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My Heroes Have Always Been Killjoys
Matt Welch has replied ably to Jacob Weisberg's latest sneer at libertarianism. I have just one point to add, about this passage near the end of Weisberg's piece:
The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school. Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world's failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight and the capacity for pragmatic intervention constitute a recipe for disaster.
The "heroic" view of capitalism may well be popular among high school Randites. But what serious adult libertarian, whether or not he went through a Rand phase, argues that markets run on heroism? We argue that markets are a discovery process filled with trial and error; that businesses misunderstand risks and misallocate resources all the time, and that this is why we need market discipline to keep them in line. Instead of that discipline, during the lead-up to the current crisis, they received first a gushing river of subsidized credit and then a series of bailouts.
When you don't believe in the heroic corporate chieftain, it should be equally hard to put your faith in that alternative fantasy, the heroic regulator: neutral and public-spirited, always attuned to market failure, constantly prepared to right the ship of commerce. Instead we favor a decentralized system of checks and balances, of which the most important are the checks imposed by an open, competitive marketplace. Not because it's heroic, but because it can ruthlessly cut a would-be hero down to size.
|10.20.08 @ 6:22PM|#
When you don't believe in the heroic corporate chieftain,
it's equally hard to put your faith in that alternative fantasy,
the heroic regulator: neutral and public-spirited, always attuned
to market failure, constantly prepared to right the ship of
commerce.
My ears are burning...
|10.20.08 @ 6:28PM|#
Do you think that it would have been politically feasible to not have a bailout? If not, then I doubt all the theories of free markets would have been able to help.
JB|10.20.08 @ 6:29PM|#
I hate "know-it-all" liberals. They think they are smart and
somehow magically government is smart.
Government is dumb and they are dumb. They want their
fairy-godmother government to come wipe their ass for them because
they don't know how to do it themselves.
Jesse Walker|10.20.08 @ 6:33PM|#
Do you think that it would have been politically feasible to
not have a bailout?
Sure looked politically feasible when the House voted it down.
|10.20.08 @ 6:37PM|#
Jesse,
Yes, I was happily surprised by that as well. Let me put it this
way. Do you think there are enough politicians that WON'T be bought
off to prevent them from bailing out these "too big to fail"
banks?
(Although, hopefully, this 'small donors' model will help to keep
our representatives somewhat free from special interests.)
Dello|10.20.08 @ 6:49PM|#
"...makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be
irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources..."
Markets irrational? Do guns kill people in his world, too?
Wait, I already know...
|10.20.08 @ 6:51PM|#
"The worst thing you can say about libertarians is that they are
intellectually immature, frozen in the worldview many of them
absorbed from reading Ayn Rand novels in high school."
Dude, if that's the worst thing you can say about libertarians,
you're not hanging out on the Hit & Run boards.
Franklin Harris|10.20.08 @ 6:53PM|#
Rand is such a mixed bag. On the one hand, she wrote an essay
about big business as a persecuted minority. On the other, "Atlas
Shrugged" is filled with decidedly unheroic businessmen who
collaborate with the government for subsidies and protection from
competition, up to the point of being complicit in their own
nationalization -- much like the financial sector at present.
Ironically, while a lot of libertarians skip over Galt's speech
(because we've heard it all before), that seems to be the only part
of "Atlas" that Rand's critics bother to read. Well, except for
maybe the sex scenes.
|10.20.08 @ 6:55PM|#
I guess Matt has never heard of the Austrian concept of the
market as a perpetual process (vs equilibrium). Or of either
Friedman & Schwartz's prescriptions for stable growth, or the
Austrian view of business cycles. Or of creative destruction. Or
the concept of the market as an adaptive complex system. Or even of
economic behavioral processes. Not to mention spontaneous
organization, self-organization and evolutionary emergence. Or
perhaps he's not familair with the economic calculation problem and
Hayek's fatal conceit & road to serfdom, not to mention
Friedman's illustrations of the futility of market
intervention.
Yeah, but he's an expert on libertarianism.
|10.20.08 @ 6:55PM|#
"Instead we favor a decentralized system of checks and balances,
of which the most important are the checks imposed by an open,
competitive marketplace."
