In response to R.J. Eskow’s article "11 Ways To Test If Libertarians Are Hypocrites"
Backup here
1. “Their political philosophy all but died out in the mid-to-late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires and corporations that found them politically useful.”
Really - billionaires and corporations revived the libertarian political philosophy? If billionaires and corporations became so wealthy and powerful using the the current democratic political system - why would they revive libertarianism which seeks to eliminate that system?
Libertarian political philosophy is pretty much the same economically as conservative political philosophy, and pretty much the same socially as liberal political philosophy. Libertarian political philosophy, however, does not condone or advocate the use of force and violence in furtherance of political or social objectives (aka "Terrorism" 28 CFR 0.85 (L)). How our philosophy is politically useful to billionaires and corporations is beyond me.
What is politically useful for billionaires and corporations is where power is centered and how to control that power for one’s own benefit.
Follow the money:
Obama
.....
Bush
.....
Democrats/Liberals & Republicans/Conservatives
2. “They call themselves “realists” but rely on fanciful theories that have never predicted real-world behavior.”
Which theories are fanciful, Eskow?
Austrian economic theory has a well established track-record of predicting real-world behavior. Ron Paul, when he applies these ‘fanciful theories’, makes predictions so accurate you would think he was using wizardry.
3. “They claim that selfishness makes things better for everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true.”
History shows that the selfishness of a politically dominant minority makes things worse for the majority of people. While those in political power were certainly selfish in stealing trillions of dollars from people to prop up the military industrial complex and bail out large financial institutions – it wasn’t selfishness itself that caused the majority of people to suffer. It was the fact that those people in political power had a monopoly on violence and could steal from one group and give it to another.
Without that power, the selfishness of those in political control would have been relegated to achieving wealth through supplying products and services (via voluntary transactions) that the free market was demanding, not their special interests cronies.
The concept of each individual making decisions to fulfill their own selfish personal desires (whether it is to help others through charity, attain higher education, grow their business and provide quality jobs and benefits for their employees, or to simply purchase a good or service that improves their own life) is the force in the market that ensures that capital is allocated for the benefit of everyone.
Without violence and coercion, the selfishness (demand) in the economy is supplied through voluntary exchange. When two people exchange goods/services/money voluntarily and they both profit from the transaction – that is love. Both parties of the transaction have their own selfish needs, but the transaction serves to enrich both parties in a free market capitalist society.
4.“They claim that a mythical “free market” is better at everything than the government is, yet when they really need government protection, they’re the first to clamor for it.”
Open a cage and let a kidnapped person go free, and there is no need for them to clamor for food and water from their kidnapper.
Yes, the free market is better at everything than the government is. The free market seeks to deliver higher quality products and services, and solve problems because that is how profit is made in the free market. In a free market, the transactions are voluntary. I can’t threaten to kidnap someone and lock them in a cage if they don’t pay me what I command them to like the government currently does.
The government’s current business model is to blow as much money as possible and then go back to the taxpayer and say, “we couldn’t solve the problem, we just need more money from you.” Every lucid person is completely aware of the fact that government has no financial or political incentive to ever solve any problems. Government needs the problems to persist so they can use it as a pretext to steal more cash and expand their power next year. That is the only way the "business" of government grows.
The only time libertarians need “government protection” and clamor for it is when government, at some form or level, is threatening harm against us. Remove the political terrorist gangs who use government to impose their will on others – and there is no need to “clamor” for government protection.
5.“Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order” - and if not, why not?
If we agree that “spontaneous” means “without central direction” in this context, this should be fairly easy to suss out.
If the union was formed, without central direction, by individuals who coordinated their actions with those of others – then yes, it is an example of spontaneous order. If the union was formed and governed under the central direction of the National Labor Relations Act, the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, enforced by the National Labor Relations Board which is paid for by coercive taxation, and finally approved by the government – then it is not “spontaneous” in the fact that it is “centrally directed”.
If the political party was formed by individuals, without central direction, who coordinated their actions with those of others – then yes, it is an example of spontaneous order. If the party was formed under the central direction of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which is enforced by the Federal Election Commission and paid for by coercive taxation, and access to the ballot was governed by a multitude of state laws and enforcement agencies – then it is not “spontaneous” in the fact that it is “centrally directed”.
