Libertarianism.org

Libertarians and the Confederacy

Jonathan Blanks — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:56:53 +0000

Authors:

Jonathan Blanks

When I arrived in D.C. five years ago, I was struck by the number of libertarians who defended the Confederacy and, specifically, the South’s “right” to secession. The proponents aren’t a majority of libertarians, but neither is it an insignificant number espousing the belief. Given the history of the Confederacy and its legacy Jim Crow, I think it is important to really flesh out what support for the Confederacy means and why it is wholly inconsistent with individual rights and, thus, liberty.

To that end, I have written an essay that examines the ‘libertarian’ defenses of the Confederacy why any continued support runs contrary to the cause of freedom.

Excursions Tuesday: Plato’s Case Against Free-Market Education

Aaron Ross Powell — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 01:36:19 +0000

Authors:

Aaron Ross Powell

George H. Smith continues his look at the intellectual roots of state education. This week he shows how history’s first great philosopher wasn’t a fan of educational freedom.

Plato’s argument that average people are not competent judges of educational quality was closely linked to his dislike of Athenian democracy, which he regarded as little more than mob rule. Plato harbored a deep distrust of the common man in politics and in every activity that requires special training. Derogatory references abound in the Platonic dialogues to the “nondescript mob,” the “ignorant multitude,” “the great beast,” and so forth.

This is the major reason why Plato attacked the sophists and Athenian free-market education. Educational entrepreneurs give the public what it wants and so cater to ignorance and vulgar desires. As Plato says the Republic: “Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call Sophists, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled, and calls this knowledge wisdom.”

Read the rest here.

Falsifying Government

John Samples — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:33:25 +0000

Authors:

John Samples

I am delighted that J.C. Lester is blogging at Libertarianism.org. I have long thought that libertarians should pay more attention to Karl Popper. Lester makes the case for my intuition in his book, Escape from Leviathan.

In this post, I want to pursue two paths, one that follows Lester’s earlier work and one that explores some thoughts suggested by his work.

Lester argues that the conjecture that liberty is compatible with welfare (or other cardinal values) has not been falsified. He defends the thesis against common efforts to falsify it. If the “compatibility thesis” has not been falsified, he argues, we should not prefer coercion over liberty.

Like a good Popperian, Lester invites everyone to falsify his central conjecture. He will not lack attempts. A whole subfield of economics—general welfare economics—seeks to show that economic liberty leads to suboptimal outcomes for welfare. I pursue here one case that strikes me as difficult.

Consider the usual case of pollution. Free exchange between two parties leads to negative effects on a third party, effects that are not captured in the prices present in the original exchange. Ronald Coase found a libertarian way out of this problem: if the parties are willing to bargain, assign the rights as you wish, and the parties can still achieve the overall welfare (although the rights assignment matters a lot to the post-bargaining distribution of wealth). But once there are many, many third parties affected by exchanges, the transaction costs of bargaining may preclude Coasean deals. We are back to a world of negative externalities that are not properly priced. We end up with distorted markets and a suboptimal state of welfare.

This line of argument, if it withstands criticism, would cast doubt on the compatibility thesis. But the argument might be extended. In the case outlined above, many imagine that the state could actually get prices correct by imposing taxes on the polluter thereby using force in service to welfare.

At this point, the burden of proof has shifted: the advocate of the state has made a conjecture subject to falsification. If the conjecture is falsified (by robust evidence of government failure, for example), the compatibility theory may be restored. Surely this is a common result: the case against the compatibility of liberty and welfare will often involve asserting that government can improve outcomes in fact as well as in theory.

In this way, Lester points us toward an important implication of critical rationalism. Policymaking by governments is always a conjecture subject to falsification. In more prosaic terms, we ought to take the evaluation of programs more seriously. It is true that Congress often funds evaluation of policies, but I think these studies are often done poorly or ignored. A proper evaluation of program evaluations would itself be welcome; we simply do not know much here. We surely should not accept the conjecture that the professed goals of a government program are in fact what the program accomplishes.

I am inclined to think that a policy or program that fails to reach its goals should be viewed as a conjecture that has been falsified. Does that conclusion follow? After all, a proponent of a failed program/conjecture could simply say we did not spend enough, the program will work with small changes, or we did not wait long enough for its effects. None of these responses violate critical rationalism. Indeed, they suggest additional testing. Still, at some point, a program will exhaust its alternatives and become falsified (and publicly seen as a failure). Perhaps something like this happened with Aid to Families with Dependent Children in the United States from 1936 to 1996.

Lester is right to join philosophy and social science. But I believe his defense of the compatibility thesis implies that government actions are an ongoing series of conjectures subject to falsification. Such testing, if taken seriously, would offer a another path to a more limited government.

