Quick Debate on Libertarianism:
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Dr.D: nice to butt horns with you on economic policy. i checked out milton friedman and libertarianism. i'm in favor of the decriminalization of pot and of prostitution, so i do have some libertarian bones in my body. and i don't reject the use of school vouchers that can be taken wherever. i like the distinction between positive rights (to shelter, education, etc.) and negative rights (to not be assaulted or robbed).
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what makes me uneasy is the suggestion of ideology in discussions such as these. i'd have to pay more attention to friedman to see if he seemed to be speaking ideologically or sensibly. in economic and legal policy, i just want to know if it works or not. perhaps in some places they've already given school vouchers a try. with enough cases, you can be scientific and decide whether vouchers work or not, do they help some people more than others, and if they do work is there a certain voucher system that works better than others. same for prostitution and drugs. i'll check out holland next time i'm there (though holland is quite socialist in some respects, with a high rate of taxation, lots of social programs).
what makes me uneasy is the suggestion of ideology in discussions such as these. i'd have to pay more attention to friedman to see if he seemed to be speaking ideologically or sensibly. in economic and legal policy, i just want to know if it works or not. perhaps in some places they've already given school vouchers a try. with enough cases, you can be scientific and decide whether vouchers work or not, do they help some people more than others, and if they do work is there a certain voucher system that works better than others. same for prostitution and drugs. i'll check out holland next time i'm there (though holland is quite socialist in some respects, with a high rate of taxation, lots of social programs).
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at least, i've had one misunderstanding cleared up, which is that libertarianism does not equal no government, which would be anarchy.
at least, i've had one misunderstanding cleared up, which is that libertarianism does not equal no government, which would be anarchy.
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in the end, i would hope that i have no ideological commitments but would be willing to submit whatever beliefs i have about what kind of government/law/legal policy to the test of history.
Biff: absence of ideology sounds pretty libertarian to me. Also sounds like George W. Bush and Conservatism, both of which have a great distrust of ideas; one of the reasons young Platos mock them both. Check out more of Friedman and his statistics on how the passage of minimum-wage laws causes unemployment in urban young blacks to double or triple (having to pay higher wages, stores usually fire their low-caste employees and employ kids from middle-class homes). Friedman on unions is interesting too. Companies in stable industries have stable profit ratios. When unions come and up wages, the money doesn't come from the boss who can't afford to lower his profit ratio without endangering company re-investment in capital goods, etc. (Besides, if profit ratio is too low and can be expected to remain low, owners just close up the business, sell off the equipment, and reinvest in a new industry. It's done all the time.) Typically, the non-unionized employees take a loss in wages. This is the pattern because unions usually only cover part of the employee structure, not all. To pay unionized employees higher wages and increase their benefits, the non-unionized employees have to pay the bill. Walmart keeps unions out because it was unions that led to the inflexibility and bankruptcy of Woolworth's and the other chains that it used to compete with. As soon as unions arrive, Walmart will head on a downward trajectory and a new competitor will replace end up replacing it. But not before we have to pay higher prices to buy precisely the same thing.
Think of government as a huge un-fireable union; no matter how badly run, the bureaucracy staggers on. 9/11 is the quintessential example. Who got fired? Who was punished? Nobody. That's paradigmatic of unions. National security in the US used to be managed in part by the private sector (Pinkerton's etc.) and the private sector should be brought back in again. If Pinkerton's was in charge on 9/11, it would have been fired with criminal charges and class-action lawsuits outstanding as we speak.
in the end, i would hope that i have no ideological commitments but would be willing to submit whatever beliefs i have about what kind of government/law/legal policy to the test of history.