If the elections were the result of individuals who coordinated their actions with those of others without central direction – then yes, those elections are an example of spontaneous order. If the elections were a result of central direction from a central authority which decides who is even allowed on the ballot – then it is not “spontaneous” in the fact that it is “centrally directed”.
If Occupy and other social movements are the result of individuals who coordinated their actions with those of others without central direction – then yes, those movements are an example of spontaneous order. If the movements are like the “Arab Spring” and centrally directed by coercive and manipulative central agencies who hide behind a veil of secrecy - they are not “spontaneous” in the fact that they are “centrally directed”.
6.“Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?”
Of course, each person should be rewarded for their value in the production. With the division of labor, there are many different people all working together to organize and produce what the market is demanding. Each of the people involved should be rewarded according to the value they added to the product or service. Some people, like engineers, add a ton of value and should be paid more for their contribution. Some people don’t want to deal with the math and just want to come in and sweep the floor after the shift. Their work has value, but it is not as much as the engineer. It doesn’t make one person more important or better than another, but the market force decides the value of each person’s labor and they should be rewarded and recognized accordingly.
7.“Is our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market forces?”
Absolutely. Libertarians believe that people have the right to form a union and collectively negotiate the value of their labor. It is the same right that a contractor has to bid the cost of their labor against competitors for a potential customer.
Libertarians support highly skilled trade/craft people organizing and offering employers the highest quality of labor for a premium price. Libertarians would advocate that labor unions use their revenue streams to increase the productivity and intelligence of their members through training and further education so when the union sits down with a perspective business, they can market their people as the best available and demonstrate how it would make that business more profitable through higher quality production, reliability, accountability, and less waste.
Libertarians also believe that people have a right to negotiate the value of their labor on their own like an independent contractor. This is an important market force that libertarians are well aware of.
Libertarians do not believe, however, that labor unions have the right to negotiate the price of someone’s labor without that person’s consent. Libertarians don’t believe that labor unions have the right to coerce or force workers to join or pay dues. Libertarians do not believe that employers should be forced to use union labor.
If the employer does not perceive that the labor union brings enough value to the table, libertarians feel the employer has the right to hire people who will provide that value, whether that be independent contractors or non-union employees, who will undercut the union’s price.
If the employer’s business fails from a lack of quality labor by going with the lowest bidder, that is the market force feedback mechanism telling other businesses in that field that paying a higher price for higher quality labor generates a greater return on the investment.
8.“Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?”
As a libertarian, I am well aware of the ongoing foreclosure fraud with MERS and the big banks. When I stood up for my neighbors against these large financial institutions, the FBI took action to nullify my work and protect the banks.
As you can see from my report, the “unwillingness of the government to regulate them” wasn’t from a lack of regulations/laws or resources to prosecute those banks for fraud – it was because government agents are getting a cut of the loot.
Deregulation didn’t lead to the foreclosure crisis – it was government interference.
The global financial crisis was “engineered” by big banks and the government together.
In a free market, the ultimate form of regulation is the consumer deciding who to do business with. If a business conducts itself immorally or unethically – the quickest and most efficient way to regulate that business is to cease conducting transactions with them. Why are people still banking with Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and others after all the scandals and fraud? Because they think the government is going to regulate them and keep them honest.
Government regulators have no incentive to put these criminal enterprises out of business. Indeed, every government regulator is usually on a ‘revolving door’ with these corporations, and their personal incentive is to ensure themselves a lucrative position in the future. Even if the ‘revolving door’ were somehow addressed; which one of these regulators has an incentive to put all these criminal banks out of business? That means that government agency will need less regulators and less taxpayer money the next budget year, which is completely contradictory to how government currently operates. All the government regulators want is a cut of the loot.
Keep in mind that no statist publication ever ran a story about me except the government’s “fake news” story of how I was a crazy stalker harassing my neighbor. Even the people and major corporations who intentionally and willfully published this fake information about me won’t share my side of the story.
