Libertarians are way too hip on double entendre to ever call themselves “Teabaggers”
By Thoreau
Michael Lind argues that libertarianism is becoming the ascendant faction in the Republican Party. I have three levels of response. On the most basic level, I never really know what to make of a Lind column. I am not nearly as conversant with American history as he is, so I can never refute any of his takes on a factual level, but they always strike me as just a bit too neat. A decade ago he was explaining that all of American history and politics made perfect sense if you just understood the cultural roots of a few different waves of immigration, most of them from different parts of Great Britain. Here he’s saying that all of American politics for the last 70 years, or at least the GOP portion of it, makes perfect sense if you just understand 3 basic movements. It’s all too…neat.
Going to the substance of it, the obvious response would be that libertarianism is the opiate of the minority party, and that Republicans have never shown much interest in it once they actually have power. Of course a movement that is out of power will explain that they oppose the ruling party out of a principled skepticism of power. And of course they will forget all of that once in power. Then again, libertarianism is hardly unique among intellectual or ideological movements in being betrayed by politicians in power. Go talk to a progressive, or liberal, or whatever some time, and ask them whether a politician has ever broken a promise made to them. Though politicians will always betray a movement once in power, a movement can still provide energy and intellectual firepower for campaigns and policy dialogues, even if they don’t actually get what they want.
So, the question is, to what extent does libertarianism play into the energy and animation of the Republican Party? Two very different answers come to mind:
1) The Tea Party Movement
2) Intellectual firepower for the plutocrats
On the Teabagger (hee!) front, I confess to not having much in-depth or personal knowledge of that movement. I am told that some of the figures in that movement really do believe in libertarian ideas. My immediate reply is “You just figured out now that government is big and intrusive? Were you in a coma between 2001 and 2008? Did the intertubes get clogged? Or, in true libertarian fashion, were you simply stoned?” The charitable response is that many of them were opposed to everything happening then, but it was hard to get traction for “limited government” talk in 2001-2008 because the natural constituency for the rhetoric (not to be confused with the ideas) leans right. Now, I know that UO commenters have many, many snorts to give there, but even if we adopt the most charitable response for the sake of argument, you’re still left with a movement in which the rank and file is not terribly interested in any of the ideas in libertarianism beyond “Team Blue politicians should be subject to opposition.” I don’t see much libertarian depth there. Libertarianism seems more like a veneer to be tossed aside at the next Red victory rather than a driving force.
Intellectual firepower for the plutocracy is a more complicated matter. On one level, if a party adopts just one facet of an ideology, do we really get to blame that ideology for whatever the party does? To me, libertarianism is multi-faceted with many insights. Yes, skepticism of regulation and taxes is one facet. Social tolerance is another. If you just want somebody who will cut taxes, you don’t need a libertarian; any Republican will do. The difference is that a libertarian supposedly also wants the government out of your bedroom as well as the boardroom, and is as skeptical of the no-knock raid as he is of the IRS auditor. And libertarians claim to be as concerned about small business as big business. Say what you will about libertarian stances on regulation of big corporations, but groups like Reason and the Institute for Justice are spot-0n when they find blatantly absurd regulations that mostly hurt people starting new small businesses while protecting existing businesses from competition. And some libertarians (e.g. these guys) even observe that military spending is, in fact, government spending, and that drug prohibition is an act of social engineering with negative effects that dwarf any social service program.
We can argue over one must embrace an entire list to deserve a label, but I’d say that one should embrace more than just one item on the list to merit a label. Otherwise, everyone would be a libertarian, from the CEO who only agrees with us on regulation of big business (but not small business) to the leftist who only agrees with us on warrantless wiretaps, to the hippie too stoned to remember our stances on any issue other than….dude, what was I talking about, and on to the cranky old man next door who is isolationist because he doesn’t trust them furriners, but is fine with, well, just about anything else the gov’t does.
Now, don’t confuse this with a defense of libertarianism. If the elites of the GOP mostly just like us because we have in our ranks many who will write apologia in exchange for 30 pieces of silver, then lambast us for that. But saying that libertarianism is dominated by the Reds is not the same as saying that libertarians dominate the Reds. If they are using us, it reflects poorly on us, but it does not follow that we are ascendant in their ranks. If anything, it makes us look even worse, because we sold ourselves to them and all we got in return was this lousy t-shirt that they charged us 29 pieces of silver for.
