6 ms·

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the weal

by tw04 10y ago

Libertarianism, as envisioned by the Koch brothers, is AMAZING when you're rich. You simply remove all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy, and re-create feudal Europe. What's not to love???

clock_tower 10y ago
Honestly, I think the poor had more rights (or at least had an easier time of having their rights honored) in the Middle Ages than they would under libertarianism. Look up _Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages_ or _A History of Private Life_ if you're curious.
- dnautics 10y ago
  No, in the middle ages (and it's returning now) there were debtor's prisons, which libertarians are very strong opponents of. That in and of itself is huge.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Looks like that's true; I hadn't come across the early history of debtors' prisons, and had always thought of them as an early-modern thing. It looks like Reason.com argues that pay-for-service modern law is equivalent to debtors' prison, but I haven't heard of libertarians supporting the restoration of proper debtors' prison (where the state imprisons someone for failing to pay a debt to a non-state contracting party). Of course, there's no canonical list of libertarian principles, so I'm sure some do support that... As for the Middle Ages, I'd still recommend the books I mentioned; they make a number of interesting references to village law, and the right of peasant farmers (both serfs, who owed labor service, and freemen, who owed rent) to self-regulate. _A Farewell to Alms_ mentions that farmland in the Middle Ages returned 10% per annum at basically zero risk in England and relatively little on the Continent (the only risks being war and bad harvests); if libertarianism wants to return to that economic arrangement, perhaps with the US government selling bonds returning 10% adjusted for inflation, then perhaps it has a silver lining.
Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
Feudal Europe was feudal Europe because it was a Malthusian state. Economic growth was quickly eaten by population growth. Libertarianism doesn't seem any more likely to increase the rate of reproduction relative to the rate of economic growth.
- majormajor 10y ago
  The comparison comes from how, recently, economic growth has largely been captured by an increasingly small subset. The who/what of the eating of the economic growth matters less than its being eaten.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
    Sure. But the reason the lot of the average person was bad was because of the Malthusian equilibrium. Because economic growth was eaten immediately by population growth basicly everyone was at subsistence; elites capturing a disproportionate share of the resources didn't decrease average welfare. It moderately decreased the population, but the rest lived at subsistence. As the elites created the science and economics that allowed us to escape, however temporarily, from the Malthusian condition, I find it very hard to begrudge them for actions that didn't even decrease average welfare.
    - majormajor 10y ago
      I don't think that, in the context of moving to a libertarian-as-pitched-in-the-USA state, "didn't even decrease average welfare" would hold true. A massive amount of publicly funded services would be cut. So if we take as a given the ability of these elites to capture the cost savings of that for themselves, you end up with the average worker receiving no more money (since it's been captured) yet receiving fewer services (since the public ones were cut). All the leverage[0] is in the hands of the owners, not the workers. [0] excluding leverage such as "there are more of us so we can outvote you" and "there are more of us so we could revolt" - the first is presumed to have not happened, for whatever reason, by the assumption of the existence of this libertarian state, and the second would be a violation of the property rights that USA-libertarians hold so central.
ksherlock 10y ago
The biggest beneficiaries of decriminalized marijuana are the people who are no longer criminals for smoking a joint.
- tw04 10y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I completely agree marijuana should be legalized. I was simply commenting on the ridiculousness of the Koch brothers version of "libertarianism". It reminds me of the people calling the nordic countries "socialist" (remind me which means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden). Words have meaning, and bastardizing them annoys me.
  - megous 10y ago
    Income tax on companies. That's income that would possibly lead to capital creation/accumulation - and was redirected to other uses by the centralized decision making of the government. I think that counts as "means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden".
    - thomasfoster96 10y ago
      Having an income tax doesn’t make a country socialist.
  - eyelidlessness 10y ago
    > It reminds me of the people calling the nordic countries "socialist" (remind me which means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden). Words have meaning, and bastardizing them annoys me. Words have meaning, and they also evolve. You'll have a much easier time understanding others' meaning and communicating with them in kind if you recognize that in many contexts: - Social democracy has largely been associated with the word socialism. - Communism has largely been associated with the word socialism. (Side-note: this is the association you appear to be making; many communists would wholesale reject the notion of the state seizing the means of production, or for that matter the notion of the state as a legitimate institution.) - Communism basically doesn't exist in the broader vocabulary, except as an historical marker for the Soviet Union, and a geopolitical classification of countries like China or Cuba; to the extent it can be associated with any word today, it's anarchism and only among self-identifying anarchists. - Anarchism has always been aligned with communism except in terms of the question of the state. - Big-L Libertarians are largely an ideological faction of the right-wing/Republicans. - Democrats and Republicans occupy a narrow spectrum of corporatism (though that is increasingly expanding rightward). - Small-l libertarians are more frequently associated with the word anarchism, which is resented by pretty much everyone who cares. (Full disclosure since at least my clarity if not my characterization displays a bias: I am an anarchist, of the communist variety, and I tend to view social democracy as harm reduction.)
metaphorm 10y ago
are you commenting only on the source (or rather the source's financial backers) or did you actually find some fault with the article?
- tw04 10y ago
  There was no hidden agenda. If I was trying to refute the article or the findings I would have. I think the criminalization of marijuana was and continues to be ridiculous. I was simply making the point that the Koch brothers support of marijuana should not give anyone the illusion they're fighting for the little guy.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    I agree, the Koch brothers are not motivated by compassion for the poor. However, they are motivated to act in opposition to some of the activities of government that are massively harmful to the poor. I don't think we need to accept the _entire_ agenda of the Koch brothers in order to appreciate that sometimes they're doing the right thing.
