« Previous Post • Home • Libertarianism II: Internal Contradictions »
Libertarianism: Bringing Back the Lower Case
November 11th, 2002 Posted in Debating Libertarians Gently So Gene Healy Doesn't Get His Feelings HurtToday I begin a series of posts on the topic of libertarianism, or, more specifically, why I think it is currently a flawed and failed religion posing as a philosophy of governance. I originally intended to entitle this series “The Rotten Heart of Libertarianism,” but decided that would be too combative. Besides, some of my best friends are libertarians.
The reason I will address this topic — and the reason you should care — is because libertarianism represents perhaps the best set of potential political solutions to America’s problems, and is the legacy of a truncated set of the Founders’ beliefs (subtract their belief in God and a strong central government, and you have libertarianism). Thus it is worth knowing something about, if you care about politics.
For those who already know something about libertarianism, it is worth considering what is wrong with it, and thinking about how to fix it. I promise not to be overly erudite or pedantic, though I suspect I cannot extend that promise to the “Comments” section.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, libertarianism can best be summarized in this way: “you leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.” It is strongly intertwined with the economic philosophy known as laissez-faire. Libertarians have their own political party, which essentially calls for government to stop doing most things beyond national defense and enforcement of contracts.
I like this philosophy. I am not a Libertarian, but I probably come close to being a libertarian. The upper-case capitalization, as I shall explain later, is critical.
There are several problems with this philosophy. None of these are well articulated by the Left, which still seems to believe that it can set the country on a path toward socialism without ever actually facing the consequences of getting there. In other words, I will say little about their rebuttal to libertarians and conservatives, which amounts to: “If government doesn’t do all these things, they won’t get done.” That causality strikes me as a good thing. I will assume my readers have an appreciation for both economics and the power of the marketplace, and that none of you lie awake at night wondering whether bananas would take inedible form if not for the vigilance of the EU.
Still, though I suspect that libertarians are right in most of their speculation about the proper bounds of government, I think they have yet to do a comprehensive and rigorous job of demonstrating such. Jeff Friedman, editor of Critical Review (disclosure: I’ve been published there) noted this problem in his compelling essay several years ago entitled “What’s Wrong With Libertarianism?” In a nutshell, he observed that libertarians make a moral case for their philosophy (i.e., it is wrong for government to push people around) which they are unwilling to push to the extreme, namely, to the point where they argue that their system of governance would be best even if one could prove that people would be materially better off in some system of stronger government. At that point they switch to what we call consequentialism, and argue that not only is the libertarian system more just by virtue of its minimal coercion, but that it is also produces more prosperity for its citizens.
The problem, Friedman rightly observed, is that we have shown no such thing. To be sure, economists have done a good job of demonstrating that heavy government management of the economy reduces economic growth by destroying property rights and incentives. Nobody has shown, however, that a libertarian system of nearly non-existent government would make people better off. We have anecdotes, we have some notion that we can extrapolate from partial analyses of more ostensibly libertarian times at the turn of the century, and we have the rational profit-maximizer of economics — but we do not have a methodologically rigorous study that can even explain, for example, the inescapable correlation between sizable government (say, 20-40% of gross domestic product) and sustained economic growth.
The reasons for this surprising reality are several. To begin, libertarian scholars largely exist in a dual world of academia and libertarianism (note: this is not true of all libertarian scholars, and is especially not true of the most interesting ones). In academia they publish the esoteric minutiae essential to tenure and advancement within the university system. These works have little to say about the big questions both as a consequence of their form (confinement to a niche of knowledge where the scholar has competitive advantage) and their surroundings (academics tend to value the exchange of ideas less than they value uniformity of thought).
In the libertarian world, ironically, scholars face similar strictures on thought. After publishing his essay Friedman, for example, was held at arms length by many in the Libertarian movement (note: my switch to upper-case is purposeful). Libertarian scholars rarely evaluate their own first principles, even more rarely do they invite non-libertarian scholars to do so. This, unfortunately, is a recipe for academic stasis. It is no wonder, then, that the Libertarian canon is heavily weighted with economic theory (the scriptures), normative philosophy (the catechisms), and polemical, anecdotal history (the sermons).