Do you want to know why that is? It’s the same reason Salon wouldn’t respond to my request to publish my story. It’s because their political and social objectives are more important to them than even the most basic concepts of right and wrong. Those are the exact same kinds of people who are government regulators. The same exact people you are saying should be in charge. It's who you are as a person, R.J. Eskow.
9. “Does our libertarian believe in democracy? If yes, explain what’s wrong with governments that regulate.”
If by ‘democracy’ you mean; “a government by the people, ruled by the majority, in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections” - then no, libertarians don’t believe in that.
No individual possesses the natural right to rule over anyone else. No individual possesses the right to use force and violence in furtherance of their political or social objectives. Because no individual possesses this right, there is no mechanism that would allow any group of people to convey or delegate to anyone else the right to do something that individuals do not possess themselves.
The "majority" has no more right to rule over others than a king or dictator does. Until someone wants to prove their claim and provide evidence that they possess the right to rule over people – just like with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny - libertarians aren’t going to believe it. “That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”.
Individuals do, however, possess the right to use force and violence in the imminent defense of their life, liberty, and property. Because individuals possess this right, they can logically delegate it to others (including a government). That is the only power libertarians believe a government could possibly have – the power to defend the natural inalienable rights of the individual.
Libertarians don’t believe the wealthy should rule over others, either. We don’t believe in rulers at all. There should be a simple, well understood set of laws governing how we treat others, and those principles should be the only “ruler” we measure our conduct by and hold each other accountable to.
While utopian, the long term libertarian vision involves creating a citizenry that is morally and socially evolved to the point where there really is no need at all for any government. While this is difficult to do in a society and system of terrorists who will choke people like Eric Garner to death for not “paying his fair share”, we believe in the cause of liberty and will continue advocating for it even while the sociopaths you’ve unleashed on your fellow man are beating people up, kidnapping people, and stealing property.
10. “Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?”
Do you think a person who was kidnapped and locked in a cage should be able to use the resources given to them by their kidnapper to preach for their release?
Do you have any evidence that the internet, phones, computers, education, banks, and wealth wouldn’t exist without government intervention in the market?
It makes more sense to me that the tremendous amounts of capital that governments have squandered murdering people over the past few hundred years would have gone to make a veritable paradise long ago. Imagine all the incredible ideas and innovations in those dead people that could have propelled mankind to the stars and ended scarcity. Those innovations and ideas were snuffed out by governments along with all those individuals.
Furthermore, libertarians have no problem using the wealth that was immorally and unequally re-distributed by government to preach for a proper role of government. That is the crux of our argument – that wealth doesn’t belong to government or the cronies they handed it to. It belongs to the people who produced it and government’s role should be to protect the individual’s right to decide where every penny of that production goes.
11. “Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property”?
Libertarians hold that government can only logically possess the right to do things that individuals have a right to do themselves. In respect to intellectual property, if a person or business keeps a process or product of their intellect secret, and any other person were to use fraud, force, or coercion to steal that intellectual property – then the government should protect the victim and their right to keep trade secrets and their intellectual property.
If, however, I were to invent some device or service and sell it on the market, I do not possess the right to use force and violence against another person to stop them from spinning-off my idea. So long as they are not trying to defraud customers by representing their spin-off as mine, they have every right to reverse engineer what I did and market it under their own branding. They just cannot use force and violence against me to obtain my information or trade secrets. Any information they obtain must be done so through voluntary transactions.
If some company invents the cure for cancer and charges people $1M for it - I have every right to purchase that cure, dissect it, reverse engineer it, develop a competitive alternative, and put it on the market under my own brand name or under a cooperative where members can own the cure themselves. If the original inventor wants to keep their formula secret, they are free to develop a method of distributing their cure in which the people who dispense and receive the cure are contractually bound to prevent the formula from falling into others’ hands. They just can’t use the force and violence of the government to prevent others from reverse engineering the cure through voluntary transactions.
12. “Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of the marketplace?”
No, we do not accept that large groups of people getting together and using force and violence in furtherance of their political or social objectives is anything close to a “free” market. In a free market, the interactions are completely voluntary (both the seller and buyer agree to an exchange in which they both benefit). In a democracy, the 51% benefit at the expense of the 49% who disagree. If both parties of a transaction don’t consent, someone is getting raped.
