. Libertarians tend to see these people as people, subject to social forces mostly outside of the corp. Thus, we tend to think that the employees and owners will not attempt to do antisocial things (from the larger social POV). The left fear they will do these things, because they are socialized in essence by the corp, and loyal to no larger society.
In history we can see some of that sort of socially closed thinking, as in the case of Carnegie, for example. But I think we see much more strongly that corporations are controlled by socialization of their employees. Just think of how powerful Microsoft could be if Gates did decide to literally coerce, for example, hiring the mob to hit competitors. Certainly he could do that, and most likely get away with it, US government or not. Why doesn’t he?
Comment by Leonard —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:53 am
Jim, yeah, even Rothbard would sloppily write “government” where he meant “state”. As if he thought nobody would be “governed” in AC.
Comment by Barry —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:57 am
Jim: “Here’s another: Any state that exists carries within it mechanisms for revising its nature. ”
IIRC, one classical example is the ‘corporations are people’ ruling of the late 1800’s. Some people running/owning large corporations wanted it, and eventually got judges who did it.
Neel: “Corporations versus the state is just the usual Internet Forever War between libertarians and liberals.”
Exactly. For example, in an overly-socialist system, it’d make sense from a liberal viewpoint to strengthen (non-state) corporate freedoms, at the expense of corporations having more power.
Comment by Tim Ross —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:05 am
This is tangential, but public financing of parties is simultaneously ridiculous and disgraceful. (So it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a Canadian idea – wah wah.)
That’s why I – a Canadian crypto-liberterian/liberal – have no idea why Nell, an American liberal, wants taxpayers to fund the Republican Party machine – which is what public financing of parties in the U.S. eventually boils down to. Think about it: yours is a 50-50 nation. So 50 cents out of every dollar funds more lying and torture advocacy. Particularly in the current context, this strikes me as completely, thoroughly, talking-into-a-coconut-phone, barking mad.
What ought to advocate is a ban on union and corporate donations, and ‘hard-cap’ individual donations at some amount. That’s the good part of the Canadian system – eventually we’ll get it right and get rid of the “taxpayer-supported parties” concept too.
Comment by Misanthrope —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:19 am
I have to agree largely with Neel: This corporate-state power issue is an IFW, virtually irrelevant the libertarian-oriented voters, (the vast majority of whom would not call themselves as such).
I think that Libertarian-oriented voters that have aligned themselves during the last few decades with the Republicans, are now more likely to vote for Democrats for four reasons, in order of importance:
1) Disillusion with Republican led abuses to civil liberties (torture, wiretapping, marriage ammendment bills, even evolution-int design)
2) Disillusion with Republican abandonment of small government principles
3) Disillusion with Republican managment of foreign affairs, Iraq
4) Disillusion with Republican moral leadership as evidenced by numerous scandals (Abramhoff, Foley, et al.)
It all comes down to disillusionment, and a perception that Democrats, even if they did not effectively oppose the Reps on these issues, would not abuse them any worse, combined with the naturally limiting effects of a party-divided government.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Two bits of attempted sloganeering here.
First: From Patrick Nielsen Hayden, I’ve swiped the phrase “the restoration of normal politics” as a goal for where to go from the Bush/Cheney administration and its rotten crew. It’s not that a lot of us are thinking there was nothing really seriously wrong during the Clinton administration (you can get a lot of liberal-libertarian agreement about Atty Gen. Reno, for starters), but there was a qualitative difference in how many (though not all) decisions were made and carried out. The state of things under Clinton, or Bush S.r, was at a minimum vastly less undesirable, and getting back to a situation in which we don’t have to spend so much time trying to wrest power back from complete moral cretins seems like something many of us can disagree with.
Second: From loopy but interesting theologian Francis Schaeffer, I’ve swiped the term “co-belligerent” as distinguished from “ally”. Your ally is going to the same place you are, or at least someplace similar; your co-belligerent doesn’t want to go there, but agrees with you about what you have to get away from first. You share an enemy or obstacle. This is, I’ve always thought, a good way to think about libertarian, green, and other such involvement with the big parties. It reduces occasions to feel frustrated disappointment, by shaping expectations about wha tyou can and can’t reasonably hope for.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:24 am
It’s a bit unfair to blame people here for recycling the same old IFW, right after Jim wrote “Could I convince anyone to address the nominal topic of the post, which is Trent’s formulation of the corporate/state power conundrum?”
My opinion on the actual politics at stake are in the first comment — Kos is making an appeal to the cultural libertarianism of the West, and couldn’t care less about the people who describe themselves as libertarian. That cultural libertarianism could conceivably be pursuaded to see Big Money as as much of an infringment on their way of life as Big Government.
Comment by Misanthrope —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:31 am
Sorry Jim, just went back and saw you wanted to stay on subject, and my first post to your site is off it. And probably really basic for the level of discussion apparently present here.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:31 am
Cato Unbound is a great venue for an article speaking to “the West” while caring less about the people who describe themselves as libertarian, huh.
Comment by IOZ —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:58 am
Corporations aren’t becoming more powerful than government. Corporations are becoming even more effective at currying favor with government. Like Ripley said, “Believe it or not!” They don’t, after all, call it the Industrial-Military Complex.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 12:15 pm
Cato is part of the ideological structure of what gets fed to the cultural libertarians. It’s the lipstick of Hayek on the pig of Western “self-reliance” — as if the West ever was — but the pig thinks that the lipstick makes it looks more respectable. You’ve got to get into the propaganda stream at its source.
Of course I don’t have any real idea of what the actual person, Kos, is thinking. I’m using “Kos” as a shorthand for the strategy that he appears to be pursuing. That strategy has no direct use for Hayekians. Perhaps he should have thrown more of the standard IFW in there to make sure that the message got through the filter of Cato — that’s basically what Trent McBride seems to be complaining about — but if so, that’s a tactical error, not a strategic one.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 12:46 pm
Actually, Doug the “libertarian” proposal is that governments defend citizens lives and property from violence, whether initiated by street thugs, organized crime or boards of directors. Neel is saying, I think, that government shirked its responsibility in the Pullman and Homewood cases by either directly combating workers OR by refusing to enforce their preexisting, settled rights to be secure in their homes and persons.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 12:52 pm
“government shirked its responsibility in the Pullman and Homewood cases by either directly combating workers OR by refusing to enforce their preexisting, settled rights to be secure in their homes and persons.”
I’ve never seen a version of libertarian ideology in which workers have a right to strike. In libertopia they have a right to get fired and go home, not to continue to obstruct the workplace.
Comment by Leonard —
October 4, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Rich, of course they have a right to strike; that’s free association. I don’t think you’d find a single libertarian who thinks there’s no right to strike, except insofar as they understand “strike” to mean “use violence to force someone to give into your demands”. And yes, the company has a right to fire them. That is also free association. They don’t own their jobs, nor does the company own them.
They have no right to obstruct the workplace, which is not theirs. This isn’t rocket science.
Comment by Brian W. Doss —
October 4, 2006 @ 1:15 pm
Jim-
I am precisely making a tautology, which isn’t a priori false unlike the dolphin bit.
