Ask Me What the Secret of "L – TIMING! – ibalertarianism" Is
Tom Knapp’s proposed World’s Smallest Political Platform:
The Libertarian Party supports reducing the size, scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope or power of government at any level or for any purpose.
In addition to Wirkman’s objections, I have a sequencing objection. Figure the state as Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s novel, Misery. She wants to help the patient so much she’ll never willingly let him go. To a libertarian, much of what the state does looks like providing crutches or shackles. To an anarchist, I suppose everything the state does looks like that. Crutches are actually important for the injured. If you’re to completely heal, though, you have to give them up at the right time. And some badly injured people are never going to be able to do without them – e.g. my mother with her walker.
But the crazy nurse wants you to keep your crutches whether you need them or not, and she’ll chain you to the bed, if necessary, to keep you in her "care." If she has to, she’ll cut off your foot, for your own good. Radley Balko specializes in investigating how this kind of "caregiving" perverts the legal system. Robert De Niro’s repairman in Brazil tries to get around shackles the state in that movie has put on free exchange.
So we want to remove most or all crutches and shed most or all shackles, depending on how, for lack of a better term, anarchistic we are. But which shackles and which crutches when? The "liberal" "libertarian" answer is: first take the crutches from those best able to bear their own weight, and remove the shackles from the weak before the strong. So: corporate welfare before Social Security before Aid to Families with Dependent Children. Drug prohibition before marginal income tax rates.
Most libertarians would agree that it’s a messed-up state that:
* Creates a massive crime problem in poor minority neighborhoods with a futile, vicious and every more far-reaching attempt to prevent commerce in popular, highly portable intoxicants that leaves absurd numbers of young men with felony records, making them marginally employable.
* Fails to provide adequate policing for such neighborhoods.
* Fails to provide effective education in such neighborhoods after installing itself as the educator of first resort.
* Uses regulatory power to sharply curtail entry into lines of business from hair-care to ride provision, further limiting the employment options of people in such neighborhoods.
* Has in the past actively fostered the oppression of said minority, up to and including spending state money and time in keeping its members in bondage.
* To make up for all of the above, provides a nominal amount of tax-financed welfare for the afflicted.
But it’s a messed-up libertarianism that looks at that situation and says, "Man, first thing we gotta do is get rid of that welfare!"
People have diverse interests and priorities, and we don’t all have to work on my issue of the moment. But given finite political energy, we can for instance agitate to stop paying Big Sugar tax dollars to foul the Everglades with runoff or end the inheritance tax. We can pressure the government to curtail torture or Medicaid These are not close calls.
Libertarian institutions that walk this walk include Radley Balko (he’s an institution, as far as I’m concerned), the Institute for Justice and . . . well, help me out here.
Now, I’m pretty sure Tom Knapp wouldn’t disagree with me, and has said similar things himself. If I were to guess at a defense, it would be that, practically speaking, political temperaments differ. It’s better to have instinctive "right-wingers" agitating to curtail state power than to expand it. Even if they’re trying to remove shackles from the strong, that’s better than loading more on the weak. Better that "conservatives" oppose net neutrality than support war with Iran, as it were.
There may be something to that. The other big defense is that government action tends to crowd out private and communal action. On this theory, we may not be able to predict what will replace state schools or Medicare, but human ingenuity is vast and, like the song goes, "There’s no telling what we’ll do when we’re free." This is an appealing, romantic vision. It even speaks to me. But I disagree that we can always be so sure that the short to medium-term results of ending a subsidy for the marginal will be benign. It seems to me that it might take us "millions of intricate moves" to live humanely without government, or with very little government, and kicking the props out from under the poor is more likely to be a late move than an early one.
NB: I realize that non-libertarians reject the simile of the State as crazy Annie Wilkes, and disagree that crutches-and-shackles fairly describes the whole of state action. Like Mortitia Addams, "I can respect that."
Comment by Wirkman Virkkala —
February 21, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
I guess I am with you. I am sort of a “liberal libertarian” I guess. I think we have to be careful “building down” the welfare state. I do think that the people who have come to rely on the teat should be treated gingerly. Children usually are. Those who have been made children by the state need some of the same courtesy.
By the way, this gradualist perspective is one reason why I reacted so strongly against the paleolibs. They seem never to express sympathy for the downtrodden, for those who have been cultivated as the permanent poor.
