Are Libertarians Greedy and Delusional?
Law professor Andrew Koppelman and Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein debate whether libertarianism has been corrupted.

Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman and Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein debate the resolution, "Libertarianism has been thoroughly corrupted by delusion, greed, and disdain for the weak."
Taking the affirmative is Koppelman, John Paul Stevens professor of law and professor of political science at Northwestern University. He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern, the Hart-Dworkin Award in Legal Philosophy from the Association of American Law Schools, and the Edward S. Corwin Prize from the American Political Science Association. He has written more than 100 scholarly articles and eight books, most recently Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed. You can find his recent work at andrewkoppelman.com.
Arguing for the negative is Epstein, the director of the Soho Forum and former economics and books editor at Barron's. He's the author of Econospinning: How to Read Between the Lines When the Media Manipulate the Numbers. Epstein has taught economics at the City University of New York and St. John's University and worked as a senior economist for the New York Stock Exchange. He has defended the negative at six Soho Forum debates. His November 2019 debate on socialism with University of Massachusetts professor Richard D. Wolff has gained almost 6 million views on Youtube.
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'.....In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed—some with horror and some with enthusiasm—that this revealed the true face of libertarianism...' Koppelman
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In other towns with privately-paid fire protection, the fire department is required to respond to all structure fires. The difference it that if the home owner isn’t a “member,” they receive a bill from the fire department.
OK, issuing a bill doesn't close the loop on debts owed. What happens if they don't pay the bill?
I haven't a clue. Maybe the owner can pay it out of his home insurance. Unless the owner decided to take on that risk, as well. The owner assumed a financial risk. This time, the owner made the wrong decision.
Ah, so when the owner makes the wrong decision with the privately-owned insurance company it's the owner's fault and all the other insurance provider's customer's problem but when they make the wrong decision with the privately-owned fire department it's the fire department's fault for looking out for their other paying customers.
Glad you could iron that moral wrinkle right out for all of us.
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I am not sure of the logic here. If one fails to pay their automobile insurance is somebody else supposed to bail them out? If one decides not to have auto insurance (not all States require it), then is one somehow not personally liable if one causes damage or injury to a third party? There is a thing called “personal responsibility.”
I am not sure of the logic here.
Glad you could clarify that you don't understand simple logic. Thanks Mr. Obvious.
If you don't pay into the local FD fund, it's your personal responsibility to deal with your own house fire. If they do it, it's by their grace and arguably conscription. They put out the fire at someone's house who didn't pay them to do it. It's not that hard and shouldn't be for anyone even libertarian-adjacent to recognize and/or understand. Even leftists get it, they just don't like it.
When the fire spreads to the next person's house, and they have no insurance, then they have to pay, then when it spreads to a third person's house, who has insurance then the insurance pays and jacks up the rates for everybody who buys insurance.
So, everybody who buys insurance pays for the people who can't afford insurance and in addition the person with no insurance who lives next door to the first person who has no insurance also pays. Then everyone with no insurance files for bankrupcy. Sounds great. Why not tax everyone and support a fire department. Or why not regulate and make everyone buy insurance to have a house? Wait regulation is bad and taxation is theft..
This is the same argument as rivers and chemical companies. You have to govern and regulate to some extent or you have to live on little islands.
So demanding services you refuse to pay for is "not greedy" according to Koppelnan, why am I not surprised. I'm sure he looked on approvingly at the BLM riots and only has a bad word for those fleeing high crime in progressive hellscapes.
Allstate doesn't pay for your car wreck if your policy lapsed, either.
Interesting note with regard to one of Overt’s points about social obligations (and slavery). Cranick needed these people to come out and potentially risk their lives, however marginally, and he expected it for no pay. Not even a nominal $75 fee.
The slaves wouldn’t put out his house for him for free and it burned down as the result of his own actions, even if accidental. Fuckin' libertarians, man, I tell ya'.
Northwestern University law professor... He received the Walder Award for Research Excellence from Northwestern
Normally, Employee of the Year awards go at the bottom of the list, if even included at all, unless you won the award 20 yrs. straight or stopped a burning bus full of orphans from falling off a cliff or something.
last week when this was posted I wasn't greedy or delusional I'm less certain today
According to the left, libertarians are ultra-conservative nazis because they support economic liberty.
According to the right, libertarians are ultra-progressive leftists because they support personal liberty.