The point is the problem is of coercive power, not what name you slap on it- call it the United States or FedCorp, in the modified words of Forrest Gump, “state is as state does”, and worrying about one subset’s shenanigans vs. another’s seems beside the point. Whichever is the more powerful point is the proximate state/coercive problem.
I.E. there is no special case for “corporate coercive power is teh Evil” vs. simple “coercive power is teh Evil”.
Comment by "Charles Dodgson" —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:20 pm
A tangential note: the distinction between “government” and “corporation” can get more than a little tenuous. I think the poster child for that would be Fannie Mae, which was created as a New Deal government program by FDR, spun out of the government by LBJ, and presently trades on the NYSE (albeit with special status as a “government supported entity”, or GSE). Similarly, we have the Fed — government? semi-private entity? And most importantly, why would anyone care?
The thing is that as a liberal, I don’t. I see a society with corporate bodies at a wide variety of scales, some labeled government and some not — but knowing whether or not one has the label “government” doesn’t tell you a whole lot about what its powers are, what the incentives of its leadership are, and how they may be held accountable, and by whom, for screwups. The jailkeepers of Gitmo, the FDA, and the National Endowment for the Arts may all be “government”, but treating them as if they all have the same moral status because they all bear that label seems awfully superficial to me…
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
I’ll take a stab at the central point of the post.
I think Kos’ comment about “corporate power” is bieng interpretyed too literally.
I think he means the power of private sector conglomerations of moneyed interests.
Because, technically, no corporation can exist without the sanction of the Gvt. Corporations are legal fictions created by state laws.
So, if you view his comment at that level, then Kos loses.
But here’s the problem with the libertarian construction or gloss on this. Either you admit that private power can conglomerate withouyt the state’s help, or admit that the free market doesn’t work. They are two mutually exclusive propositions.
If, we follow market anarchy to its logical conclusions, then if the state is gone, the only power remaining will be in private hands. And, doesn’t the most powerful private conglomeration of that power become, defacto, the “state?”
The fact that you all sound like Marxists is rather astounding to me. Marx actually agrees with you and state poiwer, liberytarians. He says that the state SERVES the interests of the bourgeouis and capitalist classes, not the other way around.
So, at bottom, you guys are really neo-Marxists it appears. Marx, in fact, pined for the day when the state would “wither away.”
His solution was to, esentialy, wait until the day when the concept of “ownership” would be abolished, and everyone would follow the maxim: “Each according to his need.”
IN any case, if you aknowldege that the Mafia exists, then Kos wins the argument. And you can’t avoid losing by saying that the mafia only exists because of Gvt prohibition of some products such as drugs, for example.
Garbage collection is perfectly legal, yet (surprise) the mafia notoriously runs it in some big cities.
That doesn’t even count the monopolistic behavior of some businesses.
Now, I suppose you could end monopolistic behavir by elimitaing patents and trademarks. i.e. blame the “State” for this probem again. But you’d also devalue innovation and investment in economic development and progress.
Which brings me to me last point: You can;t have capitalism without a state. You can;t have a “free market” without a state.
Protecting patents and trademarks is an obvious example. Now, I suppose you could hire a private army to go out and attack people who infringed the equivalent of your patents and trademarks in the absence of a legal mechanism to do it, but then you’d be conceding Kos’ point again.
See, you can’t have “intellectual property” without a Gvt to enforce those rights. Protecting land rights or chattel can be done in the phyioscal world. You can sire sons, mary into big alliances with other famillies, and hire provate armies.
But how can you protect an idea from theft?
Go back and read ancient law codes? See any intellectual property rights protected in them? I see a lot of land and chattel cases. But nothing about the Crown prosecuting John brown the Baker for stealing his rival’s famous tart rescipe.
And good luck finding a copyright infringement case in the Code of Hammurabi.
Comment by jlw —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:32 pm
I don’t have the time or inclination to engage in the Internet Forever War (or the War of Libertarian Aggression as we call it here in Left-Liberalia) but I really think that an ideology that expends so much energy extolling the dysvirtue of government needs to have a clearer explanation of why the Big G is sooooo much more dangerous than other agglomerations of power. Leonard comes closest, with his desire to opt-out, but he’s an anarchist. And this–
–is impossible for me to read without wanting to deface all mentions of “corporations” with “governments.”
Not wanting to get in a fight. Just pointing out that you guys need to do a better time arguing your central belief.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
“They have no right to obstruct the workplace, which is not theirs. This isn’t rocket science.”
You’re right, Leonard, this isn’t rocket science. You’ve just agreed that they have no right to strike. If the employer can just hire a scab work force and go on, there is no strike.
Comment by jlw —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:34 pm
. . . a better job arguing your central belief.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:44 pm
“From loopy but interesting theologian Francis Schaeffer, I’ve swiped the term “co-belligerent†as distinguished from “allyâ€. Your ally is going to the same place you are, or at least someplace similar; your co-belligerent doesn’t want to go there, but agrees with you about what you have to get away from first.”
I have to agree, if less kindly. An American voter more scared of corporations/free trade/anarchocapitalism/whatever than the government detaining people at will and torturing them is a damned fool, but if that fool wants to stop Bush, I won’t spurn his help.
Comment by Wild Pegasus —
October 4, 2006 @ 2:53 pm
The fact that you all sound like Marxists is rather astounding to me.
It shouldn’t be. Liberal philosophers and economists beat Marx to class theory by quite a ways. Marx’s diagnosis was pretty much right, but he offered a cure far, far worse than the disease.
- Josh
Comment by Michael Sullivan —
October 4, 2006 @ 3:03 pm
Quotes are from Hesiod:
Look! It’s the fallacy of the excluded middle!
(Slightly longer rebuttal: the free market doesn’t work perfectly. Neither does anything else. Utopias are for suckers.)
Following arguments to their “logical” conclusions is usually anything but logical, and broadly a rhetorical technique for avoiding the subject, rather than addressing it.
But regardless, market anarchy is not libertarianism — it’s anarchism.
And here we have your choice of “guilt by association” or ad hominem — I don’t know which one it shades more towards.
Marx was a smart guy. I obviously don’t share many of his conclusions, but I refuse to be scared by the notion that sometimes we shared a thought process or two.
Even if one were running a completely laissez-faire economic system, almost everyone agrees that the government ought to have a role in preventing violence perpetrated from one of its citizens to another.
(And those who don’t agree that are anarchists, not libertarians).
It’s rather less than clear that the mafia would be controlling garbage collection if they were being prosecuted for their violent acts, and their thefts. It’s also pretty unclear to me that they’d be interested in it if not as a laundry mechanism for their drug and prostitution profits.
Or, I could just take a short cut and point out that this is the strawman fallacy — Hesiod is setting up a silly argument that nobody’s making, and then taking it upon himself to knock it down.
Er, you keep it secret?
I don’t know, I’m just some crazy internet libertarian, but if the only part of your argument that doesn’t rest on one classic logical fallacy on another is, “Without the government, you couldn’t have the RIAA!” then you’ll have to forgive me for not being sucked into your pitch.
Comment by radish —
October 4, 2006 @ 3:13 pm
It’s not clear to me why somebody who wanted to launch a serious discussion about whether government power is qualitatively different from corporate power and which is ascendant wouldn’t start out by explaining what method they use to distinguish between governments and corporations. However, as long as we’re here…
As much as I dislike the McCain Feingold formulation I feel compelled to point out that the law, in it’s infinite majesty, allows rich and poor alike to engage in tedious, menial, time-consuming low-impact shitwork. Meaning that you (who can afford a billboard) are just as free to spend your time in the park explaining to passers-by about torture, as Joe the homeless vet is to explain about which candidate is channeling the ghost of LBJ. Right up until election day and then some (provided you don’t get too close to the polling place).
You are certainly free to argue that your speech is infringed because you ought to be able to hire homeless Joe, as a billboard substitute, to use his right to free speech in order to talk about torture instead of ghosts. But that is an altogether different can of worms. Why not just buy his vote while you’re at it?
I suppose this argument collapses and leaves us back in an IFW about whether economic power is inherently or only potentially “coercive.” Nothing new under the sun…
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 3:24 pm
Radish:
Yes, if folks aren’t constrained by law to the absolute least effective ways of spreading messages against status quo politicians who have everything from franking privileges to taxpayer-funded televised conventions on their side, it’s exactly like buyin’ votes, man!
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
Mr. Sullivan chooses to attack straw men rather than address my central arguments.
Jim is the one pining away for anarchy, but regretting that it would never work. I think.
I was just addressing that point.
In addition, you run into the old libertarian problem that once you concede that having a state is necessary in some circumstances, then you are left arguing about what precisely those circumstances are.
Some people will interpret that more broadly than others. Thus, politics is born.
The fact is, you can have armed gangs without a state, or with a state.
The powerless people who are getting trampled upon have one of three choices:
1. Submit to the tyranny of the armed bullies.
2. Form their own gang in response.
3. Form a State to regulate the use of force applied to the populace to certain, agreed upon situations, after following certain agreed upon procedures.
The point is, it is utterly silly to argue that private actors cannot be just as oppressive as Governments. Of course they can.
Bureaucratizing the use of force actually helps, rather than hurts freedom. It makes force unweildy, and cumbersome as an instrument.
Why do you think conservatives hate lawyers so much?
As for intellectual property, sure you can keep some things secret. But, umm, what about a trademark or a tradename? It’s kind of difficult to conduct business under those terms without publicizing them.
And what about, say, you create a neat little toy, or a device that you sell to people. And someone copies its design, and cuts into your business?
How do you keep it secret? People can reverse engineer your products, you know. And its kind of hard to keep it udner wraps if the idea is to sell it in the marketplace.
Finally, you actually make Kos’ points for him if you argue that Gvt fosters rapacious corporatism. Well, yes, GOP run Gvt. DOES foster rapacious corporatism.
So vote for the Democrats and corporations will be less rapacious because the Gvt won’t help them screw you as much as they do under Republican “leadership.”
Now, certainly, Democrats won’t be perfect by any stretch. But, for the purposes of electoral politics, they are the “lesser of two evils.”
And how many times have I heard libertarians use that excuse for voting for a Republican? Well, now’s the time to fish or cut bait. Are you truly voting for the “lesser of two evils,” or are you really just a Republican trying to give your personal greed an intellectual gloss?
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 4:22 pm
It shouldn’t be. Liberal philosophers and economists beat Marx to class theory by quite a ways. Marx’s diagnosis was pretty much right, but he offered a cure far, far worse than the disease.
Marx didn’t offer a “cure” for anything. He offered a diagnoses and a prediction.
All he said was that eventually the people who actually do all the work will become the “owners” of the means of production, the state will wither away and nobody will “need” private property any longer.
You can certainly argue that he was wrong in his diagnosis and prediction. But he didn’t prescribe any remedies for this. To him, it would be like prescribing a cure for death.
His “utopia” was in his mind an inevitability.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 4, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
I think I first suggested “lesser of two evils” libertarians should switch party allegiances during the 2004 election campaign, actually. Meanwhile:
I think the actual sequence of events is,
3. Convince existing gang of armed bullies that it’s worth it to them to submit to certain formal restrictions on predation. (This is the Deadwood Theory of State Formation, more or less.)
There are, needless to say, an enormous number of ways to “do step three” and an enormous variety of results.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
I find it rather amusing that libertarians argue that “money=speech.”
IN essence, they want to go back to the old Roman timocratic voting system where your vote counted more the morte land and money you possessed.
Why should a citizen, who only has one vote, get m ore of a megaphone to say what he or she tinks than some other citizens who has little or no money to do it with?
Why does “being rich” mean you deserve to drown out everyone else? The inherent elitism in that argument is staggering.
The Romans rationalized that the more property you owned, the more you had at atsak in the Republic. Well, the Plebs {commons) were the ones who frequently fought and died on the front lines in the Republic’s wars, and they started getting a little upset by this idea that they had less at stake than the patrician families.
Comment by radish —
October 4, 2006 @ 4:36 pm
It doesn’t have to be the same. It just has to be prohibitively difficult to explain the difference — i.e. why the state should intervene in the one instance (buying someone’s vote) and not in the other (buying someone’s right to speech). Go ahead, try it.
You seem to be arguing that a rule which distinguishes between buying somebody’s vote, buying somebody’s allegiance, and buying somebody’s labor is all that’s required. I’m arguing that — at least in practice — such a rule is never going to have the desired effect. If you allow commerce at all, you are never going to be able prevent the sale of allegiances or votes.
Coming full circle, the point I was trying to make to Neel is that economic power (aka “capital”) is, like military/police power, inherently coercive
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:04 pm
I find it rather amusing that libertarians argue that “money=speech.”
…Why should a citizen, who only has one vote, get m ore of a megaphone to say what he or she tinks than some other citizens who has little or no money to do it with?
I find it amusing that you’re arguing that “money=speech”.
(I’d find it amusing that a liberal really doesn’t care about free speech when it’s by the “wrong people” or for the “wrong reason”, but the humor had leached out of things like that pretty soon after I stopped being a liberal.)
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:04 pm
Hesiod wrote: Why should a citizen, who only has one vote, get more of a megaphone to say what he or she tinks than some other citizens who has little or no money to do it with?
I think this line of argument proves too much, because it justifies unlimited censorship. Unfortunately, your argument works just as well for the editors of The New York Times writing editorials, as it does for me trying to buy a billboard pointing out that Rick Santorum endorses torture. In fact, the argument works much better, because they have an enormously larger audience and more public stature than I do. If I have no moral right to a louder voice, why do they?
Maybe the FEC should shut down your blog, because there are people who can’t afford Internet access, and you have a bigger megaphone than they do?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:14 pm
Radish:
To continue a theme behind my first comment in this thread, I’ll just note that you’re going through contortions that have little or nothing to do with anything said. And you’re making those contortions in order to deem conveying ideas to be coercion, and to defend coercive measures that preserve the political status quo and the positions of incumbents.
I mean, if you like the way the country’s run and the current bunch in office, I suppose that’s an understandable stance to take.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 5:17 pm
(Hit enter too fast)
…But if not, I don’t see the point.