In invite you to re-read the previous paragraph as many times as you deem necessary.
Ahem. I said, read the paragraph in bold. Yes, you. Read it before you comment.
I’m not writing this to defend libertarianism from the charge of being infiltrated by the GOP. I’m writing this to argue that the GOP has not been overcome by libertarianism. Those are two entirely different things. From where I sit, I see some useful idiots for the GOP in the libertarian ranks, but I see precious little libertarianism animating the Republicans. If you’re going to blame us for anything, blame us for shilling, not for animating.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:05 am
Hey! You! Don’t comment yet! Read the paragraph in bold first!
Thank you.
Comment by Shem —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:33 am
Geez Thoreau, why do you constantly defend the libertarian shills who control every aspect of the GOP? Do you live in their pocket or something?
Comment by Shem —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:34 am
(You asked for that. Begged, even)
Comment by Eler —
March 16, 2010 @ 2:03 am
The libertarian chunk of the Rs is the only part left that hasn’t had its ideologies proven wrong (or ignored once in power). The Nelson Rockefellers are gone, the Pat Robertsons never got what they wanted, the George I people were turned on by the George II people, who were beaten at home and abroad by reality. Who’s left? The Palinistas have no beliefs besides whatever resentments Sarah Palin has right now, and Mitt Romney is a self-contradicting mess. If only Reagan had had an heir fit to claim that cloudy throne. So maybe the eventual Obama backlash will find at its head a libertarian, but prepare to be disappointed when he doesn’t run on a platform of dissolving Social Security, some pot in every pot, and the gold standard – you’ll get vague promises of less government, hand-waving at a smaller industrial-military complex, and intimations of America not trying to run the world. All the 31 flavors of libertarians could go for that, if they were smart.
Comment by Kolohe —
March 16, 2010 @ 4:37 am
I am not nearly as conversant with American history as he is, so I can never refute any of his takes on a factual level
the 80th (47-49) and 83rd (53-55) congresses had Republicans in control of both houses. It would take until 1994 (which IIRC is a few years after 1968) for that to happen again.
So Richard Nixon is conservative except that he’s just like Eisenhower, who wasn’t and that’s why the Republicans were in the wilderness, except when they weren’t.
So when movemment conservativism was at it’s strongest, with the double term of Ronald Reagan, it ‘wasn’t working’?
That’s a lot of people to die in 4 years. Do we have a good count of all the flying killer robots?
Comment by William Burns —
March 16, 2010 @ 7:02 am
I will never get used to the idea that “the Reds” now refers to conservative Republicans.
Comment by bbartlog —
March 16, 2010 @ 8:52 am
Already asked once, but: what happened to the link that used to go to Wendy McElroy, on your sidebar? And why do you have links to beverly hills plastic surgery, etc., instead?
Comment by J sub D —
March 16, 2010 @ 8:57 am
More than a few libertarians have adopted a “Screw the GOP” stance after eight years of Bush the Lesser and a GOP congress (6 of
that cheered on every intrusive (NCLB, Patriot Act) fiscally irresponsible (TARP, Medicare Part D and a general bloating of expenditures across the board) morally offensive (Iraq, torture, domestic spying) slap in the face to libertarians sensibilities.
You’d think that the Dems would gather up all of those disaffected libertarians but the fiscal insanity continues (Obamacare will cost at least three times projections in a decade, buying GM and Chrysler, the stimulus etc.), they’ve doubled down on the war in Afghanistan propping up a corrupt government that everybody admits stole the last election, extended the Patriot Act without any serious debate, continues to hold “terrorists” indefinitely without trial …
Screw the Dems too.
Comment by J sub D —
March 16, 2010 @ 9:00 am
The sickeningly cutesy smiley face (6 of
in my previous should read (six of eight).
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 16, 2010 @ 9:13 am
Thoreau: I think this is one of the best posts you’ve ever written.
bbartblog: I did some haphazard link cleaning and may have thought McElroy’s blog wasn’t active. It was nothing personal. Some links in the “Not Blogs” section, and only in the Not Blogs section, are text ads.
William @ 6: Frederick Pollack wrote a poem about just that, but it wasn’t one of his better ones.
@Kolohe: Actually, your comment is worth a post.
Comment by LarryM —
March 16, 2010 @ 9:37 am
Spot on.