The inability of libertarians to articulate the substance behind
this quote in meaningful and ordinary ways -- rather than with
seemingly self-evident confidence -- is probably why the Weisberg's
of the world feel they can make such sweeping generalizations.
Jesse Walker|10.20.08 @ 6:59PM|#
LnGrrrR: Apparently there aren't!
Sanchmo: I assume you meant to say "Weisberg," not "Matt."
|10.20.08 @ 6:59PM|#
... markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources ...
Oh my God! The markets are People!!!!
rant!|10.20.08 @ 7:16PM|#
I've found non libertarians to be too squeamish at young ages
about teaching people to help themselves, and then when they are
older they feel secretly ashamed of how stupid they were in
supporting government dependency schemes and also decide to get
back their tax money via government grants.
Pussies running through life pretending their herd mentality is
true deep thought of the issues.
No wonder so many people have ill behaved children.
TallDave|10.20.08 @ 7:38PM|#
My new libertarian hero is this guy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/18/banking-useconomy
"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up
making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the
other side of my trades. God bless America."
Lahde became one of the biggest names in the investment industry
when one of his funds produced a return of 866% last year, largely
by forecasting the US home loans industry would collapse.
In his farewell letter, which concluded with an appeal for the
legalisation of marijuana, Lahde said he was happy with his rewards
and did not envy those who had made even more money.
Ayn Rand|10.20.08 @ 7:48PM|#
Rand is such a mixed bag.
Who you calling a bag, you limp-wristed fruit?
|10.20.08 @ 8:17PM|#
Government is dumb and they are dumb. They want their
fairy-godmother government to come wipe their ass for them because
they don't know how to do it themselves.
The villain/fool obsession is just the flip side of faith in
heroes, and people who give into it are the most deluded of
all.
|10.20.08 @ 8:32PM|#
Is it me or do critiques of libertarianism always seem to include a mention of libertarians reading ayn rand while in high school? Did he also mention libertarians' 'whiteness' and something about mothers' basements?
concerned observer|10.20.08 @ 8:39PM|#
I'm almost certain that half of you don't have jobs and are posting from either your parents' basement or a college dormitory.
Franklin Harris|10.20.08 @ 8:41PM|#
Who you calling a bag, you limp-wristed fruit?
Let me put it this way: When I think of Ayn Rand, I always mentally
cast Helen
Mirren in the role, which improves the thought of Rand writing
her sex fantasies into her fiction immensely.
Jerry|10.20.08 @ 8:49PM|#
When you don't believe in the heroic corporate chieftain, it should be equally hard to put your faith in that alternative fantasy, the heroic regulator: neutral and public-spirited, always attuned to market failure, constantly prepared to right the ship of commerce.
It's not about faith or outcomes for these people, it's about the
sense of control, control of other people's lives. They could care
less if regulation actually works or not.
idiotface|10.20.08 @ 9:09PM|#
joe, please let "concerned observer" know that you have a job and are not posting from your parents' basement and/or college dormitory.
|10.20.08 @ 9:15PM|#
But idiotface, I'm a liberal.
What good would it do to tell him that I'm posting from the coffee
bar of a large bookstore?
;-)
|10.20.08 @ 9:24PM|#
Actually, idiotface, if you hang around these threads long
enough you'll find that joe is quite insightful and keen at finding
flaws in arguments. I'm not always sure if his tendency to come off
as a royally pompous prick are intentional or incidental, but
regardless he functions well as a check against the worst excesses
of libertarian fervor.
If only there were a way to implement him as some kind of bloated
government regulatory agency.
Anthony Gregory|10.20.08 @ 10:17PM|#
Whenever government failure destroys lives and wealth, we can
easily become frustrated as we see the crisis blamed on freedom
itself. Gun control fails to stop a massacre, and the freedom to
own guns is attacked. Narco-terrorism claims the lives of many, and
we hear the problem is not enough law enforcement against drugs.
Destructive intervention follows destructive intervention, always
in the name of erasing whatever allegedly dysfunctional liberty
remains.
Jacob Weisberg has an unbelievably asinine article blaming the Wall
Street collapses on libertarianism. We who believe in individual
liberty supposedly brought on this recession. Specifically, the
country has "narrowly avoided a global depression and is mercifully
pointed toward merely the worst recession in a long while. This is
thanks to a global economic meltdown made possible by libertarian
ideas." Thus the collapse signals "The End of
Libertarianism."