Amazing how libertarians can simultaneously be the worst of both political camps.
Where is your straw supplier? I’m worried the cattle will starve this winter if you don’t slow down on your straw man production
Boaf Sidesism seems to be the main delusional characteristic of the leftist masquerading as Libertarian
Apparently I became greedy and delusional when I became convinced that voting for The Donald was a greedy and delusional thing to do! How did I DARE to consider the long-term possibility of a peaceful and cooperative future of the human race, when me & mine could get ahead RIGHT NOW by pussy-grabbing all of the un-Americans RIGHT NOW? And ass we all know by now... The pussy-grabbed will NEVER think of pussy-grabbing us right back! This sort of one-sided pussy-grabbing has ALWAYS worked SO WELL in the past!
Step up on the Forum and take a bow.
Going to take these arguments piecemeal: Koppelman seems to assume that everyone agrees that the goal of any socioeconomic and political system is "equitable distribution" of goods and services and that regulatory interference should be judged based on the success or failure in that outcome ("no reason to believe that medical care will be distributed equitably") but what if we do NOT agree that that should be the goal? What if we disagree that government intervention is efficient at improving those outcomes or can improve equitable distribution without unacceptable unintended consequences? No sale, Andrew!
"What if we disagree that government intervention is efficient at improving those outcomes or can improve equitable distribution without unacceptable unintended consequences?" ... I agree!
Just curious, how would you state YOUR swag at what "the goal of any socioeconomic and political system" should be?
Mine? Enforce private property rights, the rule of law, restraining (not necessarily punishing; I think "revenge" doesn't work well) violent evil-doers (foreign and domestic) for the protection of society, enforcement of peaceful and permitted contracts (murder for hire is out!), courts for adjudicating disputes per written laws, and, in the modern era, let's get real... Moderate, sensible regulations to protect the "commons" of air, land, and water from pollution. And keep Government Almighty SMALL to maximize personal freedom, and a thing I call "diffused powers"... Not all powers to the state! Shared powers or polycentrism means power also to churches, mosques, civic clubs, families, corporations, and... Humorists! You know, dictators HATE humor at their expense! ... What else do we need?
When I was younger I was a rigid, doctrinaire libertarian, but I don’t have a tidy vision anymore. As I’ve said before, speaking practically, I’m willing to settle at this point for having adults in the room when it comes to government. Both in government and civic life, there is an epidemic of childishness.
Philosophically, three topics I have been mulling over in regards to government:
– There is an optimum size for a state, and the United States exceeds that size. There will always be inherent problems with the politicians in the Atlantic coastal swamp city being out of touch with what is going on in a lot of Americans’ lives. A lot of our problems with special interests capturing the power of government stem from government having such great power, which in turn stems partially from the sheer physical size of the country.
– There is no reason we need to have only one government. And I’m not talking about a federalist hierarchy; I’m talking about possibly overlapping, orthogonal jurisdictions for unrelated matters. There is no reason, for example, that the same body that governs your watershed has to be the same government that enforces your business contracts has to be the same government that runs the army that protects you from invasion.
– As I mature, I realize that everything about human society cannot be reduced to a few rigid principles. Various peoples’ rights and liberties do sometimes conflict. It requires a sense of art and balance, and keeping perspective, to balance the trade-offs to be made.
"Both in government and civic life, there is an epidemic of childishness."
Indeed! I've seen it at homeowners' association meetings! Loudmouths go on and on (verbally) ALL DAMNED DAY! (Diarrhea at the keyboard is INFINITELY more tolerable than the verbal version... I can skip and skim when reading! Send us all an email, instead, please!)
There is no reason, for example, that the same body that governs your watershed has to be the same government that enforces your business contracts has to be the same government that runs the army that protects you from invasion.
There is in that all of that involves force, and those who use force don't like to share. Hierarchal government works because they don't compete. When governments compete you get this thing called war, because only one gang of men can have the last word in violence in any given geographical area.
True. In our own country, where we have overlapping Federal and state governments, civil war once broke out between several of the states and the Federal government.
There’s often mission creep in government. So, in the hypothetical I proposed above, there’s no reason, I suppose, the watershed government wouldn’t stray from its lane and start getting involved in other matters. (As an example.)
"I’m talking about possibly overlapping, orthogonal jurisdictions for unrelated matters."