You touch only in passing on IMO the strongest reason not to take the teabaggers, the plutocracy, or the Republicans in general at all seriously as “libertarian” or even meaningfully influenced by libertarianism. Of course I’m talking about the war on Terra. That’s one area where there isn’t even lip service to libertarian ideals.
Comment by dhex —
March 16, 2010 @ 9:37 am
lind’s a *little* hung up on the rand thing, huh? (perhaps she is their che? i.e. the figurehead that “no right-minded person” would take seriously?)
i do wish he was right, if only because the spectacle of the democratic party (while in power) trying to “move in a libertarian direction” might be blackly humorous. as we’ve seen in cali, even just pot legalization/decrim schemes come up not due to some grand notion of principle or even an empty nod towards limited government, but due to budget concerns. even potential expansions of freedom is colored by how much money the government can make.
but in the age of the superstate, you take what you can get, i guess.
Comment by mds —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:21 am
The ones who traditionally were kneejerk supporters for the Republican Party, while not affecting its governing agenda in any noticeable fashion? The ones who only fell out of love with the Republican Party during the George W. Bush presidency? Yeah, why on earth would the somewhat less right-wing party not scrap everything else in its platform in order to appeal to all those right-libertarians who weren’t even remotely ascendant in the GOP?
Look, despite Henley’s previous invocation of chirping crickets to describe the left’s reaction to Obama’s abuses of power, I’m concerned about civil liberties and would be glad to have politicians feel the need to kowtow to civil libertarians of all political stripes. But given that the Democratic Party has already decided to shit all over Teh Left while chasing a “centrist” phantasm that exists only in the minds of the Beltway punditocracy, I suspect they see no electoral upside in chasing right-libertarians by abandoning the “fiscal insanity” of mild Keynesian responses to a recession. Meanwhile, the Republican Party still makes only weak efforts like Ryan’s non-deficit-elimination plan, while primarily remaining beholden to batshit theocrats who think Thomas Jefferson was less relevant than John Calvin to Enlightenment theories of government. So they’re unlikely to have a “Come to Hayek” moment either.
In summary, we’re all doomed. But you already knew that.
Comment by solarjetman —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:30 am
The explanation of the Tea Party phenomenon is really quite simple.
The RNC saw all that money donated to Ron Paul two years ago, and it wants it for itself.
Comment by marcel —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:32 am
Slightly off topic, but you mentioned it first, …
This is likely based on a quick skim of an interesting book, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (America: a Cultural History) by David Hackett Fischer. At times it goes on too long, but that’s most often due to Fischer’s piling up the evidence in support of his thesis.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:37 am
solarjetman wins the Occam Award.
marcel-
I’ve heard of that book, and I’ve been meaning to read it. I don’t doubt that the cultural roots of different American regions have a lot of explanatory power, but Lind’s columns always strike me as too…neat. We can understand the entire 2000 electoral map in terms of waves of immigration from Great Britain? Really?
Comment by Donald Johnson —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:52 am
I read Albion’s Seed a few years ago and it struck me the way it apparently struck Lind. I’m sure there’s more to modern day politics than the four waves of immigration, but it seemed to explain a lot.
Comment by mtraven —
March 16, 2010 @ 11:54 am
You already used the phrase “useful idiots”, but it bears repeating.
All due respect to the tiny minority of the libertarian-minded who managed to not get sucked into support of the Bush administration, like the writers of this blog. You guys rock, but the typical “libertarian” is more like Eric Raymond or Instapundit, a cheerful supporter of war, militarism, and even torture.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
solarjetman, I think it’s more that Team Red had invested in that “Reds – and by extension, white male Protestants – are the underdogs in America!” shtick for so long while running the place, they had to get downright silly once they fell out of power.
So, Team Red’s amazingly unself-conscious decade of emulating more and more of the very aspects of left politicking that they most mocked and claimed to hate (political correctness, politically slanted news-media, etc.) culminated in the embrace of mass protests.
(Really, someone with the time should do a mash up of warblogger mockery of the sillier pre-war protest signs and pics from Teabagger events.)