It is hard to grasp that someone could actually believe this. At
first, we might be tempted to assume the author of the above
nonsense is being deeply and deliberately dishonest. But perhaps
sheer intellectual error could suffice to explain the
problem.
Surely, libertarians have not exactly been in charge of the state.
Indeed, it would be a contradiction to say that we have - insofar
as the state is libertarian, it ceases to be a state. Yet somehow,
America's $3-trillion federal government - the largest state in our
planet's history - is associated with free enterprise in the minds
of confused pundits, left and right. But every single dollar spent
by that government is of course a dollar that has nothing to do
with free enterprise.
Anyone under fifty who went to public school probably remembers
this lesson: We used to have laissez-faire, and it caused great
inequality, poor working conditions and bank panics, so we had the
Progressive Era and the creation of the Federal Reserve. But we
still had too much economic liberty and it (not the Federal
Reserve) brought on a Stock Market bubble that burst in 1929, so we
had the New Deal, the FDIC, national economic planning and the
like. While that didn't quite end the Depression then (perhaps
World War II did?), it did guarantee that we would never have one
again. Thanks to government interventions from Teddy and Franklin
Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson, our modern economy will never have the
troubles it did in the 1930s. Central banking and millions of pages
of federal regulation keep this economy afloat and comfortably
growing.
Now all of a sudden the statists claim we are having the same kinds
of troubles, and once again it's all the free market's fault - the
same free market they said no longer exists, due to decades of
intervention. It's the freedom to buy and sell, to contract with
one another, to exchange within a framework of free association,
free pricing and property rights that has, once again, brought on
economic calamity. Not the century of interventions that they said
have guaranteed no such catastrophe would ever again happen. No,
the remaining pockets of liberty are at fault.
Of course, we libertarians have our own ideas about what went
wrong. Weisberg brushes off libertarian critiques of the Community
Reinvestment Act* and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac - two examples of
government intervention that helped bring on this mess.
To such critiques, Weisberg has a very typical response:
Academic Marxists were never going to be convinced that anything
that happened in the real world could invalidate their belief
system. Utopians of the right, [sic] libertarians are just as
convinced that their ideas have yet to be tried, and that they
would work beautifully if we could only just have a do-over of
human history. Like all true ideologues, they find a way to
interpret mounting evidence of error as proof that they were right
all along.
Indeed, one problem with a mixed economy is that if you do not
logically examine the theoretical arguments for and against
economic freedom - if you rely only on empiricism - you can never
determine what is the cause or solution to any large problem. Both
libertarianism and pure socialism are indeed non-falsifiable, in
the sense that neither has been tested 100%. But empiricism is not
the only means by which to find the truth.
Theory is crucial. Theory is what allows one to come up with ways
to explain the world as he is perceiving it. Much can be learned
about a theory through a priori reasoning. When someone says the
biggest government in the world represents the absence of
government, or that politicians and bureaucrats made the wrong
decisions because they had a "libertarian" ideology that was
skeptical of their ability to make the right decisions, you know
something doesn't add up. When they associate Bush's government
with laissez-faire, when it has been much less so even than
Clinton's, and blame its non-existent deregulation, you know their
argument is inherently incoherent.
Those who have embraced sound free-market economics have been
warning about the housing bubble, the impending problems with the
dollar, and the precarious nature of our financial system for a
long time. The only libertarian in Congress, Ron Paul, said this
more than five years ago on the House floor:
If Fannie and Freddie were not underwritten by the federal
government, investors would demand Fannie and Freddie provide
assurance that they follow accepted management and accounting
practices.
Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage
default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash
in the housing market. This is because the special privileges
granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by
allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure
market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most
productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the
entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all
Americans.
Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the
government's interference in the housing market, the government's
policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom
in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in
housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall,
homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out.
Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a
loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise
been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment
in housing. . . .
. . . Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the
housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again
forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government
interference in the market.