Comment by radish —
October 4, 2006 @ 6:15 pm
In what way does the NYT have a “moral” right to a louder voice? I was under the impression that the volume of their voice was a function of the same “market forces” that allow you to buy a billboard. I think you’re arguing a category error here, but for the sake of completeness, which of the following would you be least uncomfortable with?
a) political speech is simply unregulated (i.e. candidates favored by NYT simply get more coverage/visibility than candidates favored by Jim)
b) political speech is regulated in a way which explicitly acknowledges the political value of economic power (i.e. the status quo, however imperfect)
c) political speech is regulated, but the political value of economic power is not taken into account (this is really just a throwaway — I’m assuming you’re not going to advocate it)
Eric, the point I was trying to make, which I went so far as to state explicitly in the second comment, is that the accumulation of economic power leads to coercion no less inevitably than a nominal monopoly on the use of force. Neel is welcome to be peeved about not being allowed to buy a billboard, but that is not a prior restraint on his freedom of speech. He is welcome to buy a newspaper instead of a billboard, and he is also welcome to speak directly to everyone who would have otherwise seen the billboard.
That’s all. Sorry about being insufficiently clear for you and sorry if you consider that irrelevant.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 4, 2006 @ 6:44 pm
Eric, the point I was trying to make, which I went so far as to state explicitly in the second comment, is that the accumulation of economic power leads to coercion no less inevitably than a nominal monopoly on the use of force.
Fair enough. I think that’s an absurd assertion, and I think it’s remarkably fatuous to argue that while asserting that it’s well and good to restrict forms of political expression to certain corporations and incumbent politicians, but it is a point.
Comment by b-psycho —
October 4, 2006 @ 6:56 pm
Does Hesiod’s previous bit about the Mafia strike anyone else as admission that “government” is little more than whoever has the most guns?
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 7:25 pm
B-psycho: “The government is whoever has the most guns” is just the starting point. How they organize themselves matters a whole lot to how life goes for individuals. Eg, I’d rather that the men with guns be organized like the US government than like the Russian.
So it’s just not a very relevant point.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 7:52 pm
radish: I literally cannot make any sense of what you’re saying.
First, you say that it’s a good thing for the law to take into account the differential impact of how much money different people have, and how much more or less voice this gives them. Therefore, forbidding me from buying a billboard ad is justified. Then, you say that this restriction doesn’t count as a restraint on speech, because I could always buy a newspaper. Therefore, you’re okay with Richard Scaife spending millions on a newspaper .
So you think that me spending $2200 (a rather large fraction of my total savings, as it happens) on a billboard ad will corrupt the public discourse, but that tycoons spending $2 million won’t.
As Jim might say: man what?
You’re saying that you want to keep monied interests from driving politics, but the actual policy proposals you’re pushing don’t do that. This is like talking to a drug warrior.
Comment by J. Dunn —
October 4, 2006 @ 9:07 pm
Persuade me that corporate (coercive) power, to the extent that it exists, does not rest on governmental power at its foundation
Well, one obvious approach to this would be to examine how corporations actually behave in the absence of strong state power. I’d say the record of corporations in the 3rd World is pretty damning in that regard. For that matter, on a global scale, multinationals are much more powerful and organized than any of the governmental or quasi-governmental institutions(and most of the individual states) that might challenge them, and again, the record rather speaks for itself. Sure, when they collude with the State, it’s even worse, but that doesn’t exclude or excuse what they are perfectly capable of doing on their own. Coming from the Liberal end of the argument, I wish more Libertarians would acknowledge this as problematic, and work with those of us who are at least receptive to your worries about coercive state power on ways to limit both.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:26 pm
“I think this line of argument proves too much, because it justifies unlimited censorship. Unfortunately, your argument works just as well for the editors of The New York Times writing editorials, as it does for me trying to buy a billboard pointing out that Rick Santorum endorses torture. In fact, the argument works much better, because they have an enormously larger audience and more public stature than I do. If I have no moral right to a louder voice, why do they?
Maybe the FEC should shut down your blog, because there are people who can’t afford Internet access, and you have a bigger megaphone than they do?”
IN point of fact, I do have a probem with “the media” having a disproportionate ability to get their message out. Hence my love for the inherently democratic internet, where barriers to entry are extremely low.
You can run a blog out of the public library.
So, you actually refuted your own argument by trying to be flip. Thanks.
But, to reiterate: Bill gates should have no more say in who gets elected to politcal offce than his barber. One man. One vote.
And you shouldn’t get to drown out the truth with millions of dollars in lies on television. Those who are watching a rich man abuse his privilege and do just that in a run for Governor of Michigan know what I am talking about.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:33 pm
(I’d find it amusing that a liberal really doesn’t care about free speech when it’s by the “wrong people†or for the “wrong reasonâ€, but the humor had leached out of things like that pretty soon after I stopped being a liberal.)
Hey Eric, the Supreme Court equated money with speech. The arguments libertarians adopt in ths regard are reflected in the Supreme Court.
And, I am trying to uunderstand why you seemd to claim I didn’t care about “free speech” if it was by the “wrong peole,” pr the “wrong way.”
I never said anyting of the kind, nor did I im ply it.
Free spech only matters when both sides of the argument can get heard. If one side is drowning out the other, then free speech is non-existent for the person getting drowned out. They can “say” whatever they want.
In essence, their speech becomes the proverbial tree falling in an unnhabited forest.
Maybe you are confusing freedom of thought with freedom of speech? There’s no point in having the ability to say what you want without anyone being able to hear it. Thus, libertarians are dead-ass wrong about campaign spending reform.
Comment by b-psycho —
October 4, 2006 @ 10:38 pm
Neel, he’s effectively saying the difference in legitimacy of both is negligible. If a private power can defacto become the State, then that’s all the State is anyway. That we vote for it in practice doesn’t matter, it doesn’t mean it has any hope of doing what we intend it to or obeying its boundaries. They can just lie to us, or use petty “culture war” tactics to split us up into groups they can make unknowingly co-sign to damn near anything.
In the long term, truly representative government on any scale beyond purely local is a myth. Once it gets to be too much for the average person to easily keep track of, it’s over, we’re just playing out the string.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
Hesiod: In point of fact, I do have a probem with “the media†having a disproportionate ability to get their message out. Hence my love for the inherently democratic internet, where barriers to entry are extremely low. You can run a blog out of the public library. So, you actually refuted your own argument by trying to be flip.
If what really bothers you is inequality of voice, the Internet should not make you feel any better. Popularity follows a power law, so the people in the long tail have overwhelmingly less voice than the handful of people at the top of the curve. Instapundit has a much bigger voice than Jim here, who has a much bigger voice than me. This kind of power law distribution is also an unavoidable structural feature of the Internet, because they arise whenever heuristic graph algorithms try to balance search costs against connectivity costs.
So if you are still happy about the Internet, then I don’t think it can be because it equalizes voice — it doesn’t, and it can’t. You can make the case on reducing opportunity costs, but then we’re right back to the question of why forbiding me from buying a billboard (ie, raising my communication costs) is a good idea.
Comment by Mike Sullivan —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:47 pm
Quotes are from Hesiod:
“Straw man” has a precise definition. Pointing out your various logical fallacies is not a straw man, nor is not addressing the points you’d prefer me to focus on. For me to attack straw men, I would have had to construct a position that you do not hold, and then attack that position as if you do hold it. I do not think I did that. If I did do that, it shouldn’t be hard for you to point out what it is that I claim you’re saying, which you are not actually saying.
