The Religion Of Libertarianism

[Jason Harvestdancer]

when we pushed interest rates to nearly 20% because we believed that the Fed creates inflation by printing too much money.

Ooh, a good start already. As everyone knows, central banking is part of libertarian ideology, as much as regulation, high taxes, lush corporate subsidies, etc.

when we allowed banks to speculate in the stock market with leveraged and depositors' money.

A side effect of the same central banking that libertarians are famous for supporting.

when we deregulated the electrical energy market in California handing the energy companies market set prices and the ability to cause shortages to keep those prices high, reference Enron.

I remember that. There were two markets, retail and wholesale. One was deregulated, the other wasn't, because the way the market was moving at that time it looked like it would make big profits for those government granted monopolies. Then the market shifted, those government granted monopolies lost money, and it was the market's fault for "reasons".

when we effectively stopped arresting employers who hired illegals, libertarian philosophy of individual freedom and open borders.

You make it sound like that's a bad thing Mr. Trump.

hen we deregulated the thrifts, the savings and loan disaster.

Again an effect of central banking. Also a change in federal regulation made the bottom fall out of the real estate market causing the S&Ls that had put their assets in real estate to lose out.

when started turning the healthcare industry into a profit-seeking business instead of the way to keep people healthy.

I can see nothing libertarian in our current healthcare industry. I suppose you are thinking that because it charges money it must be by default libertarian.

One thing you forget about libertarianism, and this is because you fall prey to the government fallacy, is that it does not prohibit charity. What it does stand against is government "charity", which is something completely different. Your basic argument, that people won't be kind to each other unless forced to, says far more about you than it does about me.

There used to be many non-profit hospitals. Now even though many of them were run by churches, the nightmare situation you are about to present about refusing service to non-believers didn't actually happen. They saw their duty as caring for the sick, any sick. But they were crowded out as providing healthcare became more expensive at a rate faster than inflation. Why did it become more expensive at a rate faster than inflation?

when we deregulated the derivatives market.

The market in derivatives. You must be referencing the crash of '08. Of course I place the blame for that on the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates artificially low, but you somehow think we support things like the Federal Reserve and central banking.

when we allowed drug companies and lawyers to advertise.

Okay ... your point?

when we allowed drug companies to sell water in small green and brown bottles as drugs at drug prices, the deregulation of alternative medicine.

Um, okay...

when we declared money to be free speech, making elections easier to buy.

Um, okay... You act as if that is a bad thing.

when we declared that businesses are people and therefore their executives can't be held responsible for their bad decisions.

Corporate personhood. An interesting subject. Just so people know the subject well enough, here's a wiki link:  Limited liability company. This particular form of business was first instituted in 1977. Before that we had corporate charters.

The most important aspect of limited liability is that it is the investors whose liability is limited (to the amount of their investment). That means that limited liability applies to you and me, the small-change investors whose 401k retirement accounts are invested in a diversified assortment of stocks and other securities. We need this insulation from corporate liabilities to take any advantage of technology and the division of labor.

The alternative is unthinkable: imagine getting a letter in the mail telling you that, by virtue of your day-trading investment in $500 worth of stock of some oil company, you must fork over $5,000 to help pay for the latest oil spill. Keep in mind that corporate directors and officers are liable for bad decisions they make.

when we decided that we all would be safer the more guns we have.

Are you talking about private gun ownership? Or are you talking about how our police forces are over-equipped with military-grade equipment?

If the latter, remember the libertarian position on giving the police too much power. Well, remember it if you ever knew it.

when we ran up 12 trillion dollars worth of national debt by passing tax cuts for the already wealthy because taxation is theft.

How many times have I gone over this, only to have you repeat it as if I had never gone over it at all?

The amount of spending is always equivalent to the amount taxed, if you remember to count indirect taxes along with the direct taxes. The only way to cut taxes is to cut spending. And do you actually know our opinion on the current spending (current as in any of the last budgets passed in the last 40 years)?

when we decided offshore jobs resulting in the shifting of more of the rewards from the economy from wages to profits, from the middle class to the rich, because free trade has to be good because free is good.

Uh, equivocation much on the definition of the word "free"?

when Alan Greenspan and the Fed failed to rein in the banks pushing subprime mortgage-backed derivatives because they thought that the banks had learned to self-regulate.

Oh, even though we mentioned central banking several times, we didn't actually get to Alan Greenspan until now. Of course he would be brought up eventually. You think libertarianism is a religion? Well then he'd be a heretic, the high priest of the religion of government and the archbishop of the federal reserve.

I suppose you think the conspiracy theory is true: Greenspan deliberately acted to ruin the economy through measures libertarians oppose, in order to prove libertarian economics is true.

and the biggest one of all, when we decided to ignore the overwhelming evidence of man-made climate change because the only possible solution for it involves government action.

Hm, I'll have to pass on that one. I've never investigated that issue.

Is it true that the only possible solution involves government action?

the death of the idea of comparative advantage justification for free trade due to widespread industrialization, the ability of capital in the form of money and of ideas, intellectual property, to cross borders in fractions of seconds.