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
As I said, mtraven, the point here is not whether libertarians are discredited by their involvement with Team Red, but whether Team Red is going libertarian as Lind claims. I see little evidence for that.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:07 pm
I might add that those arguing that the GOP has gone libertarian remind me of useful idiots insisting that all REAL libertarians should vote for the party of war, torture, and deficit spending because, um, something. Both are trying to persuade me that the GOP has converted to libertarianism. It was unpersuasive coming from DONDEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and it’s unpersuasive coming from Blues.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:27 pm
As one of the libertarian-minded who did get sucked into support for awhile, I say this characterization is still wrong. And I’ll point to something:
“Libertarians” in 2000 – Fringe folks. Reds want nothing to do with them. It’s hard to find one. They’re deemed politically moot. Many are reluctant about even the Afghan invasion a few years later
“Libertarians” in 2008 – Gee, a lot of folks claiming to be one. Reds just love them, and every other Red public figure claims to be one. You can’t swing a cat without someone self-identifying as one. People straight-facedly claim that they have serious influence and are responsible for the current political state of the country. Most are for eternal war in the MidEast and anywhere else Team Red points.
Flatly, “I’m a libertarian” is the new “I’m an independent” for doctrinaire Reds who want to appear less obviously partisan. Most aren’t even as connected to libertarianism as the blog-commenters who used to incessantly tell libertarians they’d be taken more seriously if they stopped talking about the drug war and being dirty lefties who opposed Bush’s wars. (Those guys probably call themselves “libertarian” now too, though.)
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:40 pm
I suspect that “I’m a libertarian” is used in two ways:
1) “I’m not partisan a Red” (as Eric said)
2) “I may be a Red, or at least a Red on economic issues, but I’m hip and socially tolerant. So, wanna go back to my place?”
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:47 pm
I invoked this? When?
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 12:49 pm
#2 is probably out there, Thoreau. Those guys are often so hip and socially tolerant that they think gay sex should stay legal.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:21 pm
Flatly, “I’m a libertarian” is the new “I’m an independent” for doctrinaire Reds who want to appear less obviously partisan.
There’s nothing “new” about that.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:27 pm
Except that it is; in the 90s and the early 2000s, damn few Reds would claim much sympathy towards libertarians, except when trawling for their votes ala the online Blues back in 2006. They called themselves “independent” if they wanted to pull the non-partisan BS, just as the similar group of doctrinaire Blues did and do.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
March 16, 2010 @ 1:48 pm
Fair enough, Eric. We were operating from different definitions of “new,” but I take your point.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 2:28 pm
Not a problem; “new” is all in the timescale.
Comment by Picador —
March 16, 2010 @ 2:29 pm
Eler, perhaps you didn’t hear about a little kerfuffle that went down in 2008-2009 where the Ayn Rand cultists tasked with running the global economy decided to blow it up instead.
If the global financial meltdown we’re currently experiencing, stemming directly from the ideology of people like Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman, doesn’t strike you as libertarianism having “its ideology proven wrong”, I suspect that nothing would.
Comment by Mike Roberts —
March 16, 2010 @ 2:33 pm
Libertarians are bisexuals of the political world. They’re afraid to admit they always vote republican, so they just claim they are libertarians. Same with people who are afraid/ashamed to admit they sleep with the same sex, so they just call themselves bisexual.
Comment by Gaurav —
March 16, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
This whole “I am a libertarian too” thing is messed up. Someone up there said it’s the new “I am independent”, and I’d say WORD. Isn’t it hilarious that both Glenn Beck and Bill Maher, who wouldn’t even agree on which way north is, refer to themselves as “libertarian in an ideal world”?
Comment by mds —
March 16, 2010 @ 3:04 pm
HAWT!
Wait: are we talking just right libertarians, or left libertarians? I know Kevin Carson is Wobbly, but I didn’t think this meant he actually swings both ways.
Sorry; as usual I shouldn’t have tried for silly. Or, even better I should have included a link to the post. In Orwellian fashion, the Obama administration continues to use the term “standard” time for a period that now lasts four months. Yet from the left, we hear only crickets chirping. Etc.
Okay, fine, I really shouldn’t have included that passage at all, because now my previous turgid, rambling comment is all about being unfairly mean to Mr. Henley. In my defense … Look, over there! Purported acolytes of von Mises advocating draconian immigration restrictions!
[Sound of running footsteps receding into the distance]
Comment by Eric the .5b —
March 16, 2010 @ 3:45 pm
That’s pretty good, actually. Actual bisexuals get denied and shat upon by both straights and gays most of the time – except when it’s occasionally considered chic, and then you see a lot more people than before claiming to be bisexual.
It’s good, though it has some weaknesses. I’d like to be able to say something like “Glenn Beck is like one of those girls who makes out with a sorority sister for Girls Gone Wild“…but he’d really be more like a woman politely noting how another woman’s dress is flattering, then loudly declaring, “I say that because I like chicks!“.