I have a lot of sympathy for them.
And I don’t like them so relentlessly attacked, as the paleo-warriors were wont to do.
Comment by Leonard —
February 22, 2008 @ 1:37 am
Great post Jim. I’m another libertarian from the left. I think order does matter in abolishing the state.
Of course this is largely academic, since it ain’t gonna happen… but you never know for sure. Certainly, is interesting to discuss here.
There is a wrinkle here that bears thought. As you say, there are most certainly libertarians from the right — the paleos, Constitutionalists, and many other libertarians who approach as disgruntled Republicans. So, there’s a constituency out there for certain “rightish” moves, like cutting welfare, even in advance of other more technical, wonkish stuff, like educational liberty.
Let’s say that it becomes politically possible to cut welfare, but none of the other things which you think should precede that. Would you do that?
Comment by Jonathan Goff —
February 22, 2008 @ 1:38 am
Jim, Wirkman,
In spite of leaning fairly heavily towards paleolibertarianism myself, I really like what you said (and what Radley says on a regular basis). Welfare is a big problem, but welfare doesn’t bust down your door at 3am without knocking because they think you have something that they don’t like. Trying to at least focus on the most egregious violations of justice first seems to make a lot more sense than wasting time on “earmarks” or other conservative issues de jour.
~Jon
Comment by Thoreau —
February 22, 2008 @ 2:11 am
First, like Leonard said, great post!
Second, in regard to Leonard’s comment:
I’m conflicted on this. If the issue really is on the table, and it’s on the table in isolation, then yeah. Cut it. It needs to go at some point, and remember that even a lot of ostensible crutches contain hidden shackles. So I’m not about to let the best order be the enemy of the good cut.
But if it isn’t just a single issue on the table in isolation, if this is about picking coalitions, and the coalition offering this is also offering hefty doses of statism on other fronts, then I’m much less likely to support the coalition offering the cut.
Of course, with that line of reasoning I guess I could oppose just about everybody. And I guess I basically do, as evidenced by my rants against Democrats and my refusal to vote GOP.
Comment by TGGP —
February 22, 2008 @ 2:37 am
Don’t enter into a coalition. You don’t offer anything that important and will get nothing in return.
I generally think of eliminating things in the order in which they were created, figuring it doesn’t sound as crazy to go relatively recently back in the past and also that the longer something has been around the more entrenched it will be. I have no hesitations about eliminating anything at the national level though (I do view more local government as a rival power center to the feds). People that can’t stand losing the welfare state are complicit in the warfare state as far as I’m concerned.
Speaking of the Institute for Justice, another alternative to the ACLU on the right is the Rutherford Institute which is actually conservative but seems more interesting in protecting the individual from the state than some libertarians.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
February 22, 2008 @ 5:10 am
Good stuff, Jim. I’ve commented before, I think, on the dismaying frequency with which I’ve run into libertarians who can talk calmly and in an informed way about the drawbacks of this or that corporate subsidy, but who only really get passionate when it comes to disability benefits, help setting refugees, or something else materially helping people at the bottom of the heap, and for whom the inconvenience of being required not to import food with additives known to be poisonous feels a lot more real and immediate than the challenges facing a young mother who’s just left a battering husband.
Comment by Barry —
February 22, 2008 @ 8:01 am
“Even if they’re trying to remove shackles from the strong, that’s better than loading more on the weak. Better that “conservatives” oppose net neutrality than support war with Iran, as it were.”
Two comments – first, good job! This is actual libertarianism, not Republicanism-minus-overt-social-rightwingism.
The second refers to the quote above – removing ’shackles from the strong’ isn’t a libertarian thing, if the strong are still able to get the government to do, um ‘favors’, and the weak are still shackled.
Comment by Michael L —
February 22, 2008 @ 9:17 am
Thanks for the link to the William Stafford poems. Good stuff!
Comment by Jennifer —
February 22, 2008 @ 9:42 am
Great points. I’ve said before that, before we even think of dismantling the safety net for the poor, we should first dismantle the asinine regulations that make such a safety net necessary. For example: before cutting the funding to provide housing assistance for those who can’t afford apartments, first eliminate the snob-zoning requirements (i.e., houses and lots must be a minimum size) that make housing more expensive than it would otherwise be.
