Libertarianism kills ... people

[SimpleDon]

Libertarianism kills ... people


I am cleaning out my store of un-posted tomes. I wrote this in August when the article appeared but didn't post in deference to the people here who put more belief and faith into libertarianism than into reality.

As this pandemic has ground on to top 370,000 deaths and with the need to continue to wear a mask and to social distance for the six months until we all can receive the vaccine, I am feeling much less charitable toward the libertarians amongst us.

The New York Times has a news article, The Unique U. S. Failure to Control the Virus that attempts to explain why the US nearly alone among the developed capitalistic democracies has not been able to contain the virus.

Over the past month*, about 1.9 million Americans have tested positive for the virus. More than five times as many as in all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined.

* July 2020 -- sd​

The article points to two reasons why the US did so badly compared to the other highly developed countries.

The obvious one is the tragic incompetence of the Trump administration dealing with the disease. The article points out the problems with the travel bans, repeated breakdowns in testing, the closing of the White House office dealing with pandemics, the lack of planning on the national level, the ignoring of the advice of the public health experts, the mixed and confusing messages from our political leaders, primarily from Trump and his sycophants, the completely unnecessary politicization of wearing a mask, and the way too early reopening of the economy that helped spread the virus without any real economic gains.

The second reason the US did so badly responding to the pandemic, according to the article, is this thread's subject. Here is the entire point in the article.

First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes — including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy — than in most other rich countries.

“As an American, I think there is a lot of good to be said about our libertarian tradition,” Dr. Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist and vice dean at the University of Washington School of Public Health said. “But this is the consequence — we don’t succeed as well as a collective.”

I have two minor major quibbles about what Dr. Baeten and the NY Times said. First, I can't say much good about our libertarian tradition or about its immediate predecessor philosophy, anarchism, especially their economic philosophy.

And the US's health care system hasn't produced worse medical outcomes than most other rich countries, it has worse medical outcomes than any other rich country while costing much more than in any other country, twice the average per capita cost of the other developed countries.

There is no other explanation for this than the major change over the last fifty years in health care in the US. That which can't be spoken aloud at the risk of being condemned as a neoliberal heretic by the true believers who have captured the economic narrative by which we govern the nation. What changed is introducing the profit motive and Wall Street into health care in the US over the last fifty years. Largely because of another libertarian idea, that we will have better health care outcomes if we subject health care to the market's profit motive and put Wall Street instead of doctors in charge of the system's decisions.

Discuss:

Is it fair to point to libertarianism's attitude of maximizing personal freedom as a major contribution to the failure of the collective in the US to do what is required to contain the virus?

That in essence, the libertarians insist on having the freedom to infect themselves, their families, and any random strangers they are around with no negative consequences because this is truly personal freedom?

Or are these part of what must be the vast majority of libertarians, the not-a-true®-libertarian that we hear so much about when we have these discussions?

Where do true® libertarians come down on the questions of mandatory mask-wearing and business closings?

When does do no harm to others kick in?

Do libertarians really believe that the answer to our problems with healthcare costs is solved by paying Wall Street's health care insurance companies up to 25% more than the cost of the actual medical care?

The health care insurance companies make more profit as the costs of medical care increase, and the health care insurance companies largely determine how much the health care providers are paid for medical care. Should we worry that this dynamic would result in medical costs increases far exceeding the cost of living increases?​

 

[Jarhyn]

Libertarianism kills ... people


I am cleaning out my store of un-posted tomes. I wrote this in August when the article appeared but didn't post in deference to the people here who put more belief and faith into libertarianism than into reality.

As this pandemic has ground on to top 370,000 deaths and with the need to continue to wear a mask and to social distance for the six months until we all can receive the vaccine, I am feeling much less charitable toward the libertarians amongst us.

The New York Times has a news article, The Unique U. S. Failure to Control the Virus that attempts to explain why the US nearly alone among the developed capitalistic democracies has not been able to contain the virus.

Over the past month*, about 1.9 million Americans have tested positive for the virus. More than five times as many as in all of Europe, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia combined.

* July 2020 -- sd​

The article points to two reasons why the US did so badly compared to the other highly developed countries.

The obvious one is the tragic incompetence of the Trump administration dealing with the disease. The article points out the problems with the travel bans, repeated breakdowns in testing, the closing of the White House office dealing with pandemics, the lack of planning on the national level, the ignoring of the advice of the public health experts, the mixed and confusing messages from our political leaders, primarily from Trump and his sycophants, the completely unnecessary politicization of wearing a mask, and the way too early reopening of the economy that helped spread the virus without any real economic gains.