Comment by Kreb —
March 16, 2010 @ 4:22 pm
The Tea Party movement seems a lot more animated by Palin-esque politics of resentment than anything else. Policy coherence is nearly absent if you try to understand their slogans (even the ones that might appeal by saying something like about limited government). However, as an expression of resentment, they make total sense.
The Teabaggers aren’t intellectually coherent because they’re not an intellectual movement. They’re a collection of of people pissed off, sometimes they’re not even sure why they’re pissed off, and they have willing exploiters who validate and amplify their fears. That’s why their rallys include invocations of violence against fellow Americans; they’re not interested in policy forums at Cato to discuss the impact of national drug policy on an economic and social level.
Libertarians who think they can control/be a part of the teabaggers need to consider it carefully. I don’t recall Hayek as being an advocate of assassination for those with whom he disagreed.
Comment by Eric Martin —
March 16, 2010 @ 4:43 pm
Actual bisexuals get…shat upon by both straights and gays most of the time
I think that costs extra…
But seriously, yeah, Thoreau, this goes in your Greatest Hits, Volume I collection.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
March 16, 2010 @ 5:40 pm
As a non-rhetorical, non-metaphorical matter of fact, this is wrong. I spent half a decade working for a firm trying to prevent the meltdown from happening (unsuccessfully, as perhaps you noticed), and the roots of the financial crisis do not tell the story you want it to tell.
The cause of the crisis is pretty simple: banks knowingly made bad real estate loans, and lied to the mortgage companies they sold the loans to about their quality. The risk models used to rate the loans had garbage put in, and so the ratings were garbage. As a result, senior tranches of shares of those portfolios were wrongly rated AAA, and banks that were using them for reserves had a far smaller amount of real assets than they thought they did.
The sad thing is that this happened as a direct result of efforts to *prevent* financial meltdowns. Mortgage securities were invented to reduce the number of banks going under from geographically-local economic shocks (e.g., a town’s factory closing and all the factory workers defaulting on their home loans). The Basel II regulations (which allowed using arbitrary AAA securities for reserves) were instituted in order to prevent banks from engaging in arbitrage trickery to get around their reserve limits.
So efforts by intelligent, foresighted, and well-intentioned people to proactively avert problems before they arose failed, and actually caused a different variant of the problem they were trying to prevent. That actually fits the standard libertarian narrative better than a liberal one — though it’s a narrative I’m rather hesitant to embrace, since it’s just a little too convenient.
Comment by Matt —
March 16, 2010 @ 7:45 pm
“The Teabaggers aren’t intellectually coherent because they’re not an intellectual movement.”
Is there a movement or political party out there that IS intellectually coherent? That seems a weak insult.
It also seems a little silly on your part to take a few outlandish statements from a couple of people at a rally and extrapolate them to the group as a whole. But I get that such a tactic is modern politics.
Comment by Matt —
March 16, 2010 @ 7:47 pm
“Libertarians are bisexuals of the political world. They’re afraid to admit they always vote republican, so they just claim they are libertarians.”
Another fine generalization. Most libertarians I know, however, either vote for divided govt (Dems in Congress/Repub Pres or vice versa) or have given up on the process nationally.
Comment by prolefeed —
March 16, 2010 @ 8:32 pm
If you just want somebody who will cut taxes, you don’t need a libertarian; any Republican will do.
You might want to take a harder look at actual Republicans, especially politicians. The fiscal conservative wing is arguably a minority among Rs.
Comment by LJM —
March 16, 2010 @ 8:43 pm
If the global financial meltdown we’re currently experiencing, stemming directly from the ideology of people like Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman, doesn’t strike you as libertarianism having “its ideology proven wrong”, I suspect that nothing would.
If you actually think the Milton Friedman approved of the policies that led to and immediately followed the meltdown, I suspect you only have Naomi Klein’s word for what Friedman believed and said.
Friedman opposed the corporatist policies of our government, not to mention its foreign policies. In fact, on most issues, Friedman was more liberal than the Democratic Party.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 16, 2010 @ 8:45 pm
You might want to take a harder look at actual Republicans, especially politicians. The fiscal conservative wing is arguably a minority among Rs.
The fiscal responsibility wing is certainly small, but “cut all the taxes and let a future generation sort out the debt” is probably a significant majority.
