3 ms·

No, Classical Liberalism Isn’t a “Fraud”

10 points by caramiadare 9y ago

8bitsrule 9y ago
Classical liberals, pioneering class theory, have shown that business and government often partner to serve the interests of the powerful, to create a favorable environment for well-connected industries and companies.... Hear hear. But to know that means knowing a little history - about places like the Caribbean and Hawaii - and law - like when US corporations gained personhood in the late 1800s. Knowing history, it's self-evident. Which is why smearing and disappearing history has so important to these folks for soooooo long.
smacktoward 9y ago
This article is a great illustration of the fundamental problem with libertarianism. > [C]lassical liberals don’t think corporations are any more altruistic, so we propose to carefully sequester them from the source of special privilege: government. What Cooper seems not to understand (though he seems close at times to grasping it) is that corporations would rather not compete; they’d rather appeal to “the sovereignty of nations,” which, as we have noted, is their originator, to hobble or outlaw their competitors. The glaring omission in this analysis is that government, while it is one potential source of special privileges for corporations, is not the source of special privilege. Simply keeping government out of the affairs of business will not prevent corporations from reaching positions from which they no longer have to compete. As we've seen countless times over the last few hundred years, corporations can reach such a position quite effectively without any help from government whatsoever, by driving their competitors out of business (monopoly), or by colluding rather than competing (oligopoly), or through other means of imperfect competition. And when that happens, there is only one actor with enough power to free up the market again -- government. Asking (as the article does) for government to "confine itself to the protection of individual liberty" is, therefore, a call for society to accept these market failures as effectively un-fixable. (Which is perhaps why libertarianism is such a popular philosophy among those who run the corporations that would rather not compete.)
- ewzimm 9y ago
  I think "the protection of individual liberty" in this case includes regulation of corporations which act against liberty. The request is that the government not grant special privileges to some corporations refers mostly to things like subsidies and special contracts. On the other hand, if a corporation is acting in a way that puts people in danger, for example excessive pollution or selling defective products, there's no basic ideal of classical liberalism or libertarianism that would prevent the government from acting to stop it. The point of this article is that the idea of libertarians opposing all government regulation is false. They tend to want to restrict but not abolish it. That's not to say that it's a flawless philosophy. It's definitely one that's created out of idealism and faith in humanity, which might not always be warranted. In a way, it has become self-defeating in its success because it has empowered individuals to believe they're wiser than they are, leading to people who are more easily manipulated by well-crafted rhetoric that stokes the ego and convinces them that they know something that others don't. Characterizations of different groups as stupid and maybe even a little evil are particularly effective for this kind of manipulation, like the kind that the author here argues against.

10 points by caramiadare 9y ago

Classical liberals, pioneering class theory, have shown that business and government often partner to serve the interests of the powerful, to create a favorable environment for well-connected industries and companies.... Hear hear. But to know that means knowing a little history - about places like the Caribbean and Hawaii - and law - like when US corporations gained personhood in the late 1800s. Knowing history, it's self-evident. Which is why smearing and disappearing history has so important to these folks for soooooo long.

smacktoward 9y ago

This article is a great illustration of the fundamental problem with libertarianism. > [C]lassical liberals don’t think corporations are any more altruistic, so we propose to carefully sequester them from the source of special privilege: government. What Cooper seems not to understand (though he seems close at times to grasping it) is that corporations would rather not compete; they’d rather appeal to “the sovereignty of nations,” which, as we have noted, is their originator, to hobble or outlaw their competitors. The glaring omission in this analysis is that government, while it is one potential source of special privileges for corporations, is not the source of special privilege. Simply keeping government out of the affairs of business will not prevent corporations from reaching positions from which they no longer have to compete. As we've seen countless times over the last few hundred years, corporations can reach such a position quite effectively without any help from government whatsoever, by driving their competitors out of business (monopoly), or by colluding rather than competing (oligopoly), or through other means of imperfect competition. And when that happens, there is only one actor with enough power to free up the market again -- government. Asking (as the article does) for government to "confine itself to the protection of individual liberty" is, therefore, a call for society to accept these market failures as effectively un-fixable. (Which is perhaps why libertarianism is such a popular philosophy among those who run the corporations that would rather not compete.)

ewzimm 9y ago
I think "the protection of individual liberty" in this case includes regulation of corporations which act against liberty. The request is that the government not grant special privileges to some corporations refers mostly to things like subsidies and special contracts. On the other hand, if a corporation is acting in a way that puts people in danger, for example excessive pollution or selling defective products, there's no basic ideal of classical liberalism or libertarianism that would prevent the government from acting to stop it. The point of this article is that the idea of libertarians opposing all government regulation is false. They tend to want to restrict but not abolish it. That's not to say that it's a flawless philosophy. It's definitely one that's created out of idealism and faith in humanity, which might not always be warranted. In a way, it has become self-defeating in its success because it has empowered individuals to believe they're wiser than they are, leading to people who are more easily manipulated by well-crafted rhetoric that stokes the ego and convinces them that they know something that others don't. Characterizations of different groups as stupid and maybe even a little evil are particularly effective for this kind of manipulation, like the kind that the author here argues against.