What Is Libertarianism?

From Critiques Of Libertarianism
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A Rhetoric Of Liberty





Wishful Thinking

Many libertarians paint a picture of a libertarian future that is just like today, except much richer and without government. Government in society is the equivalent of a keystone species in ecology. Remove government and society will change radically. Government is responsible for the creation of middle classes, infrastructure, defense, human rights, etc. Government combats the rise of coercion for private ends and brings about limits to externalities such as pollution. These are problems where significant market failures exist, and market solutions have rarely worked. A libertarian future would be different enough that the transition would be perhaps as painful as the Soviet change to capitalism, and few would be certain of their position in the new society.

A Rightwing Populist Movement In Miniature


A Childish Selfishness


An Unusual Preference for Certain Liberties

Some libertarians simply value some forms of personal liberty more than other people consider reasonable. Essentially all the rest of their argument is post hoc excuses that conceal the simple difference in prefrences. Their post hoc arguments tend to be based on (a) natural rights, (b) ridiculous formulas like "coercion is bad", (c) assertions about qualitative benefits that overlook other obvious factors or (d) denialism.

Scrooge's Viewpoint

Many libertarians reject patriotism, democracy, politics, religion, charity and other traditional values and institutions in their attempt to view the whole world through economics. While many traditional values and institutions may deