5 ms·

>Libertarians never can describe what a free market really is. With a small amount of effort using google, you can find plenty of web pages describing basic li

by opo 9y ago

>Libertarians never can describe what a free market really is. With a small amount of effort using google, you can find plenty of web pages describing basic libertarian philosophy - it really isn’t some kind of mystery. >...Is anti-theft law a government regulation? Seems to me that pure anarchy is the only real free market. (Since you asked, I would guess that most libertarians would say that the basic goal of a free market is to allow for voluntary exchanges between two parties which leave both better off. In order for this to happen, there has to be rule of law, property rights, enforcement of contracts, etc. And if you are wondering, libertarians likely also think that drugs and electrical devices, etc should be safe - they may just have different ideas on how to achieve that safety. Just because someone is opposed to prohibition on various drugs or opposed to laws against prostitution etc etc doesn’t mean they are proposing an anarchistic war of all against all.)

maxxxxx 9y ago
Yes I can look up libertarian philosophy. No problem. What I can't look up is how this would work in the real world. Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? Look at tobacco. Without government research we would probably still be at the same stage as climate research where the tobacco companies would claim the science is still unsettled. How can you get a court settlement against billion dollar company who can pay an unlimited number of lawyers and scientists? I just think a lot of libertarians are intellectually lazy, blame everything on government and offer no practical solutions. There is a lot to improve in this world but dreaming of the ever elusive free market and evil government will do nothing.
- yvdriess 9y ago
  > What I can't look up is how this would work in the real world. Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? What I typically get as a response is that that person or company will go out of business, as people will stop buying said unsafe products. In my opinion this belief comes from wrongly applying parochial common sense to such a large and complex system that is the modern economy. Victorian England learned this lesson the hard way through its string of adulteration scandals (e.g plaster in bread). You could perhaps make a parallel with the adulteration scandals in China.
- opo 9y ago
  >...Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? I am sure many consumers see the UL certification on electrical devices and think that the product design must have been certified a large government agency. Some public goods must be provided by government, but those who think everything requires a government agency seem to forget the regulatory capture, rent seeking, political cronyism etc that can plaque government programs. >...Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? Did anyone ever say that courts should be removed? >...I just think a lot of libertarians are intellectually lazy, blame everything on government and offer no practical solutions. Oh please. One might say it is intellectually lazy to create straw men arguments and then declare victory. If you need an example of trying to offer practical solutions, go to reason.org and you can probably find hundreds of pages of commentary, practical solutions, reviews, etc. The top story on teh site looks like it is on the details of the current state of the air traffic reform legislation being proposed in congress. You can read the digital version of their magazine for free and in fact every issue they have ever published for close to 40 years. Feel free to disagree with what they (or anybody else) writes - but don't make up a story that they (and others) just "blame government and offer no practical solutions". >...There is a lot to improve in this world but dreaming of the ever elusive free market and evil government will do nothing. Many libertarians I know would consider themselves to essentially be classic liberals. I suspect they all would find your characterization above to be inaccurate and offensive. For example, here is a quote from a professor at NYU: "...I consider myself both a libertarian and a classical liberal. … So there are important differences among liberals and libertarians but I view these are differences along a spectrum. Some are principled (“Never, ever, initiate the use of force”) and some are empirical (“Many public goods can be provided privately”) and some are hard to classify (“The NSA should not collect masses of meta data”). Some people will want to take these differences and harden them into different political philosophies with different names and so forth. But I suggest that libertarians and classical liberals have too much in common for any divorce." https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/libertarianism-and-classical-liberalism-is-there-a-difference/ https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/libertarianism...
Frondo 9y ago
And when you're googling, please be sure to read this: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html It's one of the best quick critiques of libertarianism I've seen. None of these ideas are new, they've been hashed out for years, and libertarianism has never really caught on because most people have an intuitive sense that mere property rights and enforcement of contracts are vastly insufficient to make a society anyone wants to live in--a sense that is reinforced whenever they think more deeply about what the arrangement of that world would mean for their lives. (For example, take away tools for society-building such as public goods, e.g. roads, buses, libraries, health care, and replace it all with private equivalents, because now your main tool for running society is transactions. You're asking people to imagine a world in which they have to pay for everything, constantly, item by item. Like Joe Chip and his nickel-a-use door in that Phil Dick novel. People get what that would mean for their lives and they don't want that. Libertarianism gets more use as a joke in satire than in real world policy.)