Comment by Sam —
February 22, 2008 @ 9:58 am
I think one of the biggest causes is that it takes a lot of time, effort, and coalition building to stop something like torture (in this Administration, at least, given the Senate Dems unwillingness to really go to the mat) while there already is a built up right wing institution for attacking welfare and Medicaid.
Comment by Moe Blues —
February 22, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Libertarians would do well to remember that the vast bulk of the regulations in place today are written in blood. To use two of Jim’s own examples, the regulations regarding taxi and livery services came about in large part because of deaths and injuries caused by dangerous vehicles and practices in that business. Similarly, hair salons came under the eye of the health department after it became clear that poor practices can turn such businesses into effective vectors for lice and other health hazards.
What you see as shackles are, in fact, protections for the public. This is true in most instances where the regulations seem most onerous. Aviation is a classic example of an industry where the regulations make entry extremely difficult with good reason. You don’t want just any joker buying an airplane he can’t afford to operate or maintain, hiring an inexperienced crew to fly it, and then selling YOU a ticket.
Comment by Eric in Iowa —
February 22, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
This was an excellent post, and why, as a liberal I keep coming to read UO everyday and generally consider the UO contributers “reasonable libertarians.”
I agree with the priorities expressed in Jim’s libertarian critique of the state. Maybe I socialize in the wrong circles, but the self-described libertarians I that I tend to meet either A) endorse the Knapp proposal across the board w/o prioritizing “shackes” versus “crutches” and so haven’t sufficiently thought out the practical implications of such a platform or B) endorse the Knapp proposal in name only and when you get press them on it want to remove “shackles” from the wealthy only and so give away that their faux-libertarianism is merely rhetorical cover for US-style conservatism.
IMHO, UO is really the only site I’ve found that presents a nuanced and COHERENT defense of libertarianism. For that the contributers merit praise.
I only wonder among the universe of self-described libertarians, how many are could be classified as UO libertarian or as options A or B above? I only ever seem to encounter A or B.
Comment by Dangerman —
February 22, 2008 @ 4:22 pm
Two marks to Jim Henley for the Folk Implosion reference.
Comment by joe —
February 22, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
It’s a comparable situation to those self-proclaimed crusaders for racial justice who look around America and decide that the one thing that needs to be done before all else in order to fight racism is to reduce the number of black people admitted to college.
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
February 22, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
Kevin Carson puts this pretty succinctly: “Welfare from the top down, taxes from the bottom up.”
The problem is that this can only be a political strategy, not a libertarian moral imperative. The libertarian moral imperative says that it all has to go, every bit of it. A libertarian can’t use time as an excuse if there’s a moral imperative to get the state to stop. For example, if someone proposes to end welfare, the libertarian moral imperative says, “Yes! And Now!” Likewise the same with corporate welfare, the drug war, or anything else.
I do agree that many libertarians have seriously misplaced priorities. Like Lew Rockwell’s bunch, I think our number one issue should be “Abolish the armed forces.” But if someone proposes to cut the cigarette tax, I can’t say “Not until we abolish the armed forces!”
Comment by socratic_me —
February 22, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
Excellent post!
Also, I think Jennifer sums up quite nicely why Thoreau and Joshua Holmes must be careful with the moral impererative to cut cut cut. If you cut from the bottom when it is available, without insisting on some cutting from the top, you actually end up entrenching the most egregious problems.
The decision to cut welfare from the bottom up and taxes from the top down (the inverse of Kevin Carson’s quote) will always be more viable because the bottom has less resources than the top. Taking those opportunities to cut whenever those at the top make them viable inevitably strengthens those at the top. It isn;t a value-neutral cut, but actually works against you in the long run.
One’s moral calculus must always account for long term ramifications and end-goals lest today’s good deed enable tomorrow’s atrocity.
Comment by Leonard —
February 22, 2008 @ 5:35 pm
Joshua, I agree with your larger point, which was what I was getting at in #2. But I do take some exception as to exactly what the “libertarian moral imperative” is. It is to abolish unjust coercion, which includes taxation, victimless crime laws, and much regulation. It is not to abolish welfare, per se.