Comment by Joshua corning —
March 17, 2010 @ 2:41 am
“cut all the taxes and let a future generation sort out the debt” is probably a significant majority.
Technically this wing is more libertarian then the fiscal responsibility wing. To a libertarian what is more important, fiscal responsibility of its government or the liberty of its citizens?
Comment by Ron Jeremy —
March 17, 2010 @ 3:10 am
The Republican Party never will embrace Libertarian ideals because it is too statist. Witness how readily the GOP embraces torture – even of those deemed innocent by the previous administration. Show me a Republican (aside from Ron Paul) willing to endorse a reduction in military spending and a respect for the fundamental framework of The Constitution, and then I will say the Libertarian argument is gaining sway.
Comment by dcswede —
March 17, 2010 @ 7:22 am
Joshua Corning:
So, technically, large and unpaid for is more libertarian than fiscally responsible? Really?
I think lowering taxes, without reducing the size of the federal beast, is not libertarian; it is Republican.
Comment by Ceri B. —
March 17, 2010 @ 8:20 am
Albion’s Seed is a fascinating and careful book which has done nothing to deserve Lind’s attention.
Beyond that, I agree with the others, Thoreau, this is good stuff. For Republican leadership, libertarian rhetoric is very obviously nothing but a convenient tool. For a lot of the rank and file, I suspect that Eric’s nailed it and it’s a way of thinking of oneself as much more independent than one actually is.
Comment by bandit —
March 17, 2010 @ 8:37 am
wherever Libertarian and GOP ideas intersect it’s coincidence not a plan. NEVER trust GOP pols when they start lying about small gov’t.
Comment by Eric Martin —
March 17, 2010 @ 8:56 am
So efforts by intelligent, foresighted, and well-intentioned people to proactively avert problems before they arose failed, and actually caused a different variant of the problem they were trying to prevent. That actually fits the standard libertarian narrative better than a liberal one — though it’s a narrative I’m rather hesitant to embrace, since it’s just a little too convenient.
Well, it gets back to the banks lying about the value, and the ratings agencies were hardly as gullible as you make it out to be. They were in on it too.
Not that less regulation would have helped. Forcing the banks and other financial institutions to treat these liabilities as, well, liabilities in terms of cash reserves and offsets would have helped a good deal, however.
The Basel II regulations (which allowed using arbitrary AAA securities for reserves) were instituted in order to prevent banks from engaging in arbitrage trickery to get around their reserve limits.
So a rule that allowed abritrary assignment of AAA status was instituted to prevent trickery? Hmmm.
Comment by Thoreau —
March 17, 2010 @ 9:00 am
This libertarian views today’s deficit as tomorrow’s tax.
Comment by radish —
March 17, 2010 @ 10:40 am
I can’t comment about the good or bad intentions behind Basel II, but I do want to mention that for non-libertarians who don’t need to fret as much about confirmation bias, this narrative is perfectly reasonable. The “law of unintended consequences” is very robust, and is a key to understanding control theory, evolution, and adaption in general. Any discipline that deals with fitness landscapes yields plenty of examples.
You can’t discount the relevance of the rule just because you happen to be thinking about a particularly complex control mechanism.
Comment by mds —
March 17, 2010 @ 10:45 am
So … to spend is to tax? Someone needs to write that down.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
March 17, 2010 @ 1:45 pm
This isn’t right. Nobody believed that, for example, [Big Bank I Won't Name To Avoid Lawsuits] was just out-and-out faking all its numbers with a deliberate policy of fraud, mandated from the very top. Everyone assumed they were trying to game the rules, but were still technically in compliance — i.e., engaging in normal behavior. They made this assumption because (a) it works for other traded assets, and (b) you can’t trade in assets you can’t physically assess otherwise.
I mean, I personally saw part of BBIWNTAL’s loan portfolios, and thought I had gotten a batch from some incompetently-managed loan officers, rather than suspecting outright fraud. The idea that one of the country’s biggest banks had turned into a boiler room operation was just outside my imagination of the possible.
Yes, this is right. Basel II was instituted in part precisely to force banks to to value all their assets and liabilities under a uniform marked-to-market estimate of their value, including all the derivatives they owned. To keep banks from playing games with asset classes, the regulators decided to say that reserves had to be AAA assets. This was a mistake, but it was the sort of mistake that only knowledgeable and fore-sighted people could make.