Biff: absence of ideology sounds pretty libertarian to me. Also sounds like George W. Bush and Conservatism, both of which have a great distrust of ideas; one of the reasons young Platos mock them both. Check out more of Friedman and his statistics on how the passage of minimum-wage laws causes unemployment in urban young blacks to double or triple (having to pay higher wages, stores usually fire their low-caste employees and employ kids from middle-class homes). Friedman on unions is interesting too. Companies in stable industries have stable profit ratios. When unions come and up wages, the money doesn't come from the boss who can't afford to lower his profit ratio without endangering company re-investment in capital goods, etc. (Besides, if profit ratio is too low and can be expected to remain low, owners just close up the business, sell off the equipment, and reinvest in a new industry. It's done all the time.) Typically, the non-unionized employees take a loss in wages. This is the pattern because unions usually only cover part of the employee structure, not all. To pay unionized employees higher wages and increase their benefits, the non-unionized employees have to pay the bill. Walmart keeps unions out because it was unions that led to the inflexibility and bankruptcy of Woolworth's and the other chains that it used to compete with. As soon as unions arrive, Walmart will head on a downward trajectory and a new competitor will replace end up replacing it. But not before we have to pay higher prices to buy precisely the same thing.
Think of government as a huge un-fireable union; no matter how badly run, the bureaucracy staggers on. 9/11 is the quintessential example. Who got fired? Who was punished? Nobody. That's paradigmatic of unions. National security in the US used to be managed in part by the private sector (Pinkerton's etc.) and the private sector should be brought back in again. If Pinkerton's was in charge on 9/11, it would have been fired with criminal charges and class-action lawsuits outstanding as we speak.
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Dr. D: is there no political or social problem to which libertarianism does not have an answer?
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Biff: Interesting question and one I never thought to ask... Libertarianism, as far as I understand it, isn't an ideology so it doesn't provide answers. To me it's more like an approach. People provide answers; libertarians don't have a Prophet (Marx) or Doctors in holy orders (the arch-angel Chomsky et al). America's Founding Fathers, for the most part, were libertarians. Democratic republicanism, separation of powers, small government, minimal entangling alliances, no government sponsored internal development, etc. is libertarianism in politics... With Lincoln, the US turned towards deficit-spending and big government with the acme of this movement being Roosevelt's robbing of Peter to pay Paul. He paid farmers not to grow crops in order to raise crop prices and then gave money to the poor so they could afford to buy them. The Fathers must have been turning in their graves. Roosevelt, whose inheritance came from his father's (or grandfather's) Chinese opium profits, despised businessmen. But of course it's almost a platitude that rich parents spawn limousine liberals and champagne socialists... Business people tend to be libertarian because they see how business keeps people clean. You fuck up in business, nobody saves you (and the failure rate for new businesses is something like 95% within the first year). You fuck up in a government bureaucracy or private sector union, you get a lateral move.
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Dr. D: absence of ideology means an openness to sane solutions to specific problems. a commitment to libertarianism can be as ideological as a commitment to socialism or any other approach to government.
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Biff: Agreed. I don't have any ideology that I'm aware of and I don't believe in anything. I ain't committed to libertarianism. But I've seen socialism in action. Given how poorly it works, it's worth exploring alternatives. And that goes for every field. Law and order for example. In Iceland and Scotland, the tort law of the Norsemen ran automatically on economic principles, with the market determining punitive damages. I don't know the specifics of how it worked but apparently the heros of the Viking sagas were lawyers, not swordsmen. My point is, whether we're talking law, or geology (where I'm a fan of the expanding planet theory for explaining everything from plate tectonics to dinosaur size and gait to the existence of continents on Mars and Venus) or astronomy (I'm a fan of the exploding planet theory for explaining the trajectory and composition of new comets, the successful prediction of moons orbiting asteroids, the successful prediction of the behavior of disentigrating comets, plus it offers an interesting explanation for the disappearance of water on Mars and it's odd declination) to human evolution (I'm a fan of the aquatic ape theory) to whatever... I enjoy considering alternative explanations for things. I love thought experiments. Newspapers and newsmagazines are incredibly negligent at presenting the richness of the body of alternative theories that exist for practically everything. Reading the newspapers you'd think the only explanation for dinosaur die-off at 65mil years ago was the Alvarez theory of meteor impact. You'd think that man-made global warming was accepted across the board when most meteorologists don't accept it. Newspapers and magazines are simply awful and are put together by incurious people with a really shocking ignorance of how the world around them works. The scales have fallen from mine eyes... haha...