Critical-Rationalist Libertarianism

J. C. Lester — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:31:05 +0000

Authors:

J. C. Lester

Hello, I am Jan Clifford Lester (usually published as “J. C. Lester”). I am a philosopher specializing in libertarianism. Apart from articles and book chapters, I am the author of Escape from Leviathan (hardback 2000, paperback due out soon), Arguments for Liberty (2011), The Dictionary of Anti-Politics (forthcoming), and two philosophical dialogues: The Philosophical Genie, and The Naked Politician (both forthcoming in book form but also available online now).  Here are what I consider to be the three main differences between my approach to libertarianism and that of other libertarian philosophers:

1) I am a critical-rationalist libertarian. Following Karl Popper, I think it is epistemologically impossible to justify theories. One can only admit that libertarianism is a conjecture and deal with criticisms of it.

2) I have a pre-propertarian theory (including pre-self-ownership) of interpersonal liberty as the absence of proactively imposts costs. I attempt to deduce libertarian solutions to problems using this.

3) I advocate a (refined, extreme, and value-free) version of what I call the classical-liberal compatibility thesis: there are no systematic theoretical or practical clashes among the most relevant and plausible conceptions of economic rationality, interpersonal liberty, human welfare, and private-property anarchy. The most significant consequence of this is that we do not need to strike a balance between interpersonal liberty and human welfare.

I’d like to begin by discussing critical rationalism. A summary of my position, taken from my upcoming book, is now available as an essay on Libertarianism.org. It begins,

Put simply and starkly, critical rationalism is the view that absolutely all alleged knowledge is ultimately only fallible theory: mere guesses that we can test but which never become more probable by passing those tests. No truth is ever established to any degree at all. What follows can only outline an explanation of this counterintuitive view.

I encourage you to read the rest of the essay and then come back here to discuss it. I’m happy to take any criticisms, comments, questions, etc., based on the above, and let one topic lead to another (with me posting some short writings where it seems relevant).

We can continue until the discussion is judged by the moderator to have reached a suitable stopping point.

New Lecture on Richard Epstein's Simple Rules for a Complex World

Evan Banks — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 01:36:59 +0000

Authors:

Evan Banks

Today we have released the fourth lecture in our Exploring Liberty series. Richard Epstein, the author of Simple Rules for a Complex World, gives a quick outline of the six conditions that he says provide the groundwork for the emergence of a civilized society: individual autonomy, first possession/private property, contracts, tort, taxation, and eminent domain. This lecture is a great primer on how legal orders have emerged to form the complex and intricate web of relationships we know today as modern civilization.

New Video Featuring Milton Friedman on 300 Years of Political Thought

Aaron Ross Powell — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 23:32:55 +0000

Authors:

Aaron Ross Powell

Today’s new video is a particularly exciting one. Filmed in 1999 at an International Society for Individual Liberty conference in Costa Rica, economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman delivers a lecture about the tides of economic and political ideas throughout the modern era, beginning with the lassiez-faire influence of the Adam Smith in the 1700s, progressing through Fabian big government authoritarianism during the greater portion of the 20th century, and concluding with Hayek and the resurgence of classical liberal ideas following the collapse of some of the world’s largest and most restrictive authoritarian states.

Private Lives and Public Education

Jason Kuznicki — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Authors:

Jason Kuznicki

Since this story was posted, it has come to our attention that many of the facts of the incident were incorrectly reported. Further investigation seems to show that the child did not have her lunch taken away and that the mother is unlikely to be billed for the additional food provided. Problems remain, in the author’s judgment, in that the mother’s wishes were clearly not respected. Interested readers should consult this link for more details.

There’s no question that this is outrageous:

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes…

While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem.

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.

(h/t: Jacob Sullum.)

It must take a special kind of person to be a lunchbox inspector. If I had to pick that or going on welfare, I think welfare might win.

Still, I can’t help but think that there’s an untold story here. Government agents are often both mean and dumb. That’s a big part of why I’m a libertarian. But why here, and why now? Why pick on this particular girl?

We might never know, and I might be way off-base to speculate. Then again, I might not be. I imagine a feud of some kind between the inspector and the girl’s parents or grandparents. A business deal gone sour. Some unkind words in a bar. A failed affair. (A successful affair.) It’s easy to think of other, more prosaic reasons.

The existence of a private feud certainly wouldn’t excuse the story above. Quite the contrary — public officials are supposed to act in the public good, and not for any private interests of their own.

Our laws make this kind of disinterested, public-spirited state action harder, not easier, when they extend to minor officials wide discretionary powers over individual lives. In a world that will always be full of private resentments, these powers are weapons we shouldn’t leave lying around. If we do, then consider the probably tens of thousands of schoolchildren with unhealthy lunches in North Carolina, and take a wild guess at which ones get singled out.

This is a point I’d insist on even if — as could be the case — I’m totally wrong here, and if the lunchbox inspector really was just mean and dumb. Those two can be plenty, but let’s remember corrupt as well.