by opo 9y ago

maxxxxx 9y ago

Yes I can look up libertarian philosophy. No problem. What I can't look up is how this would work in the real world. Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? Look at tobacco. Without government research we would probably still be at the same stage as climate research where the tobacco companies would claim the science is still unsettled. How can you get a court settlement against billion dollar company who can pay an unlimited number of lawyers and scientists? I just think a lot of libertarians are intellectually lazy, blame everything on government and offer no practical solutions. There is a lot to improve in this world but dreaming of the ever elusive free market and evil government will do nothing.

yvdriess 9y ago
> What I can't look up is how this would work in the real world. Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? What I typically get as a response is that that person or company will go out of business, as people will stop buying said unsafe products. In my opinion this belief comes from wrongly applying parochial common sense to such a large and complex system that is the modern economy. Victorian England learned this lesson the hard way through its string of adulteration scandals (e.g plaster in bread). You could perhaps make a parallel with the adulteration scandals in China.
opo 9y ago
>...Want safe drugs and devices? Who determines that? I am sure many consumers see the UL certification on electrical devices and think that the product design must have been certified a large government agency. Some public goods must be provided by government, but those who think everything requires a government agency seem to forget the regulatory capture, rent seeking, political cronyism etc that can plaque government programs. >...Somebody has done harm to another person. Who determines that? Did anyone ever say that courts should be removed? >...I just think a lot of libertarians are intellectually lazy, blame everything on government and offer no practical solutions. Oh please. One might say it is intellectually lazy to create straw men arguments and then declare victory. If you need an example of trying to offer practical solutions, go to reason.org and you can probably find hundreds of pages of commentary, practical solutions, reviews, etc. The top story on teh site looks like it is on the details of the current state of the air traffic reform legislation being proposed in congress. You can read the digital version of their magazine for free and in fact every issue they have ever published for close to 40 years. Feel free to disagree with what they (or anybody else) writes - but don't make up a story that they (and others) just "blame government and offer no practical solutions". >...There is a lot to improve in this world but dreaming of the ever elusive free market and evil government will do nothing. Many libertarians I know would consider themselves to essentially be classic liberals. I suspect they all would find your characterization above to be inaccurate and offensive. For example, here is a quote from a professor at NYU: "...I consider myself both a libertarian and a classical liberal. … So there are important differences among liberals and libertarians but I view these are differences along a spectrum. Some are principled (“Never, ever, initiate the use of force”) and some are empirical (“Many public goods can be provided privately”) and some are hard to classify (“The NSA should not collect masses of meta data”). Some people will want to take these differences and harden them into different political philosophies with different names and so forth. But I suggest that libertarians and classical liberals have too much in common for any divorce." https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/libertarianism-and-classical-liberalism-is-there-a-difference/ https://thinkmarkets.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/libertarianism...

Frondo 9y ago

And when you're googling, please be sure to read this: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html It's one of the best quick critiques of libertarianism I've seen. None of these ideas are new, they've been hashed out for years, and libertarianism has never really caught on because most people have an intuitive sense that mere property rights and enforcement of contracts are vastly insufficient to make a society anyone wants to live in--a sense that is reinforced whenever they think more deeply about what the arrangement of that world would mean for their lives. (For example, take away tools for society-building such as public goods, e.g. roads, buses, libraries, health care, and replace it all with private equivalents, because now your main tool for running society is transactions. You're asking people to imagine a world in which they have to pay for everything, constantly, item by item. Like Joe Chip and his nickel-a-use door in that Phil Dick novel. People get what that would mean for their lives and they don't want that. Libertarianism gets more use as a joke in satire than in real world policy.)