Not sure what you mean by that one.

the obvious contradiction that you can't have freedom without limiting freedom, that I can't enjoy my freedom without someone preventing others having their freedom to rob or murder me, paradoxically, the more freedom you allow the more freedom you have to restrict.

Rights are non-competitive. My right to property does not infringe on your right to property, and vice versa. Likewise the rights to speech, liberty, religion (excepting that your religion is government), etc.

that what makes capitalism so effective is that it channels an otherwise harmful trait, greed, into a very constructive result, but it requires an adult to do the channeling, which is and always has been the government.

The government as the adult? That IS a statement of faith, especially in current year.

that the more complex the economy is, the larger and more complex that the government must be.

That's actually impossible. The more complex the economy, the lighter the touch the government must have. It was possible to have the government you desire back in the days of feudalism.

that what kills competition in the economy faster than anything are the interests of the competitors to avoid price competition at any cost.

So government, which you say is the adult.

that the only theory offered for exactly how the free market would self-regulate is marginal productivity, which, in an industrial economy with effectively no long-term diminishing returns can only result in one of two things, either profitless competition or monopolies and price-fixing cartels. Neither is desirable.

And neither of which are an inevitable result of competition.

there is no reason to believe that prices, outside of a very few commodities, are set by supply and demand, that almost all products and services are set by the producer or provider at the average cost of production plus a markup to provide a potential profit.

Ah. The mystical belief that supply and demand aren't real.

that profits are the residual left from revenues after all costs are accounted for, they aren't a cost of production that must be met, while businesses can operate indefinitely if their variable costs are covered by revenue and this is common to try to preserve the capital in the business, the failing business will not be able to expand or to innovate usually, seriously limiting their business and their longevity, another reason that businesses avoid competing on price.

There are many ways to compete. Things like quality, customer service, not just price. How many can you think of? And yes, price competition exists, which is why in my town there is a WalMart just half a block from a Trader Joes.

that companies avoid at cost competing on price, noted above, and instead compete based on innovation, quality and improving productivity. Äll are desirable.

But they do compete on price, contrary to your assertion otherwise.

wages are a necessary cost of production, if wages don't rise as revenues increase or as productivity increases, profits will increase. An integral part of libertarians dedication to private ownership rights is that the business exists for the sole purpose of making profits for the owners or the pseudo-owners, the stockholders. This precludes wage increases for the workers whose productivity increased, who provided the innovations and instead rewards the non-participants, who in the case of the stockholders didn't even provide the money used to fund the change.

Wages are a cost of production though. What kind of dreamland do you live in where you don't have to pay your workers? And why does that preclude pay raises?

the income inequality that libertarian infused neoliberalism produces is huge amounts of debt. But not just the public debt, that until Trump and the totally Republican controlled government was the obsession of the right, but the private debt, think about student loans to now poorly supported schools or the ever-increasing medical and housing costs, also tracible to neoliberalism, means that private debt is now about 150% of GDP, or about 30 trillion dollars and growing every year. The decades-long average of private debt before the neoliberal period was 60 to 70% of GDP.

There is this interesting belief that income equality is Prima Facie evidence that the market isn't working.

Private debt is much more dangerous for the economy than the public debt. Private debt makes recessions much more likely and means that it is harder and slower to recover from. The current good economy can be traced to, once again, the increase in the private debt. Not a brilliant handling of the economy by either Trump or Obama. We would have to increase wages to see sustainable, debt-free growth, that stabilizes the economy.

OOF! If you can find a debtor bigger than the government I'll be impressed.

 

[lpetrich]

Well, it is true that if your business depends on torture and exploitation, you don't get to have a business. There's a factory with truly inhumane conditions, there's another factory that treats its people well, so everyone will flock to the first because without benevolent dictatorship they won't know any better.

Utopian nonsense. The real world does not work that way.

Jason Harvestdancer, will you defend Google's firing of James Damore? Will you defend the banning of Alex Jones and/or his Infowars channel from Facebook, Apple, YouTube, Spotify, Vimeo, Pinterest, MailChimp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, PayPal, Stitcher, and YouPorn?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So you are saying that if you didn't have the government telling you to choose the better option you would choose the worse option? Your argument says far more about you than it does about me.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

So you are saying that if you didn't have the government telling you to choose the better option you would choose the worse option? Your argument says far more about you than it does about me.

Too many people will choose the greedy option, which is the "best' option for them, but the worst option for society as a whole, especially if they can do it without much visibility or oversight. Yes, we do indeed need regulation.

 

[laughing dog]

Well, it is true that if your business depends on torture and exploitation, you don't get to have a business. There's a factory with truly inhumane conditions, there's another factory that treats its people well, so everyone will flock to the first because without benevolent dictatorship they won't know any better.

Utopian nonsense. The real world does not work that way.

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

 

[Jarhyn]

Well, it is true that if your business depends on torture and exploitation, you don't get to have a business. There's a factory with truly inhumane conditions, there's another factory that treats its people well, so everyone will flock to the first because without benevolent dictatorship they won't know any better.

Utopian nonsense. The real world does not work that way.