Ron Paul, like all principled libertarians, has also been very
critical of the Federal Reserve. He has taken on Alan Greenspan and
then Ben Bernanke for years. In the presidential debates, he was
considered a fringe figure for his prescient warnings about
economic bubbles and the coming systematic problems with Fed
inflation. When he said our monetary system was basing its money
and credit on nothing, the mainstreamers chuckled. So now the
mainstream is catching on, we libertarians are criticized for
having been right? For having not been in power?
In fact, Weisberg seems to ignore how incoherent it is to blame the
Federal Reserve's economic meddling on libertarianism. Indeed, he
faults Greenspan for believing in "market fundamentalism," and
being someone who "openly calls himself a libertarian."
Can the author not see the pure absurdity of what he's implying? No
libertarian could long be the Fed chairman, for the position is
intrinsically unjust and the agency is at constant war with
economic liberty. It is the chief counterfeiting and looting
institution within the U.S. government. You can no more be a
libertarian Fed chief than a libertarian drug czar.
Libertarians have considered the Fed one of our greatest enemies
for a long time - forty-five years ago, Murray Rothbard explained
how it brings on the business cycle and how, in particular, it led
to the market crash of '29. Ron Paul and many writers at this site,
the most widely read libertarian opinion site in the world, have
been warning about the Fed's real estate bubble for years. See
especially Mark Thornton, and then come back to us and blame the
current downturn on our ideas.
But Weisberg really shows his hand with this remarkable statement:
"As with the government failures that made 9/11 possible,
neglecting to prevent the crash of '08 was a sin of
omission."
A sin of omission? Excuse me?
It was not a sin of government "omission" that funded radical
Islamists in Afghanistan, waged a brutal war on Iraq in the early
90s that left U.S. troops on Muslim holy land and imposed sanctions
that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and gave
one-sided support to Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians.
Say what you will about the morality of these acts, but U.S.
foreign policy in the Middle East has been a continuous string of
sins of commission since 1953, when a CIA-backed coup overthrew a
democratically elected Iranian leader and replaced him with the
Shah. U.S. foreign policy was anything but inactive before 9/11,
and the terrorists sure don't attack Americans because their
government doesn't go to war or spy on people. See Robert Pape and
Michael Scheuer on why they attack us: Ron Paul and the
libertarians have also been warning about the consequences of
foreign intervention in the form of terrorism, well before
9/11.
What we really see in Weisberg's approach toward economic collapse
and 9/11, both of which he blames on not enough government, is that
he, like all who see the world in this way, is no less ideological
than we are. He is not bold enough to be a Marxist, nor is he one
of us. But he is no less committed to ideas than we are. For him,
it is the idea of the managerial, modern, democratic state as
protector, guarantor of national safety, stabilizer of the economy.
So when the economy flops, revealing the colossal folly of five
generations of government intervention, he must blame freedom and
say we need the state to do more. And when terrorists attack,
showing the utter disaster of trusting an imperialist
trillion-dollar empire and security state to keep us safe at home
from anyone determined to hijack a plane and cause mayhem, it must
be because the government simply did not do enough. It is this
mentality that is truly utopian, for it seeks to create a world
though state planning and violence that is somehow more equal, more
rational, more stable and perfect than what people can do through
peaceful and voluntary cooperation and honest competition. Whenever
anything goes wrong, no matter how big and active the state, the
answer is always more state power.
When statists attack libertarianism for their own disasters, we
need not take it personally. They are not attacking the few
libertarians with some political pull like Ron Paul. They are not
attacking libertarians with real government power because we reject
such power and none of us wield any. They are instead attacking our
ideas - freedom itself - and defending the state. It is an act of
desperation, actually. They see the state under attack, their
beloved bailout distrusted by the masses, and so they strike at us,
the principled minority, because they fear we have the answers
people will seek when their cherished state eventually fails to
instill confidence anymore. We, who unlike the statists on the left
and right can honestly wash our hands of the disasters on Wall
Street, war and terrorism, are their scapegoat in a world gone
wrong under their management.
This is not the end of libertarianism. It is only the beginning.
And we have only begun to fight.
*According the Weisberg's Slate, criticism of CRA "blames the
credit crisis on poor minority homeowners" - not just on the
policy, but on the poor themselves. Yet Weisberg seems to favor the
bailout, a wholesale looting of the poor to prop up the rich.