I don't even think you need them to be unrelated matters. We can see among competing arbitration services that you can even have a robust market for many actors offering the types of services people normally see as distinctly "government".
It is also noteworthy that many of the government licensing and certification programs are enforced monopolies that a free market would conceivably offer multiple alternatives. For example, there are about a dozen standards for the IT business. There are a lot of overlaps between ITIL, Agile, COBIT, Scaled Agile, etc etc etc. They all try to solve the same problems from different angles. And while I agree that it is sometimes annoying to see YET ANOTHER certification badge, it is a space where there is a lot of innovation (and I'll note that the UK's sponsorship for ITIL had the world obsessed with a certification that was not optimal at all).
I could imagine a future where things like Building Codes are as open to self selection as Environmental Sustainability ratings, with many competing services offering to "regulate" your products and services.
Fun fact: there are different building codes. Most jurisdictions just adopt and approve the International Building Code over the Uniform Building Code.
"what if we do NOT agree that that should be the goal?"
Exactly. It is this nonsensical goal that makes absolutely ZERO sense when you actually think for more than a second about the fact.
Equitable outcomes are flatly unreal. There is no natural distribution that is remotely equal. Look in a pristine meadow and you will find inequalities in resource distribution. Some insects are pollenating more than others. Some plants receive more sun and more water and other nutrients. Go look at any social organization other than humans- bees, chimps, wolves, even herd animals- they all have large distributions from the mean.
Equality has never been a factor of any social organization in human history. From early aboriginal tribes to early city states to existing societies today. Go look at any and you will see unequal consumption- from chieftains who have rights on all property, to the outcasts. Even in death, humans have always had wide distributions in outcomes- from people piled in mass graves to lavish tombs.
There is no reason to assume an equal distribution is natural, nor is there a reason to believe equal distributions are MORAL. Is it moral that a high-school dropout gets the same income as a master surgeon? Would it be moral if everyone received the same healthcare, even if that means healthy people receive more than they need, and chronically ill are left wanting for more?
Income inequality is a sign that the nation is still partly free.
In a communist utopia where all economic resources are shared, excess resources would accrue to those running the state, typically self-selected through violent revolution, or democratically elected by promising goodies to those without the skills or ambition to acquire them.
In a free economy, by contrast, excess resources accrue to those who are good at producing things other people value, while using fewer resources to create those things. Such people can then create even more value.
The difference in growth rates between the two models is astronomical. It's why communist states always fail, and why even partially free states see continuous economic growth.
So much this it isn’t even funny.
In a communist utopia where all economic resources are shared, excess resources would accrue to those running the state
And accrue in an off-the-books/under-the-table manner so that you effectively had higher levels of income inequality, but on paper, with money, within the State's borders, everyone had the same wealth.
Even so, human society distributes goods and services more equitably under free market capitalism - even heavily regulated - than any other system yet tried including socialism and the one the "pro" side claims Hayek was okay with. The question here is whether Rothbardian or Randian libertarians (like me) are greedy. I suggest that almost all efforts to improve some of the outcomes of free market capitalism with government intervention almost always fail miserably to even achieve the goals stated for them by the interventionists and that the interventionists almost never stop with limited evidence-justified interventions. So opposing almost all such interventions is not even remotely greedy, by any definition of the word. "Cruel and heartless" are mindless epithets used by socialists to discredit their opposition when they have nothing logical to support their beliefs.
Great point but drive it home. THis is the Hillary Clinton "you are evil and against progress because you will not support my perfect solution"
Yes, every child in America should have shoes that fit but a Shoes that Fit bill that aims at 100% does nothing but allow fat aging nevr-beens to hound practical and prudent solutions , more than that it takes your money and gives it to other people and only buys votes for Hillary.
I can refute the idea that Rothbard was wrong about minarchy and addressing externalities by listing the last twenty Reason articles documenting the catastrophic outcomes of Obamacare, rampant police abuses, infrastructure, global warming and social welfare programs like Medicare, Social Security and the Global War on Everything. The only success they can point to is unquestioned improvements in water and air quality, although we can debate how much environmental regulation contributed to this outcome.
Everyone is "greedy" if they want more of something that someone else thinks is more than needed. Difference is, libertarians want to earn the "more" while all others are content to take the "more' by force if necessary.
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other peoples' money -- only for wanting to keep your own money."