Note that European banks adopted Basel II first, and so they were burned worse than the US — Scotland’s Northern Rock was the first casualty of America’s real estate bust!
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 18, 2010 @ 9:38 am
Neel, the rating agencies were in on it. Note that as fast as the financial firms could whip up unbelievably complex new products (of products of products) from various financial ’skunk works’, the rating agencies happily claimed to be able to evaluate them. For a fee, of course.
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 18, 2010 @ 9:42 am
Thoreau: “My immediate reply is “You just figured out now that government is big and intrusive? Were you in a coma between 2001 and 2008? Did the intertubes get clogged? ”
Particularly as this all happened before, and will happen again. In the early 1990’s, all of a sudden thousands or tens of thousands of people who started pulling on homemade uniforms and forming little militias. People who hadn’t been doing this during the Reagan-Bush I years, when there was at least as much reason.
And now, when a Democratic President again takes office, we see a very similar phenomenon.
That sort of coincidence isn’t a coincidence.
Comment by dhex —
March 18, 2010 @ 9:57 am
there were militias during the 80s. the survivalist/patriot movement strain of thought dates back at least to the early 70s. of course, even at its height it wasn’t very large at all, and it was a good way for the msm to go on about the terrible threat of dudes in the woods, etc. waco was basically the high point in terms of both paranoia/well-founded fears and msm pushback, probably heavily due to the whole thing having been televised.
i don’t see what they have to do with the tea partiers (partieries?) though. that seems more related to the lack of “we say no to the obama agenda” signs around brooklyn, though the wars go on.
such is life in the sports bar.
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 18, 2010 @ 10:20 am
Sorry – ‘Celebrity Gossip Magazine’ was me.
dhex, of course there was stuff from a ways back; my point was that it grew by a factor of a lot. As for the similarities, just start reading about them. Insane conspiracy theories (not just plausible ones), states’ rights, gold bugs, UN bugaboo stuff, sudden reverence for a Constitution upon whom Bush II shat regularly, etc.
Oh, and right-wing ties in leadership and propaganda – Faux News, Beck, Rush, Armey, etc. The GOP is backing this movement.
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 18, 2010 @ 10:22 am
Neel, read the article in the post above this one:
How Could You Ever Live WIthout Me? (http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/03/18/10877). Yves Smith has a lot to say. The priimary themes are:
1) People were responding to incentives.
2) These incentives were insane, from a rational market perspective. He compares the old partnership system with publicly-traded companies:
“In the early 1990s, Sallie Krawchek, then an equity analyst covering publicly owned investment banks for Sanford Bernstein, remarked, “It’s better to be an employee of a Wall Street firm than a shareholder.” Being public changed all the incentives. Management had less reason to be cautious. Indeed, that also showed up in her analysis. The most profitable business was fixed income, meaning the debt-trading business, and even then the firms were on a trajectory of taking on more risk.”
Comment by dhex —
March 18, 2010 @ 10:41 am
As for the similarities, just start reading about them.
and yet the differences are rather remarkable, no? especially with your second paragraph – the militia types had no love from the media or the law und order crews. the only shared point is “right wing” and “guns” – one is entirely politically engaged, and the other was entirely unengaged. (which is supposedly what made them dangerous, because something something something anarchy)
that the out team trades in conspiracy is pretty much standard case. so did a lot of folks on the anti-war side during bush the younger. hell, some of them even turned out to be right, though “no blood for oil” and various strains of trutherism tended to dominate. plus you have neat hybridism (neat in that it’s interesting), especially on the truther side, of the coming together of the post-bircher nwo set and international answer types, if only for a moment.
that the wars rage on and yet the big anti-obama push is from these partierie guys is merely another symptom of the sports bar. but i don’t think you can neatly join everything together beyond saying “people care about abuses more when the folks doing the abusing don’t share their party identification”. sad, but true.
Comment by Celebrity Gossip Magazine —
March 18, 2010 @ 1:01 pm
“…that the out team trades in conspiracy is pretty much standard case. so did a lot of folks on the anti-war side during bush the younger. ”
Um, not to the same extent. Do you understand when I’m talking about militias and guys getting together like that? Glen Beck? Rush Limbaugh? Fox News?
None of those have any equivalents on the left.