In keeping with the religion metaphor, it is also unsurprising that Libertarianism has its own heretics, who are often treated with greater disdain than genuine members of the hard Left. Recall Ayn Rand’s latter years, when she held her own secret tribunals by which members of the fold were cast out for being unorthodox. This mentality still pervades the Libertarian community, though in (mostly) muted form.
Anyone with experience in Libertarian circles has witnessed the following scene: during a dinner party someone raises a problem that the market doesn’t appear capable of solving. There is spirited argument about whether it is truly a market failure. Someone ventures that it must really be a consequence of government intervention. Someone else suggests that the market would provide a solution if it were truly unfettered. Eventually the person in the group with the strongest Libertarian credentials refers to some study of 16th-Century private health insurance among wheel-makers in Southern France to prove that the market could solve this problem, too. The relief, when the faith is restored by one of the priests, is palpable. I have never been a communist, but I imagine the Trotskyites have similar dinner parties.
In short, there is libertarianism, the philosophy of governance, and there is Libertarianism, the creed. The persistence of the latter interferes, I think, with the development of the former.
There are other problems. Specifically, aside from the lack of rigor and the religious fervor, libertarianism suffers from a lack of attention to practical politics, and a growing and well-deserved association with libertinism, which is (or should be) another bag altogether. I’ll address these issues in the next essay.
on 
Also, let’s not forget the ever present and important issue of “smoking a bowl”. Many libertarians would be much more interesting if their greatest focus in life rested somewhere besides drug legalization.
This seems to be both a philosophy of governance and a creed.
I have noticed that the Libertarians here in the Chicago area, when I hear about them at all, are highly concerned with access to more recreational drugs. I think they could have some appeal to people like me (I’m a P. J. O’Rourke unregistered Republican) if they would set that issue a little more to the side. The recent collapse of the Illinois Republican party might open a window for some influence.
George Will wrote something recently in which he opined that libertarians seem to value Freedom above all else, whereas conservatives agree to the sticky task of balancing sometimes competing values such as Freedom, Order, and Equality. That sentiment seems to be compatible with your first essay, and I’ll be interested to read the rest.
Tony, Some of the considerations you mention are what moved me to announce on my blog that I am a whig.
Jeff’s “libertarian straddle” problem really just reduces to the problem of any kind of a priori commitment. Ideologues will apply any argumentative strategy to preserve their commitments, whether or not those strategies are mutually consistent. That’s how you spot an ideologue!
The right way to do things is figure out what set of institutional arrangements (or range of such sets) would tend to make most people better off than they would be under any other set of institutions, and then fight for that. But that requires (1) understanding what it really means to be better off, (2) finding out what kinds of institutional arrangement in fact make people better off, (3) finding out how to get to the target institutions from the status quo…. and that’s a damn lot of hard work! (Really, Tony, maybe your employer should look into this!) I mean, who wants to get up and look out the window when you can just exclaim the TRUTH from the comfort of your armchair?
The problem with libertarians and libertinism is that most people have a genuinely hard time saying that some things are wrong, but should be allowed. There’s less dissonance involved in “It’s just fine to snort coke off 17 year old boys’ asses! So what’s the problem, you moralizing pricks!” than in “There are 36 distinct morally reprehensible aspects to X. I’d hate, I mean HATE, myself if I even _considered_ participating in X personally. But nevertheless, I’m perfectly willing to throw myself in front of a locomotive to prevent you from banning it.”
Give the libertarians their weed and half of them will rally for a pot-subsidy.
Re the whigs, weren’t they pro-coice on slavery? Call me a coward, but I’m happy to be registered in the original ganstas of abolition.
I hear all sorts of increasing Libertarians voices in my circle (a more religious right type). Of course one reason to be a big “L” Libertarinism is because it sounds “cooler” in nerdy circles because it is new and different. I can’t understand why it appeals so much to Christians because of the theology of the fall of man.
I recently had dinner with a man working on his Ph.D. at Yale only to find out his ultimate plan is to gather thousands and “take over” a state in some Libertarian way. Of course, it would take government intervention to acheive that goal…. but I digress.
Jason, your dinner companion was probably talking about the Free State Project, something that (as far as I know) does not condone government intervention.
Will, does the fact that some people have a hard time publicly admitting their philosophy would allow “dirty” or immoral behavior reflect badly upon that philosophy? I don’t believe it does and wouldn’t consider it a problem with libertarianism. It reflects badly upon those people, unwilling to be honest with themselves and others.