For example, when you extensively used straw men in your post, you argued as though libertarians in general were extreme anarchists. See how that works? You attributed a position that was not being held, and then attacked it.
Now, as to your “central arguments,” you did make several arguments that I did not address, and they were the stronger ones. Your posting style seems to me to be to lead into your strong points with cheap rhetorical tricks designed to pre-emptively smear anyone who disagrees with you — and apparently, when called on that, complain that people are missing your point.
If you want people to address your real points and not point out your logical fallacies, there’s an easy remedy — excise the ad hominems, the strawmen, the guilt by association from your posts.
Comment by radish —
October 4, 2006 @ 11:55 pm
At risk of giving offense, I will restate my original comment in the most direct terms I can think of. Quit whining.
McCain Feingold sucks, but it doesn’t restrain your speech and it does mitigate, to some small extent, the disparities between your economic power and that of Dick Scaife and homeless Joe. It doesn’t prevent you from contributing to the purchase of a billboard ad in a way that allows you to stay under the hard money limit. It doesn’t prevent you from purchasing the NYT, or starting a paper of your own. Most important, it doesn’t prevent you from standing on a street corner and telling people that Santorum voted for torture, which is precisely the level of political influence available to homeless Joe.
You implied that McC-F places a prior restraint on your speech just because you can’t spend your money as you see fit. That’s nonsense. Even if you’re maxed out for Casey it’s not illegal for you to organize a billboard, it’s just illegal for you to buy it exclusively with your own money. By the same token, it would also be also illegal for Homeless Joe and Dick Scaife to buy the respectively zero or thousands of billboards they could afford. Thus the wisecrack about the law in its majesty.
You seem to think there’s some non-regulatory solution to this problem. There isn’t, and no amount of liberal-bashing is going to change that. And there is no single perfect regulatory solution either. There are only regulatory tradeoffs.
I wasn’t pushing any policy proposals Neel. That’s all in your imagination. Instead of throwing around “drug warrior” ad hominems I suggest you reread what I wrote and what you wrote, carefully and slowly.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 5, 2006 @ 10:51 am
If what really bothers you is inequality of voice, the Internet should not make you feel any better. Popularity follows a power law, so the people in the long tail have overwhelmingly less voice than the handful of people at the top of the curve. Instapundit has a much bigger voice than Jim here, who has a much bigger voice than me. This kind of power law distribution is also an unavoidable structural feature of the Internet, because they arise whenever heuristic graph algorithms try to balance search costs against connectivity costs.
So if you are still happy about the Internet, then I don’t think it can be because it equalizes voice — it doesn’t, and it can’t. You can make the case on reducing opportunity costs, but then we’re right back to the question of why forbiding me from buying a billboard (ie, raising my communication costs) is a good idea.
You neglected to mention, also, that people who are better at making arguments, and can marshall reason and facts better than others also have an advantage. So, given that reality, I am sure your next attack on me would be to suggest that I think we should equalize talent as well.
Well…no. Your net worth is an articifical measure of merit that should have liittle to do with making political decision.
If you are a rich person, in my construct, you can always use your wealth and entrepenuerial acumen as a point in your favor when making your pitch to the electorate. Maybe people will give your aruments more credence in those circumstances. Or would pay more attention to them because of your prominence.
I’m not necessarily opposed to that.
I am not oppose to more talented football teams winning games becaus ethey are more talented. Or even better coached.
I am oposed to football teams winning games because they rigged the rules to specifically favor them. For example, if the NFL set up a rule whereby the team that pays the most gets special rules to protect its quarterbacks, etc.
And, while I certainly can see where a frutsrated minor blogger who enetred the marketplace late in the game, is frustrated by the traffic boig bloggers get, You can still, in most caes, post comments — like here.
And, in some cases, people like Glenn Greenwald can build a large audience even though he’s a relative newcomer, just by posting outstanding content.
Blogging is by an alarge a meritocracy. people who are consistently good at it get noticed. People who THINK tehy are good, but are indistinguishable from the rabble, get frustrated at why they are not getting heard.
The problem isn’t money, though. It’s ability and talent, for the most part. Or, teher is only a limited audeince for what you are saying.
Certain “low traffic” blogs are really Niche blogs that are well-read in their particular niche, but compared to the big guys, get relatively small amounts of taffic.
Now, I am trying to figure out where I ever argued that I am raising your communications costs. Assimmuing I am banning you from buying a billboard, how does that raise your communications costs?
Nobody’s banning you from buying a billboard. What I am suggestiong is that we give everyone the same oportunity to communicate, without favoritism.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 5, 2006 @ 11:12 am
Mr. Sullivan,
Let’s address your points. You claims that the following point I made was a “logical fallacy:”
But here’s the problem with the libertarian construction or gloss on this. Either you admit that private power can conglomerate withouyt the state’s help, or admit that the free market doesn’t work. They are two mutually exclusive propositions.
You stated that this was the “fallacy of the excluded middle.” Well…in my construct, I pointed out that either the mechanism that drive the free market work (and teh absence of Gvt power would lead to a conglomeration of power in porivate hands) or they don’t. You didn;t actually refute this. You just declared it was a fallacy without logically explaining how.
Instead of engaging my arguments on the mertts, you resort to sophistry and rhetorical dex ex machinas. I feel like I am having an argument with Cicero’s slow stepchild.
I espcially was amused by your whining about my ACCURATE comment that you are sounding like Marxists to be an attempt, by me, of “guilt by association.” Umm, no. It was an observation. And observation taht was, as I said, astounding since I considered libertarians to be ardent Capitalists. Yet here you were making Marxist arguments in favor of libertarian goals. It seems incongruous to me.
Then you said:
Even if one were running a completely laissez-faire economic system, almost everyone agrees that the government ought to have a role in preventing violence perpetrated from one of its citizens to another.
Sure, but what about protecting intellectual property rights? And, thanks for basically conceding that I am correct. Gvt is actually more like the Commissioner’s office of a sports league. It makes the rules of the game, via the vote of its members. It then hires the referees to enforce the rules.
And, in respnse to my mafia alanolgy, you wrote:
It’s rather less than clear that the mafia would be controlling garbage collection if they were being prosecuted for their violent acts, and their thefts. It’s also pretty unclear to me that they’d be interested in it if not as a laundry mechanism for their drug and prostitution profits.
Well…sure. That’s why Govrenment is so big. Because private sector actors can be big problems to average citizens without a check on tehir power.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 5, 2006 @ 11:20 am
Hey Eric, the Supreme Court equated money with speech. The arguments libertarians adopt in ths regard are reflected in the Supreme Court.
Hesiod, if the Supreme Court had done so, or if the Supreme Court reflected “the arguments libertarians adopt”, McCain-Feingold (among other restrictions) would be safely on the scrap-heap of unconstitutional laws.
And, I am trying to uunderstand why you seemd to claim I didn’t care about free speech if it was by the wrong peole, pr the wrong way.
Because you’re cheerfully willing to restrict and punish political speech for being “too loud” (”wrong way”). Or, if we look at the actual effects of campaign finance reform, “too threatening to incumbents” (”wrong people”).