The one thing that you spotted, and thanks for pointing out to me, is that the elite MSM are really enjoying this stuff. Even though the GOP and the right spent 8 years doing an amazing job of f*cking up, you wouldn’t know it from about 90% of the MSM coverage. And former members of the Bush II administration are in high demand – not to be mocked, but to be listened to.
Which is another differentiator of liberals vs right-wingers. Gore wasn’t anywhere to be seen after 2000, until he *worked* his way back to prominence. Same for most of the other guys.
Comment by dhex —
March 18, 2010 @ 3:38 pm
Do you understand when I’m talking about militias and guys getting together like that?
in this context? not really. you’re attempting to connect two historically separate – and disparate – things into one ball of “i do not like”. which i get loud and clear.
beyond that, most of your complaints are lost on me. the schultz/maddow/olberman contingent does a similar form of idiot theater for a different audience. definitely not my cup of tea. (ha ha, get it? tea!)
though i think she’s wrong about most things, at least amy goodman knows how to have a frickin’ conversation.
Comment by DannyK —
March 18, 2010 @ 8:05 pm
I don’t know what you want us to say, Thoreau. You don’t want us to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but is there really a baby in there?
I like much of what you have to say, but is that really “libertarian”? I mean, you agree an awful lot with Daniel Larison and Glenn Greenwald. Sanity and skepticism do not a libertarian make.
Meanwhile, when I look at big-L libertarian sources and see what answers they have to the questions of the day, I mostly see a strong desire to change the subject to something more fun to talk about. To wit:
Health Care: A strenuous attempt from multiple sources to convince us that health care isn’t actually good, it doesn’t save lives, etc.
Financial Crisis: TARP was bad. Little discussion of what would have happened without it, and almost no realistic discussion of how to manage our new post-TARP moral-hazardous world.
Climate Change: Climate Change won’t be so bad. Or it’ll be good! Or we need to put more money into energy research! But hands off the carbon, buddy.
War on Terror: Here, the arguments seem reasonable, but see my comments above about Greenwald and Larison.
Summing up an overly long post: I don’t think libertarians are any bigger whores than other political groups, but why do they command your allegiance? Why do you feel the need to stick up for them?
Comment by VikingMoose —
March 19, 2010 @ 2:36 pm
hay Doktor T.
I didn’t read the bolded part. is it any good?
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 19, 2010 @ 2:41 pm
“Health Care: A strenuous attempt from multiple sources to convince us that health care isn’t actually good, it doesn’t save lives, etc. ”
Really? You think that’s a valid presentation of libertarian positions?
Comment by lunchstealer —
March 19, 2010 @ 2:47 pm
VM – I think he was talking about that time he let Glen Beck get him drunk and fondle his principles.
Comment by DannyK —
March 19, 2010 @ 7:30 pm
Examples: Wil Wilkinson, Megan McArdle, the CATO institute. And I never said it was a valid presentation of libertarian principles, I said it’s what I’m getting from the current debate. If you know of good discussion of healthcare policy that don’t grossly insult one’s intelligence, name ‘em. I was trying to make a bigger point, namely that libertarians don’t seem to have a lot to offer me on any of the big questions of the day.
Comment by LJM —
March 20, 2010 @ 2:45 am
DannyK, could you please link to a CATO Institute opinion on healthcare that “grossly insults one’s intelligence?”
Here’s an article by a libertarian about healthcare which you might find interesting.
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/07/why-prefer-french-health-care
There are so many variants and degrees of libertarianism, it’s hard to accurately describe how libertarians feel about things outside of civil rights and foreign policy. That said, when it comes to civil rights and foreign policy, libertarians are much more liberal than the Democrats in Congress or the White House.
Comment by b-psycho —
March 21, 2010 @ 12:10 pm
LJM: A few months later & I STILL don’t quite know what to make of that column. Part of me sees it as expressing hypocrisy & an ironic desire for something-for-nothing (French-style health care without French-style funding mechanisms), while the other part generally agrees with Kevin Carson’s interpretation of it (basically, that Matt is just ranking the US’ system as below both a free-market one and a socialist system).
As for the general topic, I think simultaneously there’s not enough libertarians & too many “libertarians”. The problem with any movement that even remotely approaches popular politics is that by definition it has to appeal to a lot of people to get anywhere. The Tea Partiers jack libertarian rhetoric because their definition of libertarianism includes them. If their operative definition was what Thoreau — or, FSM forbid, I — had in mind, then they’d be spewing Mike Huckabee style “libertarianism is evil!” crap instead.