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    Are you claiming that regulation exists to help the little guy, and all deregulation is the work of oppressors? Consider the work of the Libertarian Party to, for example, free people to braid hair without requiring a year of training to get a license. Or consider that big corporations love regulations as a way to put barriers in the way of competitors. That's the whole point of the economic idea of "rent seeking", and what public choice economists are talking about when they refer to "regulatory capture". Or for another example, consider that the despite pandering by politicians, economists pretty consistently agree that the minimum wage causes unemployment - the only controversy is by how much. And the origins of the minimum wage came during Jim Crow, when it was first conceived as a way to price minorities out of the job market. So it's silly to say that libertarian's opposition to government regulation is obfuscation to cover screwing the little guy.
    - AstralStorm 10y ago
exclusiv 10y ago
How so? Libertarianism allows for the control to shift to local governments where citizens can have more power over their society. It's not the absence of government but a framework to protect individual liberty. You'd still have government functions locally.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  I've heard libertarian describe many viewpoints to be honest, so people's gut reaction can be quite confusing. On the one hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what could also be called a classic liberal position (ala Adam Smith), which favors minimal government interference but recognizes the need for government structure for many things. (In which case, a decentralized government could be part of such a vision.) On the other hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what also is called anarchism, which favors no government at all because reasons / The Man or something. I've also heard libertarian being used to describe what I would call fascist-capitalism (if you are the type of "libertarians" who also hates democracy, you possibly fall in this category). The former I personally find naive, the later I find repulsive, and neither frankly has much to do with the Adam Smith position at all.
  - exclusiv 10y ago
    It's a general framework with individual liberty at the core. It allows for a lot of different positions. It's not uncommon for libertarians to disagree but for different positions. Yes there are factions of it just like other parties, but the core is that ideas are good if they don't infringe on other people's rights. Making a law which compels someone to provide a service to another is anti-liberty and most libertarians would not support it. Even then, many might support that measure at the local level because state rights is a big component and democracy is respected. Anyway, what I like about libertarianism is that it provides a framework which is basically the Constitution at the core. Republicans and Democrats have no framework in how they go about things and we're in a big mess at many levels. There's been very little leadership and vision. If you look at what the two parties have done over the last few decades - they aren't that much different in practice and people are getting frustrated.
BurningFrog 10y ago
This argument rests on the assumption that the Government mainly benefits the poor and powerless.
- tombone12 10y ago
  No, it explicitly states that it only removes that which benefit the poor in regards to their relation with the rich.
  - BurningFrog 10y ago
    Which "it" is that, and where can I read this explicit statement?
wyager 10y ago
> all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy Like the police, who, due to smart phones, are finally being held accountable for the brutality they've been getting away with for decades? Or maybe you mean civil asset forfeiture, which the police use to steal money from people accused of criminal activity, with no effective mechanism for non-rich people to get it back? Or maybe the current public school system, which encourages mediocrity and is remarkably ineffective for poor students? Or maybe you mean the current welfare system, which has the long-term effect of keeping entire populations in destitute poverty even across generational lines? Or maybe you mean gun control legislation intended to target black populations? Or maybe you mean the PATRIOT act, which I'm sure has been very helpful in "protecting the poor" (and the rich! Great!) from the apparently ever-present and very serious threat of terrorism? Because the Koch brothers and the Cato institute have done a great deal of work to improve all of these things. > re-create feudal Europe Feudal Europe wasn't libertarian at all. Feudal lords had legal privileges that everyone else didn't. Libertarians believe in a legal system that doesn't afford special privileges to anyone, and they generally believe in government functions like a public police force (although typically a very reserved one compared to present day military-style police forces/SWAT/DEA/etc.). Such a system wouldn't even be sustainable with current levels of technology. Guerrilla warfare is now too effective compared to the kind of military forces a feudal lord could muster up, and global food production is so high that feudal lords can no longer use food production as a metaphorical (or literal, I suppose) carrot.
- elgenie 10y ago
  > Feudal Europe wasn't libertarian at all. Feudal lords had legal privileges that everyone else didn't. Libertarians believe in a legal system that doesn't afford special privileges to anyone [...] "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."
bzbarsky 10y ago
I have to ask: have you ever looked at the Koch brothers' actual views? Because I have a hard time reconciling your strawman description with http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-to-bankroll-prison-reform.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-t... as just one example. Or http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemency-the-issue-that-obama-and-the-koch-brothers-actually-agree-on/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemenc... or http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns-likes-billionaire-charles-koch-aclu http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns... for that matter. Those are not rich people problems they're trying to address there... In fact, I would argue that in the area of criminal justice they are _precisely_ trying to do more to protect the poor from the wealthy. Now I agree that on some issues they do want to remove government functions that I would prefer remained in place. But that's not the sum total of what they're doing, and while I disagree with them rather strongly on a lot of their views and preferred policies I agree with them quite strongly on some others. As does the ACLU, and our current president, for that matter.
- hackuser 10y ago
  There are equally strong objections to their attempt to dominate the political system by spending billions of dollars, from the local to the national level on an extensive range of elections and organizations.[0] At one point, they were planning to spend approximately as much as the Republican Party on this election cycle (they don't seem to like Trump, so maybe they backed off a little, but I don't know).[1] Why should two voters have so much more influence than 310 million others? It's anti-democratic. I also think this the parent post presents an overly-moderated depiction of their views - but I'm too busy to look it up myself right now.[0] Certainly the existence of a few things I agree with among their extensive activities wouldn't mean much. [0] Wikipedia, which I wouldn't put much faith in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko... and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png [1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-brothers-network-announces-889-million-budget-for-next-two-years/22363809/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-...