Fair-weather egalitarianism, indeed.
|10.20.08 @ 10:25PM|#
You can no more be a libertarian Fed chief than a
libertarian drug czar.
Really? So if you were offered the position tomorrow, you would
resign rather than affect policies about drugs at the
margin that would actually, y'know, help victims of the
WoSD?
highnumber|10.20.08 @ 10:27PM|#
Mr Gregory:
I respectfully submit that if you kept your long, long, long posts
to your own blog then everybody could ignore them without scrolling
and scrolling and scrolling down the page just to see that some
idiot lightly chastised you for being such a bore.
Orange Line Special|10.20.08 @ 10:55PM|#
Didn't read it, don't care to.
However, one of the funny things about libruhtarians is that they
keep engaging in completely fake economics. In the case of the
topic I cover, they try to use obviously biases studies to show
that MassiveImmigration is an economic boon or at least doesn't
lead to large losses.
However, their "economic" studies completely fail to take into
account all costs, both financial and
non-financial.
They're hacks at best, traitorous charlatans at worst (or at least
close to worst).
P.S. Perhaps I missed Jesse Walker's response to my requests that
he back up his smear of me.
Daniel Reeves|10.20.08 @ 11:02PM|#
Anthony Gregory, would you go into an indefinitely long state of depression if I said that nobody gives a shit? Because I really, really hope so.
Daniel Reeves|10.20.08 @ 11:03PM|#
Didn't read it, don't care to.
Wow, you feel just like how we do whenever we read something
you've written!
nonPaulogist|10.20.08 @ 11:04PM|#
"Really? So if you were offered the position tomorrow, you would
resign rather than affect policies about drugs at the margin that
would actually, y'know, help victims of the WoSD?"
yeah, really. I would call a press conference, state my arguments
about how the war on drugs is immoral, unconstituional, and harmful
and then I would resign.
zoltan|10.20.08 @ 11:15PM|#
Good post.
And TAO, does the drug czar affect policies much if they are
against the policies of the administration at the time? I mean,
when the Surgeon General said masturbation is healthy she got
fired.
Jesse Walker|10.20.08 @ 11:20PM|#
P.S. Perhaps I missed Jesse Walker's response to my requests
that he back up his smear of me.
There was no "smear," but setting that aside: Yes, you missed
it.
By the way: Since when did you, of all people, object to smears?
Physician, heal thyself.
elmo|10.20.08 @ 11:38PM|#
hey.. i read it, and found it more interesting than most of the other idiotic bullshit floating around here. thanks anthony gregory. ols you are a true douchebag. immigrants illegal and legal support our countries infrastructure, the problem is with our IMMIGRATION LAW. you incredible moron
|10.20.08 @ 11:55PM|#
Actually I found gregory's post interesting and even inspiring. I wish he did have his own blog.
Gene Callahan|10.20.08 @ 11:58PM|#
Well, I think it's important to acknowledge the kernel of truth in Weisberg's mostly mistaken analysis: A regime with bailouts and easy credit COMBINED with lax regulation is the worst of all possible worlds. It's the fake libertarians like Greenspan, Kudlow, etc. who get libertarianism blamed for this mess, because what they really work for is the oligarchs. IF you're going to guarantee home mortgages, THEN you'd better regulate lending practices tightly!
Lefiti|10.21.08 @ 12:17AM|#
Libertarianism will never die! Nothing that has no concrete existence outside the bony confines of its adherents' skulls can die! Long live Libertarianism! Keep the faith!
alan|10.21.08 @ 12:49AM|#
Definitely a valuable post, Anthony. It seems at the heart of
Jacob Weisberg argument is a Centrist Anti-intellectualism -- we
hold the power, and have been tested through experience, so,
therefore, your theories about how the world works is only that,
theories and dreams.
However, what social forces got the Jacob Weisbergs where they are?
Adherence to an ideology that stresses the betterment of the human
race, the practical every day governance
that tempers the animal spirits of the people, or is this a veneer
to justify something entirely different, a metastasis of central
power and authority that ultimately makes the citizen as indebted
and dependent on the actions of that central authority as the serfs
of pre-emancipation Russia were to entitled nobles?