As for Tony’s post, I think that the general lean of the criticism (ideologues, blind followers, and minimal self-examination taint the waters) is applicable to all philosophies. I am curious to see what he has in store for the next post.
I consider myself a libertarian with some Objectivist tones. I’m still trying to square what I’ve read (which isn’t that much, to be honest) with that I experience. Much of the Libertarian platform I agree with. Tony has a good point in saying there is little to none modern libertarian research in regards to the consequences of the policies we would put in place. We’re generally stuck with semi-statist examples of half-measures…and they work but aren’t “pure” to the philosophy.
Will you please stop picking on me? (Just kidding. I don’t expect you to ever stop picking on me.) Very good post.
the funny – har har – comments about libertarians and drugs are very original. But doesn’t the imprisonment of so many people for a voluntary act require some kind of response? Should it not be a cause of concern? And shouldn’t more conservatives who supposedly worry about limited government think about how that government becomes even more invasive when it seeks to regulate private, personal behavior? In the face of so much empirical evidence, too, that the drug war is a failure, corrupting of the civic order, and so forth, the question shouldn’t be why are libertarians worked up about the drug war, but rather why is most of the rest of the political spectrum silent.
My response here
I think that libertarian thought is better expressed as “maximizing consent”. Your statement is a bit more isolationist than I think libertarianism is. It’s also not the case that one can build even a libertarian utopia where people can fully leave each other alone (and I say this as a libertarian).
Speaking in response to dc above, as someone who would like to see more libertarian success, some Libertarians give me the impression that they care almost entirely about the drug war and almost not at all about why my property taxes are so damn high or why the costs of health care and housing are going up so much faster than most other things. And so I have a suspicion that some of these people care about drugs so much because they want to do more drugs for less money.
I would like to see Libertarians reduce the emphasis on drugs in order to make more progress on deregulation in some of these other areas that a lot of people care directly about. Then maybe the libertarian approach to the drug war becomes more convincing. Yes, one can make the argument that Libertarians can oppose the drug war while simultaneously working on other political goals. I’m contending that progress would be faster if they de-emphasized drugs. The pragmatic argument seems to have little appeal to Libertarians, which I guess is one of Mr. Woodlief’s reasons for writing these essays.
I was less impressed by that particular article of Friedman’s than I usually am with his writing. I think his “libertarian straddle” is an artifact of a choice between false alternatives with which he presents us: Anyone who doesn’t believe, as does Friedman, that consequences are the only things that ultimately matter is therefore a deontologist, and so isn’t allowed to care about consequences at all. When you start from that assumption, any pluralistic theory which values both desirable consequences and freedom as ends in themselves is bound to look like an inconsistent flip-flop between consequentialism and deontology. But that doesn’t make it so.
This is not to say that libertarian thought wouldn’t benefit from explicitly considering the tradeoff between freedom and consequences (in much the same way that, for example, democrats would benefit from asking themselves whether they’d be willing in principle to accept dictatorship if it meant more good things for everybody). I think we ought to be aiming for something like the “presumptive libertarianism” of Eugene Volokh, who is willing to accept some restrictions on freedom but wants to see a big payoff in human well-being.
You need to read some Mises.
Blabla,
I was waiting for the condescending “You need to read [insert favorite libertarian or Austrian economist here].” I’d rush right out to buy Human Action, but I’m probably not bright enough to get his point anyway.
Oh, to be among the enlightened!
Geez,
Touched a nerve? If you’ve mainly been in contact with Objectivists and Libertarians, then I’d see how you’d have your views. Mises gave a utilitarian defense for libertarians decades ago.
Despite my criticism above, I think “Blabla” would benefit from reading Friedman’s Critical Review article– for one of the better points it makes is that a utilitarian argument for libertarianism (or any other normative political theory) is going to have the conclusions reached by the social sciences as its inputs, and these are always subject to change as more research is done. It follows that, even if we stipulate that Mises’ utilitarian argument was a dandy one at the time it was made, we can’t simply assume that it’s still the last word today. At least not unless we want to deny the possibility of any sort of progress in social science.
Paul,
Disagree. Mises’ utilitarianism is based on the fundamentals of human action, and it’s no use to perform more “study.” From a few basic axioms, most political questions can be logically answered.