The second reason the US did so badly responding to the pandemic, according to the article, is this thread's subject. Here is the entire point in the article.

First, the United States faced longstanding challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. That tradition is one reason the United States suffers from an unequal health care system that has long produced worse medical outcomes — including higher infant mortality and diabetes rates and lower life expectancy — than in most other rich countries.

“As an American, I think there is a lot of good to be said about our libertarian tradition,” Dr. Jared Baeten, an epidemiologist and vice dean at the University of Washington School of Public Health said. “But this is the consequence — we don’t succeed as well as a collective.”

I have two minor major quibbles about what Dr. Baeten and the NY Times said. First, I can't say much good about our libertarian tradition or about its immediate predecessor philosophy, anarchism, especially their economic philosophy.

And the US's health care system hasn't produced worse medical outcomes than most other rich countries, it has worse medical outcomes than any other rich country while costing much more than in any other country, twice the average per capita cost of the other developed countries.

There is no other explanation for this than the major change over the last fifty years in health care in the US. That which can't be spoken aloud at the risk of being condemned as a neoliberal heretic by the true believers who have captured the economic narrative by which we govern the nation. What changed is introducing the profit motive and Wall Street into health care in the US over the last fifty years. Largely because of another libertarian idea, that we will have better health care outcomes if we subject health care to the market's profit motive and put Wall Street instead of doctors in charge of the system's decisions.

Discuss:

Is it fair to point to libertarianism's attitude of maximizing personal freedom as a major contribution to the failure of the collective in the US to do what is required to contain the virus?

That in essence, the libertarians insist on having the freedom to infect themselves, their families, and any random strangers they are around with no negative consequences because this is truly personal freedom?

Or are these part of what must be the vast majority of libertarians, the not-a-true®-libertarian that we hear so much about when we have these discussions?

Where do true® libertarians come down on the questions of mandatory mask-wearing and business closings?

When does do no harm to others kick in?

Do libertarians really believe that the answer to our problems with healthcare costs is solved by paying Wall Street's health care insurance companies up to 25% more than the cost of the actual medical care?

The health care insurance companies make more profit as the costs of medical care increase, and the health care insurance companies largely determine how much the health care providers are paid for medical care. Should we worry that this dynamic would result in medical costs increases far exceeding the cost of living increases?​

Pretty sure the answers you are looking for are "HAHA, fuck you, I got mine money/vaccine/youth," But with extra steps added in.

 

[Swammerdami]

Labels get thrown around with utter abandon in America. Top politicians who call themselves "libertarian" these days are, without exception, utter nitwits, laughably moronic.

It wasn't always like this. In the 20th century some who called themselves "libertarian" (including myself) felt that the "magic of free markets" could guide us toward optimal outcomes if external costs are afforded. For example, carbon tax is a perfect example of intelligent libertarian thinking: the "external" costs of carbon burning are accounted for with a simple tax. Circa 1990 a unique combination of environmentalists and libertarians passed the Clean Air Act.

Those days are long gone. Talk to a 21st-century "libertarian" and learn they oppose carbon tax because "all taxes are bad ... all government is corrupt."

On The.Other.Message.Board there were occasional threads where rational thinkers debated with libertarians. I tried to focus discussion on two specific examples: that governments succeeded in eradicating smallpox, and the utility of dams to control the floods that could plunge a country into inundation and famine. One libertarian regarded the eradication of smallpox as government overreach — he should have the right to decide whether his kids were vaccinated for smallpox or not. Another libertarian insisted that there was no need for large dams for flood control — buildable only by government — because farmers could "insure" their crops by clever use of rainfall futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade. Another libertarian, with a mishmash of ideas built on Hayek's writings, felt that police should be fully privatized and allowed to commit torture as long as the suspect subsequently confessed. (If instead the suspect could prove his innocence, then he could sue the police for the torture.)

Quite bluntly, anyone calling himself a "libertarian" these days is, in effect, wearing a sign that says "Kick me! I'm a blithering dolt."

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

When I look at the situation in DC, both before the election and after, I see Republicans and Democrats. They're the ones in charge. I see the same thing on the state level across the board. I even se it at the county and city level.

Where is this mythical place you reference where libertarianism is the order of the day?