Why We Get Mad at (some kinds of) Rich People

Aaron Ross Powell — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:29:51 +0000

Authors:

Aaron Ross Powell

I’m intrigued by a disconnect between the general rhetoric of anger toward the rich by folks like the Occupy movement and the actual categories of rich people they seem to be mad at. Occupy Wall Street rails against the “1%,” which would presumably include anyone and everyone rich enough to be in that top slice of earners. But there are quite a lot of very rich people Occupy spends little or no time attacking. Actors. Athletes. The late Steve Jobs. In fact, the range of the rich who draw nearly all of Occupy’s ire is decidedly narrow: bankers, non-Steve Jobs CEOs, hedge fund managers, and so on.

The Occupiers might respond that actors, athletes, and Steve Jobs aren’t harming the 99%. But neither are most bankers and CEOs. What I want to suggest instead is that part of the animosity toward the wealthy—a large part, I’m inclined to think—has nothing to do with harms or benefits caused by individual rich Americans or whether one member of the 1% is a jerk or not. No, I believe what drives much anger toward those who earn more than us results from a simple lack of understanding about just what those people did to get so rich.

I know how to throw a football, even if it’s wobbly and only sails a handful of yards. So when I watch Tom Brady hurl a perfect spiral to a wide receiver sprinting through heavy traffic at the other end of the field, I can recognize Brady’s skill and its relationship to the enormous paycheck he takes home at the end of the game. Tom Brady has a “clear job.”

Likewise with Tom Hanks, whom I can see act and can compare to other, less talented actors. I may not be able to read a script in anything other than a wooden and unconvincing cadence, but I know what good acting looks and sounds like. And I know what enjoying a movie is like, so I can, again, directly understand the connection between Tom Hanks’s skill and the millions he earns from it.

Steve Jobs’s role, too, is relatively easy to grasp. He made my iPhone. I love my iPhone and even though I know lots of other people were involved in its design and construction, Steve Jobs was the vision behind the device. So Jobs had a clear job.

But I don’t know how to run a hedge fund. I simply can’t do it—or even really understand what it is I can’t do—no matter how bad I’m willing to let the result be. Because of that, I can’t recognize hedge fund managing skill, so I can’t identify good hedge fund managers except by looking at their net worth. This means that I also can’t quite evaluate the relationship between a hedge fund manager’s skill and his enormous paycheck the way I can with Brady, Hanks, or Jobs. A hedge fund manager has an “unclear job.”

What does the “clear vs. unclear” distinction have to do with the anger of the Occupy movement? Perceived cheating. We really dislike it when someone cheats, when someone gets something he didn’t deserve, especially if he got it at the expense of someone else. Thus when we see someone making huge returns, we automatically begin looking for evidence of cheating. Unfortunately, not seeing a clear connection between the action taken (or the product produced) and the monetary benefits often counts, in our minds, as evidence of cheating. In other words, because I can’t be sure you didn’t cheat, I take that as evidence that you did.

Of course there are cheaters among investment bankers. But there are also cheaters among professional athletes. When we do discover cheating—actual cheating—we ought to get mad about it, and if it rises to the level of fraud, we ought to prosecute it. However, just as it’s not the case that most athletes and actors are cheaters, it’s also the case that most investors and CEOs are honest. The mere fact that someone manages stocks for a living no more makes him automatically corrupt than the fact that being a politician means someone is crooked.

Clearly this doesn’t explain the whole of the anger directed towards the 1%. But if it explains any of it, it means there’s a real opportunity to improve both our perceptions and our policy through simple education. If people knew more about what every sort of worker does to earn his paycheck—if we could clarify the unclear—we could begin to target our anger against those individuals who really deserve it, who really cause us harm, and who really cheat.

Excursions Tuesday: The Spartan Model of Education

Aaron Ross Powell — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Authors:

Aaron Ross Powell

George H. Smith takes up a new theme in this week’s Excursions, beginning a series on the intellectual roots of state education. The first essay takes us quite far back, all the way to conflicting philosophies of Athens and Sparta.

As post-Renaissance intellectuals looked back on Sparta, many saw something other than brutal totalitarianism. They saw a planned, well-ordered society where individual goals were subordinated to the common good, a society where education was controlled by the state and where civic virtues were instilled in children at an early age.

Plato and Aristotle, though by no means unqualified admirers of Sparta, endorsed the Spartan principle of state education, and their endorsements played major roles in elevating the Spartan model to a pride of place in the modern era. Plato’s blueprint of an authoritarian society called for a state system of centralized education supervised by a minister of education. “In this conception,” wrote the Greek scholar Ernest Barker, “Plato was definitely and consciously departing from the practice of Athens, and setting his face towards Sparta.” Plato’s aim was “to combine the curriculum of Athens with the organization of Sparta.”

Plato’s view of the relationship between the child and the state reflects the Spartan influence, as we see in this passage from The Laws. “Education is, if possible, to be, as the phrase goes, compulsory for every mother’s son, on the ground that the child is even more the property of the state than of his parents.”

Read the full essay here.

New Book Review

Jason Kuznicki — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 23:26:07 +0000

Authors:

Jason Kuznicki

Hey blog readers! Here’s my review of Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I found it nothing like (and much better than) what many of the detractors said, but I’m still not quite persuaded.