The most minimal state I can think of was 18th century Poland, where one solitary citizen could prevent the central government from acting at all, by exercising a veto. Thus the central government was unable to trespass on the liberties of any citizen. Unfortunatly the lack of a strong central government allowed some things to happen. Firstly, the stronger citizens, the nobles, were able to keep the peasants in serfdom (they were not citizens). There was no way within the constitution the King could protect the liberty of the peasants. Secondly the lack of a strong central government allowed the predatory neighboring countries, all absolute monarchies, to tear Poland apart and annex the bits. Thus the absence of a strong central government meant that everybody in Poland ended up with less freedom than they would have had if such a government had existed and been able to defend the country. This process went on between 1772 and 1795, if you want one of the reasons George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were so intent on building an effective central government for the infant USA.
DC
You simply refuse to accept the fact the drug use often has strong negative consequences on innocent bystanders. I keep tellin gyou, and you keep ignoring it.
THAT is why people are willing to put up with a war on drugs that hasn’t worked all that well. That and the fact that this “empirical evidence” you mention is rather hard to find.
If you really care about the government “regulat[ing] private, personal behavior” and not just drugs, then work on the laws against SUICIDE first – they are certainly regulations about “private, personal behavior”, and it is MUCH more difficult to argue that suicide is dangerous to innocent bystanders. When you do that, I’ll find it much easier to believe that it’s the priciple and not just the drugs that are motivating you.
“the conclusions reached by the social sciences as its inputs, and these are always subject to change as more research is done.”
What’s so bad about that? Surely we want to keep up to date, no?
Anyway, so long as people tend to divide labor to decrease their dissatisfaction in the face of a radically unknowable future, I don’t see much in the Hayek/ Mises program going out of date.
And the book to read first is Liberalism In The Classical Tradition. Save Human Action for a summer vacation or retirement or something.
I hope “Deoxy” will forgive us for being a bit more concerned about laws to punish living people than we are about laws to punish dead people.
I love Jeff Friedman dearly, but his essay was not “compelling;” it was obtuse. He seems unwilling to contemplate the possibility that libertarianism might find support in some philosophical backing more nuanced than either rabid axiomatic Rothbardianism or crude hedonistic utilitarianism. In this ridiculous, polarized schema, you’re either in the camp of “let justice be done though the heavens fall,” or you’re looking exclusively at maximizing some good consequence, or you’re undertaking some squishy compromise of the two “pure” positions. That Jeff sees these as the only alternatives is, I think, a sign of how much the dead hand of bad Rothbardian ideas still influences his thinking. Just to throw out some obvious alternative possibilites, the very different contractualist theories of T.M. Scanlon and David Gauthier establish constraints on raw maximization, but are not consequence blind. There are — and I know this is a tough one to swallow — more subtle ways to evaluate the interpersonal effects of policy than brute additive aggregation.
Paul,
We don’t punish dead people, but if you ATTEMPT suicide, you can be prosecuted. You can be put in an institution – basically, a medical form of incarceration. I think that’s fine, but it IS law that punishes acts that hurt no one but yourself. That’s the libertarian argument for legalization of drugs, right? It hurts no one but yourself?
My point was that the argument for “no one but yourself” would actually have many other consequences besides drugs, consequences that are much more obvious, for which the facts are not in debate.
For instance, whether drug use only hurts yourself is debatable (people are known to do very harmful things to others under the influence of drugs), but self-mutilation harms no one but yourself.
Example – I have decided that I no longer want to have hands, so I chop them off. I am put in a mental institution.
What crime have I committed against someone else? Yet, I am incarcerated against my will. Where are the libertarians decrying this injustice?!?
When that sort of thing begins to happen, then I will consider taking the drug argument more seriously. UNTIL then, I see no reason to believe that the “only hurting myself” argument is not just a convenient argument to legalize “smokin’ a bowl”.
That’s the libertarian argument for legalization of drugs, right? It hurts no one but yourself?
Well, no. It’s more a recognition that hurting others (and a fortiori the mere potential to hurt others) is not a sufficient condition for banning something. Lots of things which no sane person wants to ban (Dear John letters, bad reviews, firings) are hurtful to others; you need something more to justify bringing the law in– all the more so when the harm in question is merely potential. Just what that something more is will vary from libertarian to libertarian, but we all pretty much agree that drugs haven’t got it.