 

[Politesse]

I think you are confusing libertarian social philosophy with the Libertarian Party. This is a bit like confusing democracy for the Democratic Party. The kind of libertarianism meant in the OP refers to the general American ethos of valuing individual freedom of choice and opportunity over other social or ethical concerns. This is something generally true of American popular culture, that "freedom" is taken to be an assumed virtue even if one's political proclivities lead you to define freedoms one way over another (or those of one class of Americans over another's as is often the case).

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I think you are confusing libertarian social philosophy with the Libertarian Party.

It isn't advocated for by the Republicans or Democrats. The largest party that does advocate it is the Libertarian Party.

If you look at 99% of Republicans and 99% of Democrats, they aren't libertarians.

 

[Politesse]

Would you say that the Democrats and the Republicans are too.... confining and rigid for you?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I'd say that Republicans are too conservative for me and Democrats are too progressive for me.

 

[SimpleDon]

I have resurrected a zombie thread of mine to add another rather surprising voice supporting the proposition I laid out in it. It is from one of the two conservative voices on The New York Times editorial and opinion columnist boards, Robert Brooks. He is a confirmed neoliberal.

Neoliberalism is the libertarian political economics that has done so much to kill our economy, the fantasy that we should change our economy into a self-regulating free market, with free trade, deregulation, a return to the gold standard, the elimination of cash welfare, which is necessary to open borders to let the labor market be free and to pay wages to workers the true^© value of their labor. In other words, the US's current political economics.

It is in the May 6, 2021 edition of the Times titled, Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure. He doesn't mention libertarianism as the cause. Still, clearly, he blames our lack of "... voluntary sacrifice for the common good and trust in institutions and each other" for the poor response to the pandemic and to the means to end it without millions of deaths, herd immunity by vaccination.

I would be hard-pressed to find a better reason for the turn from the collective effort that ended the Great Depression and defeated fascism in World War II than the libertarian philosophy of promoting individualism over collectivism in virtually every aspect of society and the economy. Collectivism is nowhere better demonstrated than in government.

In addition, Brooks makes some good points about how distrust is earned and that for example, the government must earn back the trust of the citizens of the US by boosting the economy and reducing the current income inequality that has disadvantaged so many on both sides of the partisan divide. His solution is somewhat surprising for the conservative neoliberal Brooks, Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.

The Biden agenda would pour trillions of dollars into precisely those populations who have been left out and are most distrustful — the people who used to work in manufacturing and who might now get infrastructure jobs or the ones who care for the elderly. This money would not only ease their financial stress, but it would also be a material display that someone sees them, that we are in this together.

 

[repoman]

Lack of health insurance security for the luckily rare side effects from the vaccine.

These rare events along with a whole host of scammers of loonies with fake or munchausen events being shouted from the mountain tops from conservative social media.

They think only about the death rates for below 50 or even years of age from the original strain, which were pitiful. Nothing about the variants or the pain in the ass up to debilitation from long covid.

So they are weighing orders of magnitude increased threats from vaccines and OoM decreased estimates of the real damage from current or very possible strains. They literally think there is a 1% chance of dying or going medically bankrupt from these vaccines, which at this point is just not panning out at all.

On the other hand, there is a lot of bad will earned by big pharma and their captured regulators and advisors in the FDA/CDC/WHO and so on. Shaky statin studies, Vioxx, opiates and lots of other corruption.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This past week the story of Everest Romney a high school basketball player has been making the rounds. Not sure what to make of it, but you can look on Twitter and it is very histrionic about it.

https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news/draper-teenager-hospitalized-with-blood-clots-after-covid-19-vaccine-shot/

DRAPER, Utah (ABC4) – The day after his COVID-19 vaccine shot, 17-year-old Everest Romney felt his neck swelling. In the coming days, he suffered from severe headaches.

His mother, who tells ABC4 the pediatrician initially dismissed the symptoms as a pulled neck muscle, says she was convinced it was something else.

“He could not move his neck without the assistance of his hands,” says mother Cherie Romney.

That was just a few days after the shot. Plus, now her son suffered from fevers and incessant headaches.

Romney says she knew she needed to keep advocating to doctors that something wasn’t right.

Finally, after more than a week of the symptoms, the Corner Canyon High School basketball player and his family had answers: two blood clots inside his brain, and one on the outside.

I just got my second Pfizer shot 3 hours ago, I am not so worried in a statistical sense.