Taxation is one thing. The state functions built on it are another. One can imagine a moral world in which a government runs on charity. Perhaps it holds yearly begathons, like NPR does. (”If you subscribe at the $100 level, we’ll give you a free t-shirt!”) Such a voluntary government might still do (some) welfare, and libertarians would have no moral problem with that.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 22, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
socratic_me:
I said that the moral imperative to cut might be worth following if the cut is offered in isolation. But in real politics it’s always offered by a coalition that wants to use the savings from the cut to fund some other form of statism.
Not to sound like an apologist for the guys that Bruce Baugh refers to, but even those guys (who are most passionate about cutting in the exact opposite order that Jim suggests) would be better (in their ideal platonic form) than what is actually offered by the right wing: A few libertarian concessions, a bunch of statist boondoggles. They aren’t really offering cuts in some non-ideal order, they’re actually offering a different brand of BS.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 22, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
Shorter version: Most “conservatives” aren’t really offering even a small cut in the size of the state (in some non-ideal order). They’re offering what’s at best a swap of one evil for another equal evil, and in most cases a net negative (replace one evil with a greater evil). If you only look at the small thing that they (allegedly) rolled back it’s easy to swoon over them and say “Who cares if it’s in the wrong order?” If you look at the big picture, it’s clear that order of operations is the least of our problems.
Comment by Glaivester —
February 22, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
Actually, I think that you have the drug war and welfare in the wrong order.
Welfare in the form of the Great Society demolished the black family, creating a huge violence problem as large numbers of black men were freed from the need to provide for their families (which tends to be a civilizing influence on men) and as the children grew up without fathers. (This happened with whites as well, but the effect was the most obvious in the black community).
Strictly enforced drug laws were found to be the easiest way to segregate such men from the general population during the years of their life at which they were the most likely to be violent.
This is not to say that welfare for the poor needs to be eliminated first, bu the incentive structure needs to be made better (some of this was accomplished with welfare reform, but more may need be done).
Comment by Joshua Holmes —
February 22, 2008 @ 7:48 pm
It is to abolish unjust coercion, which includes taxation, victimless crime laws, and much regulation. It is not to abolish welfare, per se.
No one calls the Salvation Army “welfare”.
Comment by TGGP —
February 22, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
joe, affirmative action doesn’t really have much of an impact on the number of black kids in colleges. We’ve got community colleges, after all. It just changes
colleges they get into. There’s even evidence that it decreases the graduation rate. Personally, I don’t care that much about what criteria colleges use and think they have as much right to be racist (positively or negatively) as any private institution. My real problem is the idea that every middle class kid (who make up the bulk) needs a college degree leading to endless subsidies, tuition hikes and the watering down of standards.
Comment by TGGP —
February 22, 2008 @ 11:01 pm
Whoops, used b-quote instead of bold!
Comment by Thoreau —
February 23, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
I can’t believe I didn’t bring this up earlier:
I think Rand’s influence on libertarians is a big part of the reason why you get many self-described libertarians who are more concerned with removing shackles from the mighty than from the meek. In “Atlas Shrugged” she portrays an economy that collapses when the supermen leave. Until they leave, the country gets by, even under the yoke of regulation. But once the supermen get pissed and leave, the whole thing goes to hell.
If you believe that our prosperity is largely the work of a small elite, as opposed to the consequence of large numbers of people being able to pursue their own betterment, then of course it makes sense to help the elite first. The elites are the only ones who deserve it in that scenario, and the rest of us are just ungrateful beneficiaries.
Comment by TGGP —
February 23, 2008 @ 3:21 pm
As annoying as I find Ayn Rand, Cuba and Zimbabwe seem to support her view of the world. I mentioned how Ayn Rand’s conception of freedom was similar to that of the “Cavaliers” in Albion’s Seeds here.
Comment by Thoreau —
February 23, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
TGGP-
Certainly Cuba and Zimbabwe are screwed up. However, I don’t know that it’s just because the elites were chased away. It’s also a matter of just how genuinely unworkable their systems are for anybody else who wants to try to get ahead.
I realize that not everybody will be equally successful, and that the most successful do matter for the economy. But Rand’s focus on the elite has probably shaped a lot of libertarian thinking toward those who aren’t in the top tier. I know there were places in Atlas Shrugged where she was respectful towards those who did a good job without being in the top tier, but the thrust of the novel was how crucial these elites are. By putting so much of the focus on them, it shapes attitudes.