by tw04 10y ago

clock_tower 10y ago

Honestly, I think the poor had more rights (or at least had an easier time of having their rights honored) in the Middle Ages than they would under libertarianism. Look up _Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages_ or _A History of Private Life_ if you're curious.

dnautics 10y ago
No, in the middle ages (and it's returning now) there were debtor's prisons, which libertarians are very strong opponents of. That in and of itself is huge.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Looks like that's true; I hadn't come across the early history of debtors' prisons, and had always thought of them as an early-modern thing. It looks like Reason.com argues that pay-for-service modern law is equivalent to debtors' prison, but I haven't heard of libertarians supporting the restoration of proper debtors' prison (where the state imprisons someone for failing to pay a debt to a non-state contracting party). Of course, there's no canonical list of libertarian principles, so I'm sure some do support that... As for the Middle Ages, I'd still recommend the books I mentioned; they make a number of interesting references to village law, and the right of peasant farmers (both serfs, who owed labor service, and freemen, who owed rent) to self-regulate. _A Farewell to Alms_ mentions that farmland in the Middle Ages returned 10% per annum at basically zero risk in England and relatively little on the Continent (the only risks being war and bad harvests); if libertarianism wants to return to that economic arrangement, perhaps with the US government selling bonds returning 10% adjusted for inflation, then perhaps it has a silver lining.

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago

Feudal Europe was feudal Europe because it was a Malthusian state. Economic growth was quickly eaten by population growth. Libertarianism doesn't seem any more likely to increase the rate of reproduction relative to the rate of economic growth.

majormajor 10y ago
The comparison comes from how, recently, economic growth has largely been captured by an increasingly small subset. The who/what of the eating of the economic growth matters less than its being eaten.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
  Sure. But the reason the lot of the average person was bad was because of the Malthusian equilibrium. Because economic growth was eaten immediately by population growth basicly everyone was at subsistence; elites capturing a disproportionate share of the resources didn't decrease average welfare. It moderately decreased the population, but the rest lived at subsistence. As the elites created the science and economics that allowed us to escape, however temporarily, from the Malthusian condition, I find it very hard to begrudge them for actions that didn't even decrease average welfare.
  - majormajor 10y ago
    I don't think that, in the context of moving to a libertarian-as-pitched-in-the-USA state, "didn't even decrease average welfare" would hold true. A massive amount of publicly funded services would be cut. So if we take as a given the ability of these elites to capture the cost savings of that for themselves, you end up with the average worker receiving no more money (since it's been captured) yet receiving fewer services (since the public ones were cut). All the leverage[0] is in the hands of the owners, not the workers. [0] excluding leverage such as "there are more of us so we can outvote you" and "there are more of us so we could revolt" - the first is presumed to have not happened, for whatever reason, by the assumption of the existence of this libertarian state, and the second would be a violation of the property rights that USA-libertarians hold so central.