Free spech only matters when both sides of the argument can get heard. If one side is drowning out the other, then free speech is non-existent for the person getting drowned out.
So, the fact liberals like you get heard infinitely more than libertarians – collectively and individually – means you guys are destroying our free speech?
If you believe that and want to convince as many other liberals as possible to “shut up” so that libertarians can be heard, that’s very nice of you…but not really necessary.
Maybe you are confusing freedom of thought with freedom of speech? There’s no point in having the ability to say what you want without anyone being able to hear it.
That actually gave me a brief pain between the eyes.
That’s precisely the confusion I think CFR supporters like you and Radish make. There is not, and will never be, campaign finance reform that will trouble incumbents or lack subtle (or even huge and obvious) loopholes that people with money and/or political influence will happily step through. It only serves to make sure that outsiders, challengers, and people with complaints about the status quo are restricted in how much they can trouble those in power.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 5, 2006 @ 11:27 am
Well…sure. That’s why Govrenment is so big. Because private sector actors can be big problems to average citizens without a check on tehir power.
Er, no. The federal government could have ten times the people and resources devoted to investigating organized crime and be vastly smaller and less intrusive than it is now.
The government is so large because of the vast scope of government action people like you and the conservatives have demanded, action that rarely has to do with fighting groups (private or otherwise) that are trying to coerce anyone.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 5, 2006 @ 11:35 am
I am oposed to football teams winning games because they rigged the rules to specifically favor them.
Then you should be against campaign finance regulation. But you’re not. What’s up with that?
Comment by Michael Sullivan —
October 5, 2006 @ 12:07 pm
Hesiod: You can call me Michael, if you like. Or Mike, for that matter. Mr. Sullivan is also fine.
I did, in fact, explain why it was the fallacy of the excluded middle (which you repeat above), albeit briefly. I guess I assumed that the fallacy was clear. I will expand:
You are trying to create a dichotomous situation where none exists. As you put it, “either the mechanism that drives the free market works or it doesn’t.” That is the fallacy. Who says that it either works or it doesn’t? My claim would be that it works some of the time and fails some of the time — and my claim is also that everything is like this. Democratic government works some of the time and fails some of the time. Your liberal politics work some of the time and fail some of the time.
Obviously, you think that markets fail more often, and I think that liberal solutions fail more often. That’s fine. The fallacy is where you assert that it either works or it doesn’t — that it’s either 0% or 100%. Then, by finding a single instance of failure, you demonstrate that it doesn’t work 100% of the time, and so by your (incorrect) assumption, it must therefor work 0% of the time.
Here we have the argument ad hominem (yet another classic fallacy). When I accuse you of bad rhetorical technique, I clearly identify the problematic areas of your argument, and precisely explain why they are problematic. You seem unable to do the same in return. Why is that?
If it were not an attempt to produce guilt by association, you would explain why it is that “you sound like Marxists” is a criticism.
I mean, you and George W. Bush both walk erect, breathe oxygen, and are opposed to the rape of children and kittens. You’re alike in so many ways! But if I lead into my comments with, “It astounds me that a liberal like Hesiod sounds so much like Bush. He’s opposed to kitten-raping. So he’s really a Bushite,” it’s clear that my ACCURATE observation is being couched in terms that I hope you will take as insulting (as well, I am carrying the association far past what the ACCURATE observation calls for — you aren’t a Bushite because you share a few common behaviours with Bush. Nor am I a Marxist because I have a few isolated areas of agreement with Marx).
The preceding paragraph was in response to your mafia analogy as well.
And again, this is the straw-man. As I have told you several times, I am not an anarchist. Of course private sector actors can be problems to average citizens without a check to their power.
Where your Mafia analogy completely falls down is that it doesn’t argue at all for the current size of the government. A much more limited government (one which only prosecuted theft and violence, for example) would still check Mafia power, if it could effectively prosecute the Mafia. That, by the way, is not an argument that the government should only prosecute theft and violence — just an exploration of the failure of your argument.
And with that, I think I’m done with this thread. If you have a response, I’ll read it with interest, but I won’t be commenting any more.
Comment by radish —
October 5, 2006 @ 2:08 pm
Seems to me you’re “making” plenty of your own confusion without any help from anybody else. I’m a CFR “supporter” like you’re a terrorist “coddler,” Eric (or better yet like Mike Sullivan is a Marxist
). Do you want terrorism suspects to have due process or don’t you? You do? Well then I rest my case Mr. Coddler. Jeebus.
Compare and contrast the following, in case you can’t be bothered to fully parse anything that you’ve already decided is hostile to your POV.
and…
Core difference? You’re opposed to any CFR statutes because they’ll never be perfect. I’m grudgingly accepting current CFR statutes because the alternative (unregulated campaign finance) has an empirical history of ugly collapses. For that, my comments are misrepresented and I get called fatuous and a drug warrior. Very classy. At least Mike Sullivan is making the good faith (and interesting, and sort-of-falsifiable) argument that “liberal solutions” have an appreciably higher failure rate than “market” solutions.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
October 5, 2006 @ 2:26 pm
radish: I don’t have time to respond to your post right this minute, but I do want to take a moment to a) apologize to you for snapping at you, and b) thank you for continuing to talk.
Trackback by Andrew Olmsted dot com —
October 5, 2006 @ 3:14 pm
On Power…
In which I write about what some people seem to have thought I was writing about when I talked about libertarian Democrats. For those looking to catch up, you can start here, here, and here. While I am not really……
Comment by Mark —
October 5, 2006 @ 3:45 pm
Just to point out the obvious, libertarians can’t choose a party; Republicans have proven they will not run the government in the libertarians approve.
The arguments for voting Democrat are good, but not wholly convincing.
The Libertarian Party is a joke.
So what this leave? Split government. Never let one party take control. The most libertarian government we had in generations was during the Clinton-Gingrich years. That is your lesser of evils.
So yea, this year that means voting for the Democratic Party, but not always.
Comment by Mona —
October 5, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
I agree with Jim. Democrats need to woo us, if they want us to stay. Kos’s essay is exactly what Jim says: a sales pitch.
Fact is, if libertarians are to align with Dems on any kind of semi-permanent basis, it is time for hard-nosed negotiation. I have my deal-breakers. Just as I have had with the GOP, who have broken the deal with them.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 5, 2006 @ 5:57 pm
Seems to me you’re “making” plenty of your own confusion without any help from anybody else. I’m a CFR “supporter” like you’re a terrorist “coddler,” Eric (or better yet like Mike Sullivan is a Marxist
). Do you want terrorism suspects to have due process or don’t you? You do? Well then I rest my case Mr. Coddler. Jeebus.
So, if I understand your clumsy sarcasm, you’re saying that you’re making these absurd, contorted defenses of CFR without actually supporting CFR. That’s cool – everyone needs a hobby.
Compare and contrast the following, in case you can’t be bothered to fully parse anything that you’ve already decided is hostile to your POV.
Man, if I had a dime for everyone on the internet who carped about those with radically different viewpoints not shedding the scales from their eyes when confronted with their brilliant yammering…
“There is not, and will never be, campaign finance reform that will trouble incumbents or lack subtle (or even huge and obvious) loopholes that people with money and/or political influence will happily step through.”
and
“And there is no single perfect regulatory solution either. There are only regulatory tradeoffs.”