Luckily these vaccines are very effective, so in this case these companies don't have to sell poison or overrated crap. White lower/middle class Trump voters probably have seen the bullshit from pharma more than Biden voters. They are in areas that have had more opiate addicts and so on.

But the captured regulators are pooh poohing treatments like ivermectin and ignoring all the positive studies and pouncing on the rare negative ones. Those guys came from pharma and will likely go back again as consultants.

 

[Bomb#20]

But the captured regulators are pooh poohing treatments like ivermectin and ignoring all the positive studies and pouncing on the rare negative ones. Those guys came from pharma and will likely go back again as consultants.

That makes no sense. Why on earth would captured regulators ignore positive studies and pounce on rare negative ones? Pharma would benefit from the reverse bias. Regulators ignore positive studies and pounce on rare negative ones because the regulatory agencies have evolved a culture of No because everybody wants to be the next Frances Kelsey.

 

[Angry Floof]

"Do no harm to others" only applies to the libertarian's own hands. Supporting policies that do harm to others indirectly through the politicians enacting those policies doesn't count as anything libertarians should be concerned with. Maybe this is why libertarianism appeals so much to very short sighted people without the capacity to see past the ends of their own noses or care about things that don't affect them directly.

 

[Patooka]

Where is this mythical place you reference where libertarianism is the order of the day?

Mogadishu in the early 90's was a splendid example of Libertarian Free Market Economics at work.

 

[SimpleDon]

I think you are confusing libertarian social philosophy with the Libertarian Party. This is a bit like confusing democracy for the Democratic Party. The kind of libertarianism meant in the OP refers to the general American ethos of valuing individual freedom of choice and opportunity over other social or ethical concerns. This is something generally true of American popular culture, that "freedom" is taken to be an assumed virtue even if one's political proclivities lead you to define freedoms one way over another (or those of one class of Americans over another's as is often the case).

I am not confusing libertarian philosophy with the libertarian party. I know little to nothing about the libertarian party except that one of its presidential candidates wears a boot as a hat. It is interesting that you don't consider the libertarian party to be based on the libertarian philosophy. Whose philosophy is the party based on, then?

I am talking about the libertarian philosophy of Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Nozick, and all the way back to the original American anarchist, Benjamin Tucker. I am talking about the philosophy that empathizes individualism over collective action, which says that society as whole benefits if we forgo collective action and instead rely on individuals each maximizing their own freedom, the attitude that has served us so poorly in the pandemic to this day.

Why do you think that libertarian philosophy had no impact on the "American ethos of valuing individual freedom of choice and opportunity over other social or ethical concerns?" Do you really believe that social concerns aren't based on ethics? That the social concern about large numbers of people dying is not based on ethics? It is American ethos that caused the vast majority of what, just short of 600,000 people to die needlessly and the libertarian philosophy had no part in promoting that American ethos? There is an element of lying to yourself about this.

 

[untermensche]

It is not libertarian party.

It is Libertarian party.

And it is a strange worship of capitalism with a few ideas about drugs and prostitution.

 

[Swammerdami]

I have an extremely low opinion of David Brooks (any relation to Robert Brooks? ). Do I need to start a new thread in Rants to express it?

Brooks wrote that he was a liberal in college until he heard Milton Friedman speak. I've always thought that was a mark of intellectual light-weight: Books and papers didn't do it for him, but a charismatic speaker did! (When I hear Friedman speak, I think "Yep. He's as nutso as his detractors say.")

The hypocrisy of David Brooks staggers the imagination. In a column circa 2002 he wrote something like — yes, I'm exaggerating slightly —

All you Demturds need to stop picking on George W. Bush. Sure he stuck us in a foolish trillion-dollar war; didn't you ever make a mistake? Just shut up already.

Yeah I know that while Clinton was Prez I spent Every.Single.Column ranting about Monica and the Semen Stain. But I regret all that now. My reformed self would have been more respectful, so you Demturds need to grow up.

He wrote an article for The Atlantic lamenting that universities hired few right-wingers. Uhh, they don't think their biology department should teach creationism? They don't think their sociology or economics departments should cram Christianity or Laissez-Faire into their students? Or — most importantly — teaching is a low-paying profession altruists choose; conservatives tend to be greedy.

On a MLK birthday, Brooks spent 3 sentences applauding King; then the rest of the column segued into a GOP advertisement.

Just looking at his face makes me want to puke.