ksherlock 10y ago

The biggest beneficiaries of decriminalized marijuana are the people who are no longer criminals for smoking a joint.

tw04 10y ago
Don't get me wrong, I completely agree marijuana should be legalized. I was simply commenting on the ridiculousness of the Koch brothers version of "libertarianism". It reminds me of the people calling the nordic countries "socialist" (remind me which means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden). Words have meaning, and bastardizing them annoys me.
- megous 10y ago
  Income tax on companies. That's income that would possibly lead to capital creation/accumulation - and was redirected to other uses by the centralized decision making of the government. I think that counts as "means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden".
  - thomasfoster96 10y ago
    Having an income tax doesn’t make a country socialist.
- eyelidlessness 10y ago
  > It reminds me of the people calling the nordic countries "socialist" (remind me which means of production the state has forcefully taken in Sweden). Words have meaning, and bastardizing them annoys me. Words have meaning, and they also evolve. You'll have a much easier time understanding others' meaning and communicating with them in kind if you recognize that in many contexts: - Social democracy has largely been associated with the word socialism. - Communism has largely been associated with the word socialism. (Side-note: this is the association you appear to be making; many communists would wholesale reject the notion of the state seizing the means of production, or for that matter the notion of the state as a legitimate institution.) - Communism basically doesn't exist in the broader vocabulary, except as an historical marker for the Soviet Union, and a geopolitical classification of countries like China or Cuba; to the extent it can be associated with any word today, it's anarchism and only among self-identifying anarchists. - Anarchism has always been aligned with communism except in terms of the question of the state. - Big-L Libertarians are largely an ideological faction of the right-wing/Republicans. - Democrats and Republicans occupy a narrow spectrum of corporatism (though that is increasingly expanding rightward). - Small-l libertarians are more frequently associated with the word anarchism, which is resented by pretty much everyone who cares. (Full disclosure since at least my clarity if not my characterization displays a bias: I am an anarchist, of the communist variety, and I tend to view social democracy as harm reduction.)

metaphorm 10y ago

are you commenting only on the source (or rather the source's financial backers) or did you actually find some fault with the article?

tw04 10y ago
There was no hidden agenda. If I was trying to refute the article or the findings I would have. I think the criminalization of marijuana was and continues to be ridiculous. I was simply making the point that the Koch brothers support of marijuana should not give anyone the illusion they're fighting for the little guy.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I agree, the Koch brothers are not motivated by compassion for the poor. However, they are motivated to act in opposition to some of the activities of government that are massively harmful to the poor. I don't think we need to accept the _entire_ agenda of the Koch brothers in order to appreciate that sometimes they're doing the right thing.
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  Are you claiming that regulation exists to help the little guy, and all deregulation is the work of oppressors? Consider the work of the Libertarian Party to, for example, free people to braid hair without requiring a year of training to get a license. Or consider that big corporations love regulations as a way to put barriers in the way of competitors. That's the whole point of the economic idea of "rent seeking", and what public choice economists are talking about when they refer to "regulatory capture". Or for another example, consider that the despite pandering by politicians, economists pretty consistently agree that the minimum wage causes unemployment - the only controversy is by how much. And the origins of the minimum wage came during Jim Crow, when it was first conceived as a way to price minorities out of the job market. So it's silly to say that libertarian's opposition to government regulation is obfuscation to cover screwing the little guy.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago

exclusiv 10y ago

How so? Libertarianism allows for the control to shift to local governments where citizens can have more power over their society. It's not the absence of government but a framework to protect individual liberty. You'd still have government functions locally.