Core difference? You’re opposed to any CFR statutes because they’ll never be perfect.
No, the core difference (which I’ve repeatedly, explicitly mentioned mentioned) is that the “trade-off” of CFR involves restricting speech in order to bias the playing field towards incumbents. This is not “imperfection”, this is active harm inherent to any plausible execution of the concept – and a just letting Neel rent a billboard doesn’t seem to be nearly as harmful.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
October 5, 2006 @ 6:55 pm
I thought the “argument” about corporate power was that the democrats will use government power to help small business against big business. The “libertarians” are presumably people who own small businesses or at least like them, and so will buy into this plan to become another interest at the government trough. (Of course, small business is already at the trough, along with big business.)
As for the liberal readers of this blog, it is important to understand that few libertarians see “corporate power” as a problem if the issue is charging to much or paying too little. You know, some notion that we need a countervailing government power to make sure that “corporations” charge less or pay more. Most libertarians have a passing acquaintance with economics, and understand that “bargaining power” isn’t what drives the distribution of income. The vertical supply and demand curve over some kind of large range remains the unfortunate fantasy of the economically illiterate. There are many possible sources of market failure that could presumably be corrected by an omniscient and benevolent state. Unfortunately, none exist. I find market anarchism to be an implausible solution, and rather favor having limited government that is primarily focused on stopping crimes against person and property, including any committed by the wealthy and powerful, and only then seeking to correct the most egregios market failures. When government seeks to solve every problem, no matter what, the voter is overwhelmed, making an educated vote impossible–how are they to know about the solution to every problem? And so, they are left voting for politicians whose skill is sounding good. Including those pushing the “bargaining power” theory of the distribution of income.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 5, 2006 @ 9:32 pm
Mr. Sullivan,
I am not the one arguing that your sounding like a Marxist is necessarily a criticism. You’re the one who’s apparently touchy about the fact that your marxist sounding arguments were highlighted. This despite the fact that you claimed exactly the opposite in your first respons eto my comment.
As I said, twice, now (and this will be the third time), I was actualy quite surprised Id be reading a marxist argument from a libertarian. You’re the one who read “criticism” into that comment.
Comment by Hesiod —
October 5, 2006 @ 9:49 pm
Eric, Eric, Eric…
Hesiod, if the Supreme Court had done so, or if the Supreme Court reflected “the arguments libertarians adoptâ€, McCain-Feingold (among other restrictions) would be safely on the scrap-heap of unconstitutional laws.
It did say so. It also said that while free speech is a fundamental right, so is the right to vote and to free and fair elections. Since they countervail one another, the Court believed that allowing restrictions on independent expenditures or campaign donations by trid parties to candidates can be reasoably restricted to foister the second right without unduly burdening the first.
Upi may balance the rights differently than the Court did, but that’s what they said.
[Y]ou’re cheerfully willing to restrict and punish political speech for being “too loud†(â€wrong wayâ€). Or, if we look at the actual effects of campaign finance reform, “too threatening to incumbents†(â€wrong peopleâ€).
Ummm…no. I don;t seek to “punish” loud speech. I seek to, essentialy, level the playing field so that all speech has the same volume. And, even if I was “punishing” loud speech, so what? The idea of a free society and amerketplace of ideas is that the BEST ideas should win out, not the ones that have the biggest megaphone and can drown out all the others. The idea is to foster –gasp!– competition! A concept I thought libertarians normally supported? I guess they don;t when iot come sto speech. They prefer monopolists, coercision, and trampling of freedom in that case.
So, the fact liberals like you get heard infinitely more than libertarians – collectively and individually – means you guys are destroying our free speech?
It could mean that our ideas are more appealing than yours as well. It’s not as though “liberals” started out in a dominent position. And, one culd argue, we aren’t doing so well right now, anyway.
If you believe that and want to convince as many other liberals as possible to “shut up†so that libertarians can be heard, that’s very nice of you…but not really necessary.
There’s a difference between a cacophany of the multitudes and the high pitched squeal of one individual. I have no problem asking liberals to “shut up” so you can get yur viewpoints across. Based on what I am seeing here, we ain’t got much to worry about.
That actually gave me a brief pain between the eyes.
That’s precisely the confusion I think CFR supporters like you and Radish make. There is not, and will never be, campaign finance reform that will trouble incumbents or lack subtle (or even huge and obvious) loopholes that people with money and/or political influence will happily step through. It only serves to make sure that outsiders, challengers, and people with complaints about the status quo are restricted in how much they can trouble those in power.
That’s just bullshit. Take a gander at the State of Arizona’s campaign financing system. It creates, as much as any state, a relatively level playing field between incumbants and challengers.
Oh, and the REASON it is so hard to cnstruct a fairer system that doesn’t favor incumbants so much, is not just because incumbants like to protect themselves. It’s because people keep arguing, and the Supreme Court keeps buying, the very sae arguments you are making. That we cant restrict the amount of SPENDING on a campaign, because it infringes free speech.
So, physician, heal thyself.
Comment by Scott —
October 6, 2006 @ 9:14 am
Why is the size of a corporation a problem, but the ’size’ (budget, # of employees, etc) of govt supposedly a non-issue as far as fear of abuse of power? If I shouldn’t care about the size of the budget as an indicator of govt power, why should I care about Exxon’s revenues, as if only the second translates to power?
Although the anti-minarchists have a point, it’s the “police power” that gives the worst abuses (I’d rather be extorted by a corrupt official to keep a business open than, say, be sent to Gitmo). However, there is a relationship between how many areas of life we let the govt put it’s grubby mitts into, and how much deference it gets, and between how much deference it gets and how much abuse we get in return.
Govt needs more than power, it needs internalized belief, and a people who don’t trust the govt to do more than arrest rapists and murderers are less likely to buy whatever BS arguement the govt gives for locking people up w/o trial.
We cannot trust the govt w/ the power the left wants to give it w/o giving them enough benefit of the doubt to let them get away w/ things like Gitmo. They are related by a common “trust the govt, because they are here to help us” mindset.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 6, 2006 @ 10:27 am
“Hesiod, if the Supreme Court had done so, or if the Supreme Court reflected “the arguments libertarians adopt”, McCain-Feingold (among other restrictions) would be safely on the scrap-heap of unconstitutional laws.”
It did say so. It also said that while free speech is a fundamental right, so is the right to vote and to free and fair elections. Since they countervail one another, the Court believed that allowing restrictions on independent expenditures or campaign donations by trid parties to candidates can be reasoably restricted to foister the second right without unduly burdening the first.
Which would be not reflecting the arguments libertarians present, which deny pretty much every step of that “countervailing” business.
Ummm, no. I don;t seek to “punish” loud speech. I seek to, essentialy, level the playing field so that all speech has the same volume. And, even if I was “punishing” loud speech, so what?
That line gives me a little smile.
The idea of a free society and amerketplace of ideas is that the BEST ideas should win out, not the ones that have the biggest megaphone and can drown out all the others. The idea is to foster – gasp! – competition! A concept I thought libertarians normally supported? I guess they don;t when iot come sto speech. They prefer monopolists, coercision, and trampling of freedom in that case.