The house my dad purchased and paid off within three years at a
similar income that I have now, adjusted for inflation, would take
me at least fifteen. The hospital bills for scrapes and broken
bones I received as a little fella (from riding a dirt bike) in the
seventies paid out of the wallet at the front desk by my pop could
not possibly be paid for by similar means today. I paid for college
through Summer
and part time jobs in the nineties without a dime for tuition from
my parents, from the prices I've seen in the school catalogs they
still send that doesn't look like a feasible alternative any
longer.
There are those who would naturally scoff at the comparison I make
in the second paragraph of a well off American citizen to that of a
serf trapped in the debt structure of Czarist Russia, but you need
to understand, the things I listed occurred over one generation, it
does not bode well for the future, the conditions you measure your
life by today are by no means static, and the people of Russia did
not become serfs overnight, but over generations where they
inherited the debts imposed upon their fathers.
Conservationist|10.21.08 @ 1:24AM|#
Let's face it: Ayn Rand is a terrible writer with second-rate
ideas.
The heroes of libertarianism were always those who founded the USA,
and guys like Ron Paul.
Not some second-rate, supersimplified Nietzsche ripoff.
|10.21.08 @ 1:42AM|#
Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult for them to accept that markets can be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources or that financial systems without vigorous government oversight and the capacity for pragmatic intervention constitute a recipe for disaster.
Now on the other hand, the author's heroic view of central economic
planning makes it difficult for him to accept that governments can
be irrational, misunderstand risk, and misallocate resources or
that financial systems with vigorous government oversight and
intervention always lead to painful market corrections.
I guess it all comes down to a difference in world views: do you
believe in people acting voluntarily, or do you worship at the
altar of the Almighty Gum'mit.
Famous Mortimer|10.21.08 @ 2:17AM|#
He's right.
I came to Libertarianism with a keen interest, and an open mind,
and I still find Libertarian discussions far more interesting than
most others, but many Libertarians do come across as intellectually
immature, if not often outright anti-intellectual. I understand
some of the complaints, but it often goes too far. It seems to be
derived from the inability to deal with criticism.
The righteousness that many Libertarians apply to their arguments
renders much of the outside world incompatible with their culture.
It's an act of self-marginalizing; an echo chamber mentality.
They snark far too much, cherry pick with the best of them, and
often show signs of cult-like thinking. It's one of the reasons why
Ayn Rand was able to galvanize a relatively small group of them so
easily. Call it a cult of personality, or group-think. Whatever the
description, they're not above it.
Libertarianism is best used as a emergency break when debating
political action, and reminding people about that little piece of
paper.
However, Libertarianism applied in any strict form would more than
likely be a disaster that resulted in more regulations, and public
distrust.
Most of the Libertarians I have known have either been Investment
Bankers/Economists, disgruntled Republicans, or IT guys.
That's not a group of people who are commonly known for their
humility.
I find this place both compelling, yet inhabited by many unhappy
people who breed negativity. The same effect can be experienced on
Skeptics forums, where there have even been discussions about how
Skepticism makes many of them unhappy.
I see the same type of atmosphere on here.
Although, I will say that Hit & Run posters can be far funnier
than most.
I guess they have to be, or else they would combust.
Famous Mortimer|10.21.08 @ 2:35AM|#
"Oh my God! The markets are People!!!!"
Why not?
Aren't corporations?
Cherry picking.
Famous Mortimer|10.21.08 @ 2:37AM|#
TallDave posted:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/18/banking-useconomy
That's brilliant.
It's going on my wall.
|10.21.08 @ 3:31AM|#
Famous Mortimer:
One of the central libertarian points is that "Oh my God.
Governments are people!"
The question is more about whether you think people with power are
more corruptible than people with money. At least in the free
market when someone wants to get you to do something, he has to
persuade you with money. When it's the government, it's the law,
and you've got no choice, whether you like it or not.
Liberals are fond of advancing this concept in international
diplomacy - the carrot rather than the stick. Leftists do the same
thing, though mainly because they just want to weaken the power of
capitalist countries like the US (what Communist nation ever
practiced "carrot" diplomacy?). For some reason when it comes to
domestic affairs, though, the liberal side is all about beating
people into submission with government fiat.
