Category: Uncategorized

Jason Brennan posted a bleg Where are the “Market Suck” Libertarians?  Here is my response.

We have all heard the quip from Winston Churchill “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”   click for reference

In a similar vein it could be said “Free Markets suck, but all other economic systems tried suck worst”.

As a young child, when I wanted something I would ask my mother. She would either give it to me, or say “no”, or sometimes she would say “maybe later”. Sometimes I would persist, and sometimes she would give in, but usually not. When I did not get what I wanted, although I might be temporarily unhappy, I knew that she had my best interests at heart, and that if she said no, I really didn’t need it. It was a good system. I would just ask, never had to give up anything (value for value) , and always got what I really needed.

Those who don’t like market systems, probably had the same experience, but they haven’t grown up, and pine for a system that worked like what we had as children.

Those who claim that because other people are alive, that puts obligations on us, or don’t like the choices other people make, typically advocate immoral systems because to them – the ends justify the means.

 

 

 

An essay by Sheldon Richman,  Speaking to Nonlibertarians,  suggests how libertarians should speak to nonlibertarians about government.

As an exercise, I tried to turn the topic around:

Speaking to Libertarians

If ordinary people want to change how libertarians’ think about government, they will need to understand how libertarians think about government. By “libertarians,” I mean the minority of people who spend lots of time pondering political theory, or what Murray Rothbard called political ethics. They may focus at times on particular government programs and actions, or on proposals for new programs, but rarely about government as a beneficial/friendly institution.

This is not hard to understand. Libertarians come into a world full of national governments that present themselves as providers of a social safety net, guarantors of products and services, protectors of workers, defenders of the national borders, and dispensers of benefits to an assortment of deserving groups (farmers, exporters, too-big-to-fail banks, low-income people, and so on), but rarely ever delivery on their promises.

So for libertarians, the waste and corruption of the state is a natural, ever-present part of the landscape. This is reinforced through their “self-education” in economics, history, and political science. Few ever see the necessity, much less wonder about all the benefits that a larger more powerful government could do for them.  Some libertarians may think that some government programs work okay in this matter or that, but the benefits of expansion of the social-service state itself never comes under examination.

So how can ordinary people speak to these libertarians in a way they will understand? How do we get them to question deeply held beliefs that they articulate all the time? My basic advice is to continue doing what governments always do – make them do what we want. This may be distasteful, but there is no need to persuade libertarians. The government has the power, and can force them to do what we want. So when you talk to libertarians get them to understand that having a government means you don’t have to convince someone you are right, just make them understand you have the power to make them do what you want them to do.

Restricting immigration is a form of rationing. When a situation becomes too big for government planners to figure out how they will get the taxpayers to foot the bill, the leaders and others call for rationing and other forms of restricting freedom rather than looking for freed market solutions.

Christopher Freiman dismisses the argument that we cannot have open borders because of the welfare system.  See
There’s No Such Thing as a Closed-Borders Libertarian

Paraphrased excerpts:
[You’ll hear people make statements like: “I support open borders in principle, but we can’t have both free immigration and a welfare state so I reject open borders in practice.”

If preventing an increase in welfare justifies restricting freedom in immigration, then it also justifies restricting everything people may want to do.

Consider laws restricting people’s ability to consume drugs and sugary beverages, gamble their savings on professional sports, ride motorcycles without helmets. A major argument made on behalf of supporting these laws is that they prevent an increase in the consumption of state-provided benefits.]

Contrary to current wisdom, up to a point, the more people a country has the better. Free people (especially younger people) are resources. They produce more than they consume, and add vitality to an area. See for example Article about The Ultimate Resource

Attached is a projection of population by state, whereby each state with less than 1,000 people per square mile double their population density (number of people/land area), except for Alaska and Hawaii.  They were left off because it is not clear how much of the land is habitable, and those with more than 1,000 people per square mile were reduced to that limit.

population Density by state

1,000 people per square mile was chosen because I have visited states like New Jersey and Rhode Island. They have more than 1,000 per square mile, and there seems to be lots of open area and green space. I also lived in Shanghai where there are about 9,700 people per square mile, and it wasn’t unbearable.

My analysis indicates that we easily could have 600 million people living in the United States. Doing so, our population density would be less than 170 people per square mile. Germany has about 600 people per square mile.

Opening our borders to all peaceful and honest people who wish to reside here is the humane way to go. Lets set an example for all the world to follow.

History has proven that all the warnings by earlier generations against Irish, Italian and eastern European immigrants were wrong. There is no reason to believe that the current concerns about South American immigrants will result in serious problems.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” – Emma Lazarus

The Libertarian Party distributed a media release on 7/8/2014 titled “Let the Children In”.

LP Press Release 2014 07 08

Here are some excerpts:
Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark released this statement:

Should the U.S. government forbid foreign children from entering the United States? The Libertarian Party says no.

It would be unjust and inhumane for the U.S. government to prohibit these children from entering the United States.

It is wrong to jeer at them, call them “illegals,” and tell them to get out.