How many libertarians do you see supporting the handicapping of competitors in any market?
What coercion and trampling of freedom do you see in people and groups being able to speak freely without being cut down at the knees if they communicate to more people than some government minder would want them to?
How exactly does someone like George Soros silence people like Jim or myself when he throws scads of money at liberal groups?
What happened to “the solution to bad speech is more speech, not less”?
“So, the fact liberals like you get heard infinitely more than libertarians – collectively and individually – means you guys are destroying our free speech?”
It could mean that our ideas are more appealing than yours as well.
It’s your claim, Hesiod. If you can’t bring yourself to say that it applies in the case of a major political group with very deep pockets versus an infinitely smaller group with much shallower ones, when can it ever apply?
“There is not, and will never be, campaign finance reform that will trouble incumbents or lack subtle (or even huge and obvious) loopholes that people with money and/or political influence will happily step through. It only serves to make sure that outsiders, challengers, and people with complaints about the status quo are restricted in how much they can trouble those in power.”
That’s just bullshit. Take a gander at the State of Arizona’s campaign financing system. It creates, as much as any state, a relatively level playing field between incumbants and challengers.
I’ll happily take a gander. I expect to be amused at your idea of a “relatively level playing field”.
Oh, and the REASON it is so hard to cnstruct a fairer system that doesn’t favor incumbants so much, is not just because incumbants like to protect themselves. It’s because people keep arguing, and the Supreme Court keeps buying, the very sae arguments you are making. That we cant restrict the amount of SPENDING on a campaign, because it infringes free speech.
Hesi, Hesi, Hesi. Try to be a little less typical and avoid the “OMIGOD, our political solutions would totally work if nobody was MEAN and didn’t support us!” cliche, OK? Especially when the Supreme Court utterly buys into the assisine idea that political speech is improved by stifling people.
Comment by radish —
October 6, 2006 @ 12:52 pm
Neel, thank you, and I apologize for lumping you in with Eric the half-baked.
Mona I would much rather hear that you intend to infiltrate the Democratic party and push it toward more libertarian policies than that you insist on being wooed. i.e. Jim is right, Tom Knapp is wrong, and Dems appear to be embracing libertarianism only by comparison with the GOP’s open embrace of fascism. I agree with Mark that gridlock should be generic libertarian priority #1, and it’s only a matter of time before Dems need to be restrained. But the direction of Dem policy is probably as malleable right now as it will be for decades. If you wait for Dems to offer concessions you’ll be waiting longer than that.
Why? Because of the demographic aspect that Rich nailed right out of the gate. The Dem courtship is aimed at Rich’s (self-deluding) “self-reliants,” rather than libertarians proper. Kos et al want to use existing libertarian channels and branding to reach a non-libertarian demographic as part of a strategy to secure the mountain states and presumably eventually drive Ah-nuld into the sea. The tactical problem they’re trying to solve is how to reach people who think of themselves as rugged individualists, which means they need a brand that hasn’t been tainted the way “liberal” has. They need to draw those people into the Dem fold to balance the “nervous nellie” urban/suburban independents that they’ve been losing as a result of Dicky and Georgie’s nonstop terror show.
But the self-reliant demographic (like big corrections, big ag, big pharma etc) are actually way more enthusiastic on big gummint than yer average liberal. Their ascendancy in Dem politics won’t result in libertarian policy because it would run directly counter to their economic and sociopolitical interests. If you want smaller government my advice is to stump for Dean’s 50-state strategy, because otherwise the Western strategy is going to be an unstoppable juggernaut by 2008.
p.s. Oops! I forgot to fulfill my sworn duty and call attention to b-psycho’s Oct 4 10:38 advocacy of decentralism. It’s amazing how people with otherwise irreconcilable views converge on that one point over time.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 6, 2006 @ 3:08 pm
Glad that you agree, radish.
Meanwhile, everyone who has been asking, annoying, why the Democrats haven’t done more should be looking at the polls out of Connecticut. Lieberman has a double-digit lead over Lamont. That’s right: the worst ever Democratic senator (from the point of view of torture, civil liberties, defending the Democratic party, out-of-touchness, the war, excusing Republican coverups, etc.) is beating a good Democratic challenger, in a New England (border) state. All of the people who seem to think that “if only the Democrats stood for something, they’d win” should realize that their blog-commenting neighbors are not an unbiased sample of the U.S. electorate.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 6, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
All of the people who seem to think that “if only the Democrats stood for something, they’d winâ€
Here’s the thing. If the Democrats won’t stand for some of the things libertarians most care about right now, why should we care whether they win?
Besides partisan tribalism, why should you care whether the Democrats win if they don’t stand for anything and play follow-the-leader with the Republicans?
Comment by David R. Block —
October 6, 2006 @ 4:15 pm
Democrats are interested in civil liberties only if it is at the expense of the Republicans, as all of the intelligence “scandals” would indicate.
By the same token, Democrats don’t give a rodents rear about civil liberties if they publish instant messages and e-mails to remove Republicans from office. The same kind of e-mails, that if used by Republicans, would results in self-righteous cries of “homophobia” against the Republicans.
I find the cynical approach to civil liberties on the part of both major parties to be a bad thing. Neither party has shown that they are objectively in favor of civil liberties to my satisfaction in view of their behavior over the past several decades.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 6, 2006 @ 5:15 pm
Neither party has shown that they are objectively in favor of civil liberties to my satisfaction in view of their behavior over the past several decades.
Agreed. I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to candidates like Tester, though; it’s not like we have any choice.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 6, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
Eric the .5b, I don’t particularly care whether libertarians care — you’re ineffectual. But the reason why anyone who cares about America should care is that the Republicans are destroying it. Only the libertarian standard nonsense that, upthread, compares Bush to FDR, could really see no difference between the parties at this point.
As for this “the Democrats” business, what you don’t see is that the Democrats can go no further than the people. That was the point of what I wrote above. Only libertarians think that a pointless stand that results in electoral loss is valuable. The way that you have to proceed, if you’re interested in electoral politics, is to gradually pull the people who make up the party in some direction.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 6, 2006 @ 6:34 pm
But the reason why anyone who cares about America should care is that the Republicans are destroying it….As for this “the Democrats†business, what you don’t see is that the Democrats can go no further than the people….Only libertarians think that a pointless stand that results in electoral loss is valuable.
At least libertarians would be willing to make a stand. I don’t think you’re arguing for anything more than “being a Democrat makes us better people”, without that requiring you do anything besides sulk about how the voters suck.
Comment by Walt —
October 6, 2006 @ 8:05 pm
David R. Block: That’s the funniest thing I read in a rather humorless day. Thank you.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 7, 2006 @ 7:52 am
At least libertarians are willing to make a stand? Where, then, is their stand? Seems to me like they’re doing nothing.
Comment by Bill Woolsey —
October 7, 2006 @ 9:30 pm
Roosevelt actually had Japanese Americans rounded up and put in concentration camps. Thankfully, Muslim Americans have been treated much better. I suppose it was Truman, rather than Roosevelt, that used nuclear weapons against civilian targets in a nonnuclear state. As best we can tell, so far, it is only some factions of the Bush administration that favor such actions against Iran.
I despise Bush, but I am not blinded by partisanship.