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Dr. D: hope you're not drinking this coffee, which contains a penis and heart stimulant not listed on the ingredients. another case of the DOH trying to protect citizens from lying manufacturers. what would a libertarian government do?
知名藝人高凌風代言的火鳥咖啡，被衛生署檢驗出違法添加犀利士壯陽藥，勒令下架回收，衛生署也把業者移送地檢署偵辦，醫生今天還警告，這種產品喝多了，對心血管病人會有致命危險。
早上一杯，晚上發威，由知名藝人高凌風代言的火鳥咖啡，一盒咖啡內，只有一包咖啡，就要價三百九十九元，最近被衛生署檢驗出違法添加犀利士這種壯陽藥，以違反藥事法移送地檢署偵辦，並要求廠商立即回收下架 不止是火鳥咖啡，還有像是龍鳳液養生飲，龍抬頭，快樂精靈，慾旺99，勇豹錠等食品，雖然都有衛生署食品字號，不過也都被驗出違法添加威而剛和犀利士等壯陽藥，這些違法食品大多在第四台或是西藥房買得到，醫師表示，這類產品喝多了對心血管病患會有致命危險
醫師表示老年人因為代謝差，喝多了更容易有副作用，民眾如有性功能障礙，應找醫師治療，不要聽信廣告偏方。至於，代言人高凌風今天則表示，他用生命擔保，火鳥咖啡絕對沒有問題。
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Biff C. Esq.: First of all, a libertarian government (a sort of contradiction in terms...haha) would let Taiwan's consumer foundations take care of the publicity and issue warnings as they have been doing since long before the DPP reformed government operations. I expect the government is performing a redundant function. Secondly, either affected citizens or consumer foundations can file lawsuits. Government agencies are not the sole actors with legal remedies at their disposal. Law suits work just fine; in fact they work even better than government fiats because the manufacturer has a chance to state and argue his case in a court of law.
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It's naive to think that government bodies are cleaner and less corrupt than the private sector: both, after all, are human institutions. In France, bribery while doing business overseas is a tax-deductable business expense. As it is in several other European nations. I'm not making this up. Often the only way for European corporations operating in Europe's high-expense environment to compete with US companies overseas is to bribe bureaucrats in banana republics (like Iraq, which is why the governments of France and Russia were opposed to the war. Several European political representatives, including one British member of the House of Commons, were found to be on Saddam Hussein's payroll. Any American politicos on that payroll? None. Corruption in the US is not institutionalized in the way it is in Europe and, sorry to say, it is in Canada (unless things have changed since I was there)). As opposed to France et al, US companies have been forbidden by US law to bribe foreign governments since 1976.
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It's naive to think that government bodies are cleaner and less corrupt than the private sector: both, after all, are human institutions. In France, bribery while doing business overseas is a tax-deductable business expense. As it is in several other European nations. I'm not making this up. Often the only way for European corporations operating in Europe's high-expense environment to compete with US companies overseas is to bribe bureaucrats in banana republics (like Iraq, which is why the governments of France and Russia were opposed to the war. Several European political representatives, including one British member of the House of Commons, were found to be on Saddam Hussein's payroll. Any American politicos on that payroll? None. Corruption in the US is not institutionalized in the way it is in Europe and, sorry to say, it is in Canada (unless things have changed since I was there)). As opposed to France et al, US companies have been forbidden by US law to bribe foreign governments since 1976.