A democratically elected government is not a demonstration of “spontaneous order” because it is a product of central direction and authority - not spontaneous. There is nobody alive today who ratified the US Constitution or consented to the volumes of federal codes. There isn’t a scrap of evidence which proves the Constitution and codes apply to someone for the sole reason that they are physically located in the United States.
There isn’t even “majority” rule in the US – we are run by a dominant minority
It’s also been called, quite accurately, an oligarchy.
In a democracy, you have a system of political control which relies upon majority approval, and as Edward Bernays wrote in “Propaganda” - “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
Democracy is not a form of the marketplace. It is directly opposed to the core principle of the free market, which is voluntary transactions and the ownership of capital by the very people who create it. Democracy is simply violent and coercive rule by a group of people who have no real authority, and certainly no moral character sufficient enough to wield such power responsibly.
13. “Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?”
Of course we do. But in my case, it wasn’t Wells Fargo tellers or loan officers kicking in my door with guns and taking the evidence that proved they committed fraud to steal property they had no claim to. It was government. It wasn’t just a few “bad apples” in government. It was literally every level of government and every agency, from the local level to the Federal level, involved to protect this corrupt bank.
If a corporation achieves a monopoly by out performing all the competitors and providing the market with great products and services at affordable prices – libertarians completely support them in this venture. If those corporations use government regulations and agents to stifle their competition, capture the market, and defraud customers; then libertarians do not find that acceptable. One avenue is through voluntary transactions – the other through the force and violence of the state. The former moral, the latter immoral.
Libertarians do feel it is important to avoid the creation of syndicates that interfere with the market. But the answer is not using force and violence through government to achieve that end. The solution is free market regulation – the free and unregulated ability for people to spontaneously get together and form cooperatives, employee owned companies, credit unions, currencies, and public utility districts where the owners of the enterprise are the very people receiving the goods and services. Competition is not a sin.
14. “Ayn Rand was an adamant opponent of good works, writing that “The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.” That raises another test for our libertarian: Does he think that Rand was off the mark on this one, or does he agree that historical figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”?
You might want to add the rest of that quote from Rand:
“The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality -- the man who lives to serve others -- is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism.”
Libertarians don’t think that figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”. But, the point Rand made about motives being parasitic rings true. The man who lives to serve others is the slave to those parasites. The man who chooses to feed those parasites is ‘parasitic in motive’ because he knowingly enables their parasitic behavior instead of teaching them to become independent and productive.
Many libertarians would also argue that a person enslaving themselves voluntarily, in the name of love, for their children is not parasitic in motive. So long as the parent is working to help their children become independent and self sustaining, it’s reasonable to believe their motive isn’t to create a perpetual parasite that will feed off them or others.
But, if a politician were to promise free goodies to people for votes and, upon election, ensured a steady stream of “free stuff” for the parasites at the expense of others under the altruistic guise of “serving them” – this politician would be ‘parasitic in motive’ because they would be willfully enabling parasitic people.
Crony capitalists aside, there are a multitude of wealthy people in this country who are mentors and want to teach their apprentices how to become wealthy and successful as well. Imagine how much more good those wealthy people would do if government didn’t steal money from them and hand it over to cronies and parasites?
15. “If you believe in the free market, why weren’t you willing to accept as final the judgment against libertarianism rendered decades ago in the free and unfettered marketplace of ideas?"
Was there a final judgment? Liberals, especially classical liberals, were championing the idea of personal freedom. At the same time, conservatives were championing the ideas of free market capitalism. In the ‘marketplace of ideas’, the two core concepts of libertarianism (social and economic liberty) were held by millions and millions of people decades ago and still through today.
Libertarianism is just a rational plea to liberals and conservatives that we can create a spontaneous order of immense wealth if we can all just agree to stop using terrorism as a means to further our political and social objectives. If an idea is truly good, it won’t take the threat and/or use of violence to gain compliance in the marketplace.
Who would ever give up on propagating a message as moral, evergreen, and beautiful as that? I won't, because I'd fail the test of life and permanently brand myself a hypocrite.