I have resurrected a zombie thread of mine to add another rather surprising voice supporting the proposition I laid out in it. It is from one of the two conservative voices on The New York Times editorial and opinion columnist boards, Robert Brooks. He is a confirmed neoliberal. ...

It is in the May 6, 2021 edition of the Times titled, Our Pathetic Herd Immunity Failure. He doesn't mention libertarianism as the cause. Still, clearly, he blames our lack of "... voluntary sacrifice for the common good and trust in institutions and each other" for the poor response to the pandemic and to the means to end it without millions of deaths, herd immunity by vaccination.

Brooks is one of these guys who likes to leap from specifics to some huge pseudo-intellectual reduction. He always gets these wrong. But when he sticks to facts, he often gets it right. And he isn't a Trump-licker. Sometimes I think that if he read his own columns with an open mind, he might restore what was once probably a 110+ IQ.

Could today’s version of America have been able to win World War II? It hardly seems possible.

That victory required national cohesion, voluntary sacrifice for the common good and trust in institutions and each other. America’s response to Covid-19 suggests that we no longer have sufficient quantities of any of those things.
...

We’re not asking you to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima; we’re asking you to walk into a damn CVS.

Spot on! But why is this, Brooks? Much of the problem is due to assholes like YOU, spewing "conservative" garbage and enabling right-wing liars. How much do the Kochs pay you?

 

[untermensche]

I am dubious of the claim that the US won WWII.

In the Pacific mostly.

In the West mostly the Russians won the war.

 

[Swammerdami]

I am dubious of the claim that the US won WWII.

In the Pacific mostly.

In the West mostly the Russians won the war.

The Soviets did not defeat Germany without assistance.  Lend-Lease

The United States delivered to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945 the following:

• 427,284 trucks,
• 13,303 combat vehicles,
• 35,170 motorcycles,
• 2,328 ordnance service vehicles,
• 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the high-octane aviation fuel,
• 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.),
• 1,911 steam locomotives,
• 66 diesel locomotives,
• 9,920 flat cars,
• 1,000 dump cars,
• 120 tank cars, and
• 35 heavy machinery cars.

Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption. One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company's River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR.

Between June 1941 and May 1945, Britain delivered to the USSR:

• 3,000+ Hurricanes aircraft
• 4,000+ other aircraft
• 27 naval vessels
• 5,218 tanks (including 1,380 Valentines from Canada)
• 5,000+ anti-tank guns
• 4,020 ambulances and trucks
• 323 machinery trucks (mobile vehicle workshops equipped with generators and all the welding and power tools required to perform heavy servicing)
• 1,212 Universal Carriers and Loyd Carriers (with another 1,348 from Canada)
• 1,721 motorcycles
• £1.15bn worth of aircraft engines
• 1,474 radar sets
• 4,338 radio sets
• 600 naval radar and sonar sets
• Hundreds of naval guns
• 15 million pairs of boots

In total 4 million tonnes of war material including food and medical supplies were delivered. The munitions totaled £308m (not including naval munitions supplied), the food and raw materials totaled £120m in 1946 index. In accordance with the Anglo-Soviet Military Supplies Agreement of June 27, 1942, military aid sent from Britain to the Soviet Union during the war was entirely free of charge.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Spot on! But why is this, Brooks? Much of the problem is due to assholes like YOU, spewing "conservative" garbage and enabling right-wing liars. How much do the Kochs pay you?

Yeah. He is the intellectual side that tried to spin things to fall into an intellectual version of the Moore-Coulter. Like arguing in '00 that W is inexperienced, mental lightweight, nothing like his father and the right-wing response is 'But will Gore be his own person?', pretty much agreeing with the inadequacies, but then ignoring them and creating a false narrative about the other politician. The Brooks and Wills helped bring us here and are now a little stunned by it, but even then, don't dare to take responsibility, and continue to declare the Dems as some sort of far left wing monster.

They always find a way to tar and feather the Dems, even after the insurrection. Maybe time to renames these people Yeahbuts.

 

[untermensche]

I am dubious of the claim that the US won WWII.

In the Pacific mostly.

In the West mostly the Russians won the war.

The Soviets did not defeat Germany without assistance.

If the Russians had been defeated as easily as the French the Germans would have then thrown everything at England.

The US and England armed Russia to save England.

In terms of the cost of military lives lost the US did next to nothing compared to Russia in Europe.