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Socialism (i.e. government interference) encourages unethical practices because (a) it raises the cost of business artificially high and (b) there is often only one bureaucrat to bribe and this bureaucrat is now beheld to you; with his pecker in your pocket, to coin a Lyndon Baines Johnson phrase, he becomes your mouthpiece and shill for when the shit hits the fan. Thus (c) there is incentive to buy a bureaucrat's cooperation and then go about on a spree breaking the law.
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The Love Canal hazardous waste scandal of the 1970's is usually blamed on corrupt private-sector companies but this forgets that the canal was managed by a government agency which took bribes and corruptly cooperated with these companies facilitating their crimes. I can only presume the government agency was protecting these companies from exposure, for it was in its own interest to keep newspaper busy-bodies unaware of what was going down. Without the agency, the appearance of propriety via a false watch-dog would not have been available to mislead the public and press. Minus the official watch-dog, the scandal would likely have been exposed all the sooner. And without the government watch-dog there might not have been a scandal at all for without incentive and opportunity, chances are slimmer that the unethical companies involved would have taken the risk.
Lin Yu-tang wrote that the primary impetus for passing proscriptive legislation in 1930's China was the manufacture of opportunities for bribery. Render any activity illegal, and there is only one conduit that can re-enable this activity: the government bureau in charge of enforcing its prohibition. Then, its just a matter of purchasing dispensation.
Lin Yu-tang wrote that the primary impetus for passing proscriptive legislation in 1930's China was the manufacture of opportunities for bribery. Render any activity illegal, and there is only one conduit that can re-enable this activity: the government bureau in charge of enforcing its prohibition. Then, its just a matter of purchasing dispensation.
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A favorite racket in Mencken's day was pick-pockets who worked streets only after bribing the beat cops. Another racket was prohibition which saw drunkeness and consumption increase. That of course took official connivance. Just as prostitution, illegal for a decade now in Taipei, continues courtesy of Mayor Ma's office. I had a roommate who I lived with for a couple of years and who spoke at length about working full-time for a major US city police force as a member of its extortion program that threatened local businesses with police harassment if they didn't donate to a fund for the families of policemen killed in the line of duty.
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Another great government scam is today's Drug War. Drugs can only be sold in any number if the local cops are in on the action. When I left, Fredericton's largest dealer was an ex-vice cop who was busted at one point and then continued in the biz in a private capacity (I learned from a long-time friend who was a dealer). The first US drug czar stayed in office for nearly 30 years because, just like J. Edgar Hoover, his primary occupation was collecting dirt on politicians so that he could blackmail them into renominating him for his position every several years. Hoover was head of the FBI until the day he died. The reason he could galavant around in such a conservative era with his boyfriend in public places, such as ballparks, was because nobody dared whisper a word about his gay lifestyle. And, he got launched into the highest echelons of government by participating as a lieutenant in America's first Red Scare in 1919. His boss, Mitchel A. Palmer used this to leverage himself onto a party ticket and was a candidate in the primaries for the 1920 US presidential elections!
If you legalize an activity, there are far fewer people to bribe (i.e. just the sales staff of the occasional badly run company are left) and those taking bribes can't control who's in the marketplace, unlike a corrupt government official who may. So the remaining opportunities for bribery distort marketplace operations much less. Minimize government and the market is cleaner, more liberal, and more effective. Which means lower prices and greater selection.
If you legalize an activity, there are far fewer people to bribe (i.e. just the sales staff of the occasional badly run company are left) and those taking bribes can't control who's in the marketplace, unlike a corrupt government official who may. So the remaining opportunities for bribery distort marketplace operations much less. Minimize government and the market is cleaner, more liberal, and more effective. Which means lower prices and greater selection.
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Government is sometimes an ameliorative treatment for societal ills, but very seldom a cure. It operates rather like tuberculosis, the Middle Ages cure for leprosy. TB worked, munching leprosy's bacillus Mycobacterium leprae, and it also seems to have enjoyed a widespread reputation for increasing intelligence, but in the end it still killed you.
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That's my fifty-cents worth...
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Hope I said something useful...
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Biff...
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