In some cases, children may be better off migrating, even without adult supervision, than staying trapped in dangerous environments — just ask the Jewish children who escaped from Hitler, or Tutsi children who escaped genocide in Rwanda.

Libertarians do not support forcing people to pay for other children’s welfare, and there are obviously costs associated with helping children who arrive in the United States. However, there are many charitable organizations that have already mobilized to provide that help. A nation of 320 million people can provide sufficient charitable help to the number of children involved (around 50,000 over the last nine months).

All foreigners should be allowed entry into the United States unless the government can produce positive evidence that they pose a threat to security, health, or property.

There are about 60 million legal foreign entries into the United States each year (mostly tourists). Those foreigners should be free to work in the United States as well. There’s no question of border security — it’s just a question of the government’s unjust and foolish protectionist labor laws.

(By comparison, there are only about 500,000 “illegal” entries into the United States each year. Most of those are foreigners who want to work in the United States, and who would be denied visas because of that intention.)

Some observers have noted that generous benefit and subsidy programs in the United States, including free education and health care, may be attracting lazy foreigners. The Libertarian Party supports the abolition of government benefits and subsidies, for both natives and foreigners. It’s worth pointing out that foreigners use these programs at a lower rate than natives, according to a recent report by the Cato Institute.

It’s a shame that many in the media are trying to make Americans feel fear and suspicion toward immigrants. It’s particularly disgusting that protesters would yell at children to make their political point. Immigration is good for foreigners and good for Americans, and we need to change our laws to make immigration much easier.

Robert Wenzel at:
US Patent Office Goes Off the Wall Politically Correct

decries the latest abuse of free speech.

A selection from Sheldon Richman article in today’s fff.com blog:

http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-noninterventionists-told-you-so/

“With few exceptions, the go-to “authorities” are the same people who got it wrong — not all of them neoconservatives, because interventionists come in different stripes. The discussion today is almost exclusively over how the Obama administration should intervene in Iraq, not if it should intervene. Even Paul Wolfowitz, one of the wizards of the original invasion, gets face time on major networks. He was part of the crowd which said that American invaders would be greeted with rose petals, that regime change in Iraq would spread liberal democracy throughout the Middle East, and that even peace between the Israelis and Palestinians would take place.

These “authorities” were wrong about everything — assuming they believed their own words — but that seems not to matter.”

posted: 2014-06-18

Those who have followed my discussions, have frequently heard me say something like, “The ends don’t justify the means – because the anticipated ends never occur as expected”.

A parallel guideline is: “Don’t make public policy recommendations based on aggregate economic statistics – because such statistics don’t accurately measure the economy”.

In a recent Wall Street Journal essay Piketty’s Numbers Don’t Add Up, Martin Feldstein explains the effect of data collection methods on income inequality statistics.

an excerpt:
” … problem with Mr. Piketty’s conclusions about increasing inequality is his use of income-tax returns without recognizing the importance of the changes that have occurred in tax rules. Internal Revenue Service data, he notes, show that the income reported on tax returns by the top 10% of taxpayers was relatively constant as a share of national income from the end of World War II to 1980, but the ratio has risen significantly since then. Yet the income reported on tax returns is not the same as individuals’ real total income. The changes in tax rules since 1980 create a false impression of rising inequality.”

Thanks to Jerry Bloom to alerting me to the referenced essay.

Sheldon Richman continues the discussion of the scope of libertarianism on his TGIF FFF post.

Sheldon provides a link to a 2008 essay by Charles Johnson

What this discussion has to do with pizza will be added when I feel like it.

Previous discussion of this topic can be found here.

Both Robert and Jacob brought to my attention this article in the New York Times.
The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

Jacob responds here:
THE REASON FOR AMERICA’S ECONOMIC DECLINE

Robert would challenge Jacob’s assertion:
“Let’s assume that everyone saves $10,000 out of his $40,000 income. Everyone puts his $10,000 into the bank. The banks lend all those savings to companies, which use the money to invest in better tools and equipment. Those tools and equipment make workers more productive. More productivity means higher profits for the firms. Higher profits lead to higher wages.”

by saying something like:
— More productivity means higher profits for the firms. Due to greater market power and greater political influence causing a rigged economic system, the wealthy keep a greater portion of the higher profits, and thus income inequality increases –.

Jacob also says:
“the government, through the income tax and IRS, seizes the $10,000 that people would have put into savings. Thus, those savings never get put into the bank, which means that they’re not available for companies to borrow, which means that better tools and equipment don’t come into existence, which means that firms don’t become more productive, which means that real wage rates don’t rise.”

Robert would say something like:
— The Federal Reserve puts money in the banks so there is no shortage of investment capital for firms to borrow for better tools and equipment – interest rates are now very low, and inflation (as measured by the Federal Reserve) has not reached their target value. —

Robert would say that income inequality is bad because
(1.) It is unfair.
(2.) It is politically unstable. The masses will eventually revolt, so it is in the best interest of the rich to use their political power to raise taxes for redistributing their wealth because if they don’t, due to envy and/or desperation, the masses will take it.