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Dear Libertarian Types (of which I consider myself one) Please stop arguing against the Obama strategy. There’s nothing you can do to stop it and its failure

Dear Libertarian Types (of which I consider myself one) Please stop arguing against the Obama strategy. There’s nothing you can do to stop it and its failure (if it does fail) will make your point better than if you wrote a billion blog posts. Beyond that if he does succeed you could write a billion blog posts saying he was wrong and they aren’t going to convince people. One way or the other it’s out of your hands. More importantly...you have a bigger problem. Right now there are a lot of people out there arguing that libertarian principles got us into this mess. That is simply not the case and arguing against that is where you should be putting your effort. Because assuming President Obama does fail you’ll want people to be open to libertarian principles in the future. Fiscal policy is like a game of chess right now and you should be looking three moves down and not at the very next encounter (which you already lost almost 3 months ago) Sincerely, Tom

donniefitz2 18y ago
Amen, brother. Speaking the truth.
- adnam 18y ago
  Praise the lard
rudyfink 18y ago
I think if someone believes what we, as a country, are doing is wrong they should speak out. The sums and future commitments involved in all of this are absolutely enormous and if someone thinks it is being misspent this is the time to say so. You are right that there is practically little anyone can do and that politics is usually played several moves down the road. The recent election will be taken as a mandate for whatever is passed and that will be that. That said I still think that if someone believes they should speak their mind. I don't say this because I'm a libertarian or especially in any given political camp. I just do not want to see political opinion or participation discouraged. I think the long term solution is more people aware and interested in policy and not less.
- davidw 18y ago
  I would humbly submit that perhaps there are more appropriate forums for speaking up.
  - justindz 18y ago
    Although I have no interest in stifling debate here, I do agree with you that HN karma has little to no influence on policy and does not counter-balance monetary influence on policy makers. So I hope that the strongest opinions here, regardless of which side they take, are also being citizen-lobbied.
ellyagg 18y ago
If you wait to say he's doing it wrong, then people will just say that hindsight is 20/20, won't they?
divia 18y ago
I agree with you that arguing against the Obama strategy is pretty much futile, but I think it's wrong to assume it'll be obvious after the fact whether the bailout made things better or worse, since there's no way to run a controlled experiment. I think the best strategy for people who think they have a good understanding of the situation to follow Bryan Caplan's advice and state publicly how they will interpret different outcomes. http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/09/how_would_we_kn.html http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/09/how_would_we_kn...
- llimllib 18y ago
  You should listen to a recent This American Life[1] episode where both Tyler Cowen (anti-bailout) and some other dude (pro-bailout Princeton prof) argue that Obama's bailout constitutes the closest thing to an expierment of Keynes' ideas that we will ever have. [1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1281 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=128...
euroclydon 18y ago
The argument for three steps down the road needs to go something like this: Government is inefficient, therefore the larger they get, the more areas of your life they will spread their inefficiencies into. Areas where their inefficiency should be of major concern are: their respect for your liberty and freedom.
david927 18y ago
After '89, there were some who said, "Communism didn't fail because this wasn't /really/ Communism." I answered, sorry, but that's how Communism is rendered. There are those now who are saying, "Laissez Faire Capitalism didn't fail because it wasn't /really/ Laissez Faire Capitalism." I'm answering, sorry, you had your chance. You can argue on blogs all you want. The experiment has failed miserably. Europe is going to come out of this smelling ok, and with it, Third-way Socialism, where there's a balance between the market and the public interest.
- dantheman 18y ago
  If anything you could say a mixed economy doesn't work. The problem is the state makes all sorts of problems and then they blame it on free market capitalism. The current situation is widely attributed to the federal reserve's manipulation of the currency. In a Lassez Faire economy their would be no federal reserve.
  - anewaccountname 18y ago
    In Lassez Faire economy anyone who creates a systemic risk discounts said risk by how big they are in relation to how big the system is.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- daniel-cussen 18y ago
  Chile is more Laissez-Faire and it's doing awesome.
  - lazyant 18y ago
    Perhaps, but president Bachelet and her government have as highest priority the reduction of poverty, wealth redistribution etc (thank god btw) through direct government intervention, or at least that's what they say every time they speak (I have TVN). And thanks to them or instead of them (Concertacion governments) Chile has been reducing its poverty levels; pretty much they are the only country in South America with a middle class. This has nothing to do with anything but I think in a way it's awesome that a country has a president who is: 1) woman 2) single mother 3) declared agnostic/atheist can you imagine not a president but just any politician in the US like that?
shader 18y ago
The point of speaking out should not be to stop the government from continuing it's policies, which is futile. It should instead be to educate people about the flaws in these policies so that when they do fail it will be understood that it wasn't because "they didn't do enough" but because of something more basic. To merely give in and not continue to speak out would be to assent to their policies. I agree that we should not look to stop him now but looking three chess moves down the road still requires playing in the present. If we stop proclaiming the truth, we won't even be able to say "I told you so" because we wouldn't have. However, I think that individual rants will not help much for these other goals anyway. We need a stronger, rational argument for why his plans won't work, and what we can do better. In response to socialism, Mises did not merely try and say "See, it isn't working" because that kind of response is easily defused by statements such as "it wasn't pure enough". Instead, he wrote a rational argument from first principles about why it wouldn't work. Granted, not everyone has read his book or agrees with it, but it's better than just using evidence of previous failure. It's amazing how good humans are at rationalizing away flaws in their belief systems. We should do the same thing with the current financial crises. Make clear statements about why it happened and what the best way to fix it is, and then try and get as many people to read them as possible. As incorrect and irrelevant as academia often is, it has an amazing effect on future beliefs. If we can get the ideas out there, I'm sure that we can make a difference. Maybe not in time to stop the current president, but possibly in time to stop the next one.
crux_ 18y ago
IMHO the real failure is that Libertarian Types cannot seem to articulate a vision for the future. The linked article explicitly hearkens back to the 19th century; almost every libertarian proposal I have seen consists of nothing more substantial than rolling back to those times. Like "true" communism you will never see free market principles fully embodied, and nobody can seem to articulate real-world half steps that don't have severely unpleasant side effects.
- jobeirne 18y ago
  I don't understand what you mean by "Libertarian types" not articulating a "vision for the future", because it seems to me that that's precisely what this article is doing; Philip Greenspun suggests a course of action which would be advisable for Obama to take. If, however, you mean to say that Libertarian principles don't change with the times, I think I can address that. It's because Libertarian principles are just that: they're principles. They don't change per the circumstance, which is what makes Libertarianism such a robust ideology. And as far as hearkening back to the 19th century, I'm curious as to what's so bad about that? The 19th century was a period of rapid growth for the US. A couple of ugly incidences excluded, things fiscal were generally Good.
  - crux_ 18y ago
    Greenspun's suggestion is not a serious one. It is certainly earnest, but it is also impractical to the point of being laughable. Can you imagine an politician, of any ideology, seriously taking this suggestion and lasting more than a few months at it before they are overridden by congress, or the courts, or someone else comes in to give it a try? Its purpose is not honest suggestion; it is instead designed to make Greenspun and those who agree with him feel good about their beliefs, and perhaps convince interested readers to entertain a similar belief system as well. If you really want to give Obama suggestions, and you really want them to be taken, you ought to make them feasible. The way forward is via productive compromise and incremental progress -- and that's one of the ways in which libertarianism fails completely: when has any of you ever suggested a small step? Instead you snipe from the margins about the philosophical inequity of it all. Further along the lines of not articulating a vision for the future: - The vast majority of suggestions are negative -- what we must not do or change -- rather than positive. - Libertarian policy is exclusively derived from absolute philosophical first principles with zero consideration as to empirical effectiveness, side effects, or how-do-we-get-there-from-here. It's nice for utopian fiction and useless for the rest of us. p.s. I like how you brush aside so much of the ugliness of that era as "incidences." Assume I take you at your word that things "fiscal" were generally Good: how were things "liberty" then, hmmm? (A rhetorical question.) (edit: paragraph breaks missing in a few places)