Any attempt to tar libertarians with hypocrisy for opposing drug prohibition but not suicide prohibition runs into the somewhat inconvenient fact that libertarians do oppose suicide prohibition. The admittedly greater emphasis placed on drugs may have something to do with the small number of innocent bystanders killed in drive-by shootings by turf-warring gangs of Kevorkians, and with the small number of homeowners burglarized by suicide junkies trying to finance their next cyanide fix. Surely even the most deep-dyed deontologist is allowed to look at consequences when deciding which rights violation to attack first?
Any attempt to tar libertarians with hypocrisy for opposing drug prohibition but not suicide prohibition runs into the somewhat inconvenient fact that libertarians do oppose suicide prohibition.
Well, that’s the first I’ve heard of it. Drug prohibition on the other hand – it’s hard NOT to hear about it.
Consequences are one thing to look at – battles you can win are another. Just something to think about.
As far as drug legalization goes, I could go for letting adults use recreational drugs – they check into a drug hospital/hotel type place and get their own room (or a communal room with other people who want to). To get out again, they have to be “clean” – no being high in public. Why? Because that’s the main problem (well, besides losing jobs, etc, that can’t really be controlled in a free society) with drugs. THAT I could go for – safety for others.
Why do I consider drugs so dangerous? I think they’re much more dangerous than guns, for instance. Because they inhibit judgement and rational thinking. Rational behaviour is REQUIRED for a safe society – people whose reasoning is impaired should not be allowed to roam free.
People with mental problems are already locked up (hopefully, it’s much friendlier than that, but you get the point) – what about the “temporarily impaired”?
By the way, if you think gang violence all goes back to illegal drug distribution, you’re out of touch. Gang violence has been around much longer than drug prohibition.
And no matter how cheap drugs are (other than free – paid for by the government), addicts will still need the money to pay for their habit – and if drugs are not illegal, there will most certainly be people who spend the same amount of moeny they do now on drugs – they’ll just be high a lot more and work a lot less (like none), so I don’t see how no more theft for drugs and no more gang violence necessarily follow from drug legalization.
Will there be less of those? Probably – almost definately – but there will also be an increase in drug-induced crime (murder over silly things because of impaired judgement and the like). Will the overall rates be higher or lower with legal drugs? Nobody knows for sure – make your case that the increase in drug-induced crime will be less than the decrease in drug-related crime (theft for drugs, etc), not just that drug-related crime will decrease.
It’s more a recognition that hurting others is not a sufficient condition for banning something.
Hurting an innocent bystander IS a sufficient codition for bringing in the law – if you hurt me through no fault or even voluntary involvement on my part, you have wronged me. Whether that is criminal or civil, if you wronged me, a court of law can (and hopefully always will) try to bring about justice.
And “potentially” dangerous things are banned all the time – practicing medicine without a license, for instance. It’s quite possible that an unlicensed could be better than a licensed one – but it’s unlikely. We play the odds all the time. Drugs are, in my opinion, a very bad bet.
After all these years of being a simplistic libertarian, being suspected of subtlety comes as a welcome change of pace. The only thing is, I can’t see what’s so subtle about the idea that freedom and consequences both matter.
Deoxy has given me all I want for the time being: at least drug re-legalization is something about which reasonable people can disagree, rather than an idea so transparently bogus than its advocacy can only be laid to self-interest. I still think the burden of proof should lie with those who want to say no.
I don’t mean this to be a “parting shot” – it’s a legitimate problem in this country that libertarians SHOULD (and, from what I’ve actually experienced, DO) detest – the decay of the concept of responsibility for one’s actions.
One reason to argue for drugs being illegal is that those who harm others while under the influence could be expected (in today’s climate) to get a slap on the wrist, while those who do so for money (drug-related gang violence and theft for money to do drugs) are more likely (we hope) to get real punishment.
I think libertarians should be addressing that problem first – personal responsibility for one’s actions. Many other problems (including, I think, many of the problems with legalization of drugs) might largely work themselves out.
Many examples of what I’m talking about: overlawyered.com
I think the libertarian voice could go a long way in this battle. I also think that arguing for drug legalization loudest (or even at all until other problems are dealt with) wastes that voice – and damages future credibility.