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

And it doesn't even describe how it OUGHT to work; that's the purview of ethical philosphy and more recently its upgraded version Game Theory to investigate. Really, religion is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming while PRETENDING the world works that way. I might some day, however, write a horror story of what the world would look like if it did, in fact, work that way.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Well, it is true that if your business depends on torture and exploitation, you don't get to have a business. There's a factory with truly inhumane conditions, there's another factory that treats its people well, so everyone will flock to the first because without benevolent dictatorship they won't know any better.

Utopian nonsense. The real world does not work that way.

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

Which is why you worship Our Government Which Art In Washington.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

Which is why you worship Our Government Which Art In Washington.

Can you explain how the real world does work that way?

 

[laughing dog]

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

Which is why you worship Our Government Which Art In Washington.

Nah, I am way too lazy to worship.
Besides, unlike you, I prefer to think for myself.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Exactly. The real world never works the way any religionist thinks - that's why there is religion in the first place. Religion explains how the world ought to work, not the way it actually works.

Which is why you worship Our Government Which Art In Washington.

Nah, I am way too lazy to worship.
Besides, unlike you, I prefer to think for myself.

Is that why your every response reads as if it were computer coded for a background character?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

It is simply what happens when you leave people alone. Is leaving people alone a delusional lie?

If we'd ever make a reality of libertarianism we'd open up the door to a totalitarian take-over. Because there'd be nothing to stop it. I'm convinced that the inevitable result of libertarianism is a fascist government nightmare.

I'm against libertarianism because I like to keep our freedoms. I believe statism is a necessary protector of our freedoms.

I think they're as naive as communists. It's the same head-in-the-sky utopian and delusional thinking.

That's right. Both systems forget that greed is built deep into human nature. Libertarians expect that greed can be harnessed to the better good, and communists think that it can be banished. Both views are, in my opinion, misguided.

 

[laughing dog]

Nah, I am way too lazy to worship.
Besides, unlike you, I prefer to think for myself.

Is that why your every response reads as if it were computer coded for a background character?

Computer coded but by an intelligent designer.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I am not sure where I read this about Prussia, it was years and years ago when I was reading a lot of history. It is also notable that Prussia was one of the earliest examples of a modern state mandating universal literacy among it's citizens. Again not because of some fuzzy example of liberalism but because illiterate peasants make for poor soldiers and citizens. The Prussians have always had it seems, a streak of no nonsense pragmaticism.

It's a fact that Bismarck, of all politicians, installed a social safety net in Prussia -- precisely in order to guard the monarchy he served. Funny how history works that way, no? Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, yadda yadda.

Someone clearly understood that at its foundation, the state is built on its people; and that if the people are abused, or oppressed or subjugated they will withdraw their support for the social/governmental institutions that work to keep them down. It sometimes takes decades, or even longer, but the thirst for freedom -- and I don't mean the freedom to oppress, but the freedom to be left alone -- is strong in people. They can, have, and will fight for it.

Even though citizens of the USSR enjoyed a safety net, it was clearly not enough a sop to slake the thirst for the freedom to be left the hell alone.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

What part of Libertarianism - stopped child labor exploitation? Can you explain better?

The part that, because of the free market, the standard of living was raised to the point where children no longer needed to work the way they had in the days before the standard of living rose, when everyone worked grueling labor on the farm.

That's not actually what happened, though. There were a couple of factors in mitigating abusive labor practices -- disasters like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, movements like unions, the demand for an educated workforce resulting in mandatory schooling -- that played much larger roles.

Then what? Polluter says, "what are you going to do about it?"

"Sue your pants off. Better give me the deed to your company now and save yourself the bother later."

Except that a large corporation can much better afford the legal fees that can quash the complaints of the aggrieved. Because money talks.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

So you are saying that if you didn't have the government telling you to choose the better option you would choose the worse option? Your argument says far more about you than it does about me.

The fact is that no matter how good you think you are as a person, a good proportion of people would happily shit on you if it gets them a couple of extra beans. "You're projecting!" is an ad-hom argument because it ignores large swathes of human history when government was too weak to regulate human interactions and so those with resources screwed over those without.

I'm all for small government, but I abandoned libertarianism precisely because of its pie-in-the-sky view of human nature. Indeed, I'd bet that government was invented precisely to regulate fair relations between tribe-members. It is in the interest of the nation that its constituent citizens feel like they've gotten a fair shake.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So you are saying that if you didn't have the government telling you to choose the better option you would choose the worse option? Your argument says far more about you than it does about me.

Too many people will choose the greedy option, which is the "best' option for them, but the worst option for society as a whole, especially if they can do it without much visibility or oversight. Yes, we do indeed need regulation.

Yup, one of the big reasons for regulation. There's no other realistic prevention of tragedy of the commons situations.

 

[marc]

Which is why you worship Our Government Which Art In Washington.

This sounds sooo much like when a theist is loosing a debate they assert that atheism is a religion too.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Quick question for any of the libertarians in this thread: Would you like to see the aircraft industry de-regulated? Abolish the FAA entirely and let the free market take care of us?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Is that why your every response reads as if it were computer coded for a background character?

I think you are on to something here. It isn't just Russians who have troll bots.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Is there any difference between libertarian and anarchist?