soundwave106 10y ago
I've heard libertarian describe many viewpoints to be honest, so people's gut reaction can be quite confusing. On the one hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what could also be called a classic liberal position (ala Adam Smith), which favors minimal government interference but recognizes the need for government structure for many things. (In which case, a decentralized government could be part of such a vision.) On the other hand, I've heard the term "libertarian" applied to what also is called anarchism, which favors no government at all because reasons / The Man or something. I've also heard libertarian being used to describe what I would call fascist-capitalism (if you are the type of "libertarians" who also hates democracy, you possibly fall in this category). The former I personally find naive, the later I find repulsive, and neither frankly has much to do with the Adam Smith position at all.
- exclusiv 10y ago
  It's a general framework with individual liberty at the core. It allows for a lot of different positions. It's not uncommon for libertarians to disagree but for different positions. Yes there are factions of it just like other parties, but the core is that ideas are good if they don't infringe on other people's rights. Making a law which compels someone to provide a service to another is anti-liberty and most libertarians would not support it. Even then, many might support that measure at the local level because state rights is a big component and democracy is respected. Anyway, what I like about libertarianism is that it provides a framework which is basically the Constitution at the core. Republicans and Democrats have no framework in how they go about things and we're in a big mess at many levels. There's been very little leadership and vision. If you look at what the two parties have done over the last few decades - they aren't that much different in practice and people are getting frustrated.

BurningFrog 10y ago

This argument rests on the assumption that the Government mainly benefits the poor and powerless.

tombone12 10y ago
No, it explicitly states that it only removes that which benefit the poor in regards to their relation with the rich.
- BurningFrog 10y ago
  Which "it" is that, and where can I read this explicit statement?

wyager 10y ago

> all government functions that protect the poor from the wealthy Like the police, who, due to smart phones, are finally being held accountable for the brutality they've been getting away with for decades? Or maybe you mean civil asset forfeiture, which the police use to steal money from people accused of criminal activity, with no effective mechanism for non-rich people to get it back? Or maybe the current public school system, which encourages mediocrity and is remarkably ineffective for poor students? Or maybe you mean the current welfare system, which has the long-term effect of keeping entire populations in destitute poverty even across generational lines? Or maybe you mean gun control legislation intended to target black populations? Or maybe you mean the PATRIOT act, which I'm sure has been very helpful in "protecting the poor" (and the rich! Great!) from the apparently ever-present and very serious threat of terrorism? Because the Koch brothers and the Cato institute have done a great deal of work to improve all of these things. > re-create feudal Europe Feudal Europe wasn't libertarian at all. Feudal lords had legal privileges that everyone else didn't. Libertarians believe in a legal system that doesn't afford special privileges to anyone, and they generally believe in government functions like a public police force (although typically a very reserved one compared to present day military-style police forces/SWAT/DEA/etc.). Such a system wouldn't even be sustainable with current levels of technology. Guerrilla warfare is now too effective compared to the kind of military forces a feudal lord could muster up, and global food production is so high that feudal lords can no longer use food production as a metaphorical (or literal, I suppose) carrot.

elgenie 10y ago
> Feudal Europe wasn't libertarian at all. Feudal lords had legal privileges that everyone else didn't. Libertarians believe in a legal system that doesn't afford special privileges to anyone [...] "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread."

bzbarsky 10y ago

I have to ask: have you ever looked at the Koch brothers' actual views? Because I have a hard time reconciling your strawman description with http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-to-bankroll-prison-reform.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/13/koch-bros-t... as just one example. Or http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemency-the-issue-that-obama-and-the-koch-brothers-actually-agree-on/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/15/clemenc... or http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns-likes-billionaire-charles-koch-aclu http://cjonline.com/news/2015-10-15/forfeiture-reform-aligns... for that matter. Those are not rich people problems they're trying to address there... In fact, I would argue that in the area of criminal justice they are _precisely_ trying to do more to protect the poor from the wealthy. Now I agree that on some issues they do want to remove government functions that I would prefer remained in place. But that's not the sum total of what they're doing, and while I disagree with them rather strongly on a lot of their views and preferred policies I agree with them quite strongly on some others. As does the ACLU, and our current president, for that matter.

hackuser 10y ago
There are equally strong objections to their attempt to dominate the political system by spending billions of dollars, from the local to the national level on an extensive range of elections and organizations.[0] At one point, they were planning to spend approximately as much as the Republican Party on this election cycle (they don't seem to like Trump, so maybe they backed off a little, but I don't know).[1] Why should two voters have so much more influence than 310 million others? It's anti-democratic. I also think this the parent post presents an overly-moderated depiction of their views - but I'm too busy to look it up myself right now.[0] Certainly the existence of a few things I agree with among their extensive activities wouldn't mean much. [0] Wikipedia, which I wouldn't put much faith in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Koch_brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_the_Ko... and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Maze_of_Money.png [1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-brothers-network-announces-889-million-budget-for-next-two-years/22363809/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/26/koch-...