Comment by Sasha —
February 23, 2008 @ 8:12 pm
I think it is wrong to phrase it the way you did. Black men were not “freed” from the need to provide for their families, they were actively prevented from doing so. In the early days of welfare, you simply could not get benefits if there was a man in the house. So even after industry fled the cities and unemployment was endemic, the only way to get welfare benefits was for the man to leave or not live there in the first place.
This was probably one of the most misguided policies of all time
Comment by Eric —
February 24, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
I’ll echo Glaivester and Sasha. I agree with prioritizing, especially in a humane way, but some of these things, like welfare, aren’t just sops to ameliorate the problem the other policies cause, but are also factors that deepen the problems and make peoples’ lives worse.
Welfare encourages people to be dependent and kicks the feet out from under those who try to earn an honest living. We’ll get rid of it a short while after we go to a non-interventionist foreign policy (ie, on the 17th of Never, not the 5th), but if it became feasible, I’d happily replace the current system with a negative income tax with no hesitation at any point in time. I don’t care how much the Blue end of the spectrum would whine; that would be the right and humane thing to do.
Comment by James Hanley —
February 26, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
Hmm, almost frightening that someone whose name is so similar to mine expresses views that are so similar to mine.
Are there really such things as doppelgangers?
Comment by Kevin Carson —
February 27, 2008 @ 1:38 am
This is in the running for your best post ever, Jim.
It’s interesting you quoted Tom Knapp, because he’s the one who coined the phrase “cut taxes from the bottom up and welfare from the top down.”
I think Chris Sciabarra’s right in advocating a dialectical approach: that is, any particular form of state action should be evaluated in terms of the role it plays in an overall system of power. Since our goal is to dismantle state capitalism, our approach should be to first go after the statist roots of privilege, and save for last the secondary forms of statism whose primary purpose is to ameliorate the effects of privilege.
It’s a mistake to welcome, as “a step in the right direction,” any random retrenchment in state intervention without regard to its effect on the overall structure of power. So long as we let the corporate ruling class and its “libertarian” intellectual stooges (AEI, ASI, etc.) set the priorities in deciding where to scale back and where to stand pat, you can be sure that every particular choice will reflect an overall strategic picture aimed at protecting big business.
I’m sure the Romans welcomed the withdrawal of the Punic center at Cannae as “a step in the right direction.” We need to be setting our own strategic priorities in dismantling the state, based on our understanding of who the enemy is: state capitalism.
Comment by Thomas L. Knapp —
February 29, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
Thanks for the comments, y’all.
If I’m understanding this right — and I think I am — Jim seems to think that a platform which just says “cut government” tends to lend itself to “royal libertarian” solutions, i.e. cutting welfare before cutting police rosters, etc.
I don’t know that that’s an unfair criticism, but I do know that the one organization which has adopted the World’s Smallest Political Platform also adopted as one of its program items a bottom up tax cut, as opposed to a “royal libertarian” proposal of the “cut the top rate, or maybe capital gains” item.
There are obviously valid criticisms of the WSPP (as there are of any platform). What I had in mind in writing it was that it would serve an incrementalist party which is willing to take any cut it can find, when and where it finds it.
If I end up back at the drawing board, it won’t be the first time, or the last (unless I write a big heavy book to stake my rep to and then spend the rest of my life tenaciously defending every comma as the gospel … but that sounds sooooooo boring).
Regards,
Tom Knapp
Comment by Thomas L. Knapp —
February 29, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
Kevin,
I wanted in particular to address your comment.
I respect dialectical approaches to libertarianism (particularly Sciabarra’s in Total Freedom and its predecessor works), and find the idea of critiquing proposed tactics in terms of “regard to its effect on the overall structure of power” worthwhile.
However … the WSPP doesn’t in any way preclude that. It’s intended to be one part of a political party structure, the other part being a program that flexibly (through periodic reconsideration) embodies the party’s tactical approach.
Platform: We cut government, period.
Program: Here’s how we’re going about it.
The tactical approach I had in mind when writing the WSPP was an opportunistic one — “any cut, any time, whenever we identify one that’s doable.” But in theory, the party using the WSPP could adopt any tactical approach, right up to drawing government programs out of a hat and pasting “cut government program x” into its program.
Anyway — throw shit at the wall, see what sticks, and so on and so forth. It brings out interesting observations in any case.
Regards,
Tom