donniefitz2 18y ago

Amen, brother. Speaking the truth.

adnam 18y ago
Praise the lard

rudyfink 18y ago

I think if someone believes what we, as a country, are doing is wrong they should speak out. The sums and future commitments involved in all of this are absolutely enormous and if someone thinks it is being misspent this is the time to say so. You are right that there is practically little anyone can do and that politics is usually played several moves down the road. The recent election will be taken as a mandate for whatever is passed and that will be that. That said I still think that if someone believes they should speak their mind. I don't say this because I'm a libertarian or especially in any given political camp. I just do not want to see political opinion or participation discouraged. I think the long term solution is more people aware and interested in policy and not less.

davidw 18y ago
I would humbly submit that perhaps there are more appropriate forums for speaking up.
- justindz 18y ago
  Although I have no interest in stifling debate here, I do agree with you that HN karma has little to no influence on policy and does not counter-balance monetary influence on policy makers. So I hope that the strongest opinions here, regardless of which side they take, are also being citizen-lobbied.

ellyagg 18y ago

If you wait to say he's doing it wrong, then people will just say that hindsight is 20/20, won't they?

divia 18y ago

I agree with you that arguing against the Obama strategy is pretty much futile, but I think it's wrong to assume it'll be obvious after the fact whether the bailout made things better or worse, since there's no way to run a controlled experiment. I think the best strategy for people who think they have a good understanding of the situation to follow Bryan Caplan's advice and state publicly how they will interpret different outcomes. http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/09/how_would_we_kn.html http://econlog.econlib.org//archives/2008/09/how_would_we_kn...

llimllib 18y ago
You should listen to a recent This American Life[1] episode where both Tyler Cowen (anti-bailout) and some other dude (pro-bailout Princeton prof) argue that Obama's bailout constitutes the closest thing to an expierment of Keynes' ideas that we will ever have. [1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1281 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=128...

euroclydon 18y ago

The argument for three steps down the road needs to go something like this: Government is inefficient, therefore the larger they get, the more areas of your life they will spread their inefficiencies into. Areas where their inefficiency should be of major concern are: their respect for your liberty and freedom.

david927 18y ago

After '89, there were some who said, "Communism didn't fail because this wasn't /really/ Communism." I answered, sorry, but that's how Communism is rendered. There are those now who are saying, "Laissez Faire Capitalism didn't fail because it wasn't /really/ Laissez Faire Capitalism." I'm answering, sorry, you had your chance. You can argue on blogs all you want. The experiment has failed miserably. Europe is going to come out of this smelling ok, and with it, Third-way Socialism, where there's a balance between the market and the public interest.

dantheman 18y ago
If anything you could say a mixed economy doesn't work. The problem is the state makes all sorts of problems and then they blame it on free market capitalism. The current situation is widely attributed to the federal reserve's manipulation of the currency. In a Lassez Faire economy their would be no federal reserve.
- anewaccountname 18y ago
  In Lassez Faire economy anyone who creates a systemic risk discounts said risk by how big they are in relation to how big the system is.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
daniel-cussen 18y ago
Chile is more Laissez-Faire and it's doing awesome.
- lazyant 18y ago
  Perhaps, but president Bachelet and her government have as highest priority the reduction of poverty, wealth redistribution etc (thank god btw) through direct government intervention, or at least that's what they say every time they speak (I have TVN). And thanks to them or instead of them (Concertacion governments) Chile has been reducing its poverty levels; pretty much they are the only country in South America with a middle class. This has nothing to do with anything but I think in a way it's awesome that a country has a president who is: 1) woman 2) single mother 3) declared agnostic/atheist can you imagine not a president but just any politician in the US like that?

shader 18y ago

The point of speaking out should not be to stop the government from continuing it's policies, which is futile. It should instead be to educate people about the flaws in these policies so that when they do fail it will be understood that it wasn't because "they didn't do enough" but because of something more basic. To merely give in and not continue to speak out would be to assent to their policies. I agree that we should not look to stop him now but looking three chess moves down the road still requires playing in the present. If we stop proclaiming the truth, we won't even be able to say "I told you so" because we wouldn't have. However, I think that individual rants will not help much for these other goals anyway. We need a stronger, rational argument for why his plans won't work, and what we can do better. In response to socialism, Mises did not merely try and say "See, it isn't working" because that kind of response is easily defused by statements such as "it wasn't pure enough". Instead, he wrote a rational argument from first principles about why it wouldn't work. Granted, not everyone has read his book or agrees with it, but it's better than just using evidence of previous failure. It's amazing how good humans are at rationalizing away flaws in their belief systems. We should do the same thing with the current financial crises. Make clear statements about why it happened and what the best way to fix it is, and then try and get as many people to read them as possible. As incorrect and irrelevant as academia often is, it has an amazing effect on future beliefs. If we can get the ideas out there, I'm sure that we can make a difference. Maybe not in time to stop the current president, but possibly in time to stop the next one.

crux_ 18y ago

IMHO the real failure is that Libertarian Types cannot seem to articulate a vision for the future. The linked article explicitly hearkens back to the 19th century; almost every libertarian proposal I have seen consists of nothing more substantial than rolling back to those times. Like "true" communism you will never see free market principles fully embodied, and nobody can seem to articulate real-world half steps that don't have severely unpleasant side effects.

jobeirne 18y ago
I don't understand what you mean by "Libertarian types" not articulating a "vision for the future", because it seems to me that that's precisely what this article is doing; Philip Greenspun suggests a course of action which would be advisable for Obama to take. If, however, you mean to say that Libertarian principles don't change with the times, I think I can address that. It's because Libertarian principles are just that: they're principles. They don't change per the circumstance, which is what makes Libertarianism such a robust ideology. And as far as hearkening back to the 19th century, I'm curious as to what's so bad about that? The 19th century was a period of rapid growth for the US. A couple of ugly incidences excluded, things fiscal were generally Good.
- crux_ 18y ago
  Greenspun's suggestion is not a serious one. It is certainly earnest, but it is also impractical to the point of being laughable. Can you imagine an politician, of any ideology, seriously taking this suggestion and lasting more than a few months at it before they are overridden by congress, or the courts, or someone else comes in to give it a try? Its purpose is not honest suggestion; it is instead designed to make Greenspun and those who agree with him feel good about their beliefs, and perhaps convince interested readers to entertain a similar belief system as well. If you really want to give Obama suggestions, and you really want them to be taken, you ought to make them feasible. The way forward is via productive compromise and incremental progress -- and that's one of the ways in which libertarianism fails completely: when has any of you ever suggested a small step? Instead you snipe from the margins about the philosophical inequity of it all. Further along the lines of not articulating a vision for the future: - The vast majority of suggestions are negative -- what we must not do or change -- rather than positive. - Libertarian policy is exclusively derived from absolute philosophical first principles with zero consideration as to empirical effectiveness, side effects, or how-do-we-get-there-from-here. It's nice for utopian fiction and useless for the rest of us. p.s. I like how you brush aside so much of the ugliness of that era as "incidences." Assume I take you at your word that things "fiscal" were generally Good: how were things "liberty" then, hmmm? (A rhetorical question.) (edit: paragraph breaks missing in a few places)