One thing so few people seem to address is really how deeply
inconsistent so many positions on the left-liberal side of the
spectrum actually are. I came to libertarianism largely because the
philosophy isn't a morass of internal inconsistencies and
hypocrisies. (i.e. "anti-war" protestors running around in Che
Guevara T-shirts.)
a|10.21.08 @ 4:21AM|#
Here is the actual letter from the guy in TallDave's link
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/128d399a-9c75-11dd-a42e-000077b07658,s01=1.html
|10.21.08 @ 6:47AM|#
"frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from reading Ayn
Rand novels in high school"
I'll have you know that I'm frozen in a worldview I got from
reading Hienlien in high school.
Wanker!
|10.21.08 @ 8:01AM|#
Anthony Gregory, your post was great. Not sure where the animosity came from, unless it was prompted simply by the length.
Nano Man|10.21.08 @ 8:38AM|#
what serious adult libertarian, whether or not he went
through a Rand phase,
argues that markets run on heroism?
Markets run on the very unheroic and mundane acts of all the people
that make up the base of the pyramid, but there often are heroes at
the very top. They're the ones with the vision and drive and
willingness to risk their own cash on an idea. If the snarky
do-nothings here can't see them, they're not looking very hard, or
they've never cracked a history book.
VM|10.21.08 @ 8:45AM|#
Lefiti | October 21, 2008, 12:17am | #
Libertarianism will never die! Nothing that has no concrete existence outside the bony confines of its adherents' skulls can die! Long live Libertarianism! Keep the faith!
OH JOY! THE EDWEIRDOOOO HAS SPOKEN. WE SHALL KEEP THE FAITH AND
FOLLOW THE SHOE, JUST AS YOUR BIDDING...
OH. you were being sarcastic. oh. i see. it was a slam against
libertarianism. oh.
/sulks off
|10.21.08 @ 9:34AM|#
"... frozen in the worldview many of them absorbed from
reading Ayn Rand novels in high school."
I didn't read Atlas Shrugged until I was 55 years old. I
think I enjoyed it a lot more than any high school student could
because the book distills a lot of what's been going on over the 25
years I've seen here in Washington. A couple a weeks back, when
Paulson and Congressional types where driving caravans down
Constitution Ave back and forth between the Treasury, White House
and Capitol Hill, I and a work mate would call out: "There go the
Looters again."
Jesse Walker|10.21.08 @ 9:34AM|#
Next time, Anthony (or whoever is posting in his name) can just post the link.
Eric S.|10.21.08 @ 9:58AM|#
Dear Famous Mortimer:
The two biggest philanthropists/humanitarians in the history of the
world are an IT guy and an investment banker, respectively.
Piss off.
highnumber|10.21.08 @ 9:59AM|#
in retrospect, I should have said "boor," although when I wrote
it, I meant "bore."
Eh, a little of both.
nyu law libertarian|10.21.08 @ 10:01AM|#
Saying markets "can be" irrational is like saying water flowing downhill is irrational.
dhex|10.21.08 @ 11:23AM|#
I came to Libertarianism with a keen interest, and an open
mind, and I still find Libertarian discussions far more interesting
than most others, but many Libertarians do come across as
intellectually immature, if not often outright anti-intellectual. I
understand some of the complaints, but it often goes too far. It
seems to be derived from the inability to deal with
criticism.
again, i think some of this is pedigree (some of it is merely human
nature; lord knows immature conservatives and liberals seem to make
up a whole lot of the population) i.e. many libertarians come from
american conservatism. higher education is seen as highly liberal,
if not an outright marxist fourth column - see any thread here that
mentions college for more details - and as such constitutes a kind
of conspiracy against whatever values the poster tends to
hold.
i mean, in a perfect world, the randroids, the daily show liberals
(living in nyc i have grown to hate them and their manufactured
soundbites so), anyone who takes fox news seriously, the college
socialists, authoritarian christian dominionists, authoritarian
atheist domnionists and probably me would all be shot into the sun,
but i don't think you can viably have agriculture with only ten
people left on the planet.
JB|10.21.08 @ 6:03PM|#
Joe, you are the fool who thinks some all-knowing government
with lots of power is better than a marketplace with lots of
information and individuals making choices.
That is foolish.
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