-Joseph Sobran
1) You can spend your own money on yourself.
2) You can spend your own money on someone else.
3) You can spend somebody else's money on yourself.
4) You can spend somebody else's money on somebody else.
===> ” You're interested in making your own life as good as you can. But you're not going to be anywhere near as careful as spending this money on other people.
But what about progressive Republicans?
In the eyes of "progressive Republicans" these days, somehow Pro-GRessive has becum Pussy-GRabbive, in a zero-sum manner... For us GOOD people, we can only get ahead by pussy-grabbing the BAD people, which is ALL of the un-Americans, the RINOs, the libertine libertarians (scarcely worth bothering to mention), and, of course, the Demon-Craps, whose votes are all FRAUDULENT!
Which also means that since most libertarians are not homeless or disabled or coming from a horrible background, being left alone really means "I don't effectively give a sht what your problem is, because it is not MY problem" ...This explains the religious problem libertarians have.
1 Cor 4:7
For what gives you the right to make such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?
Greed is wanting something you didn't earn, more akin to socialism and communism than to libertarianism, where you have to earn something if you want it.
Another advertisement for that dude's book.
This is a horrible debate topic, at least for a traditional debate. It's worded specifically to give this guy extra publicity for his book, titled similarly, not to create a clear debate topic.
Of course, talking of "greed" while whoring people's books pretending they are actual news articles instead of ads is a pretty good object lesson.
transcript????
> Are Libertarians Greedy and Delusional?
yes.
Not really. Just fake and gay.
No. People who want to use Gov-Guns to STEAL are greedy.
But BOY can they PROJECT their greediness like nobodies business.
And finally: virtue signalers howl with glee whenever they think they finally have an issue that refutes once and for all the "invisible hand" - like "externalities." Free market capitalism (the narrative goes) cannot possibly address the unfairness of externalities and, therefore, the entire concept of unregulated free markets, private property and profits is morally bankrupt and must be regulated by the best and brightest to rectify the victims of externalities. Of coursea it's simply hogwash! Even if it were true that the issue of externalities justified some targeted corrections (which it doesn't) the idea that some peoples' profits might cause other people to be inconvenienced requires a trillion dollar per year regulatory bureaucracy and a $20 trillion dollar national debt is completely ridiculous on the face of it. If something I do on my property spills over onto your property, you have the right to sue me for damages. If a corporation's activities damage their neighbors, those neighbors also have a right to sue the corporation. Using the excuse that some people somewhere might be harmed in some vague way without knowing who might have been responsible doesn't justify regulating everything everyone does that might cause some undefined damage to someone somewhere!
The current Libertarian party in the US is delusional. Yet most actual libertarians just want to be left alone to live their lives, and are willing to leave you alone to live your life, so I would say neither.
Will the Libertarian party ever become popular and gain traction politically? Probably not, to many people expect something more they are willing to pay for from the government. The second thing is how will the Libertarians run the government, when they hate the government? Don’t confuse the capital L Libertarian party with small l libertarian people because not every libertarian is a Libertarian.
1) You can spend your own money on yourself.
2) You can spend your own money on someone else.
3) You can spend somebody else's money on yourself.
4) You can spend somebody else's money on somebody else.
===> ” You're interested in making your own life as good as you can. But you're not going to be anywhere near as careful as spending this money on other people.
"Greed" is a silly word, used to denigrate people whose self-interest simply does not align with the word's user's self interest.
Nothing is more greedy than a Collectivist, who would steal from those who earned it, give some to those who do not deserve it, and steal some for themselves in the process.
Libertarians are indeed delusional.
They're delusional in thinking that humans can exist for any length of time before using government to violently steal from and oppress other humans.
In other words, libertarianism assumes that human behavior will be better than it actually is (in a specific way), in the same way that communists assume that human behavior will be better than it actually is (in a different, specific way, i.e. that humans will work hard for no self-advancement and no profit to benefit the collective).
Thus, there will never be a truly libertarian nor a truly communist government, and if there is for either, it won't last very long given human nature.
All this said, I am still a libertarian because all the other political philosophies advocate the initiation of violence to achieve goals, including the ones that claim to be good/kind to the weak.
Praising human "democracy" (i.e. [WE] mob RULES! government ideology) over a *Constitutional* (i.e. Supreme Law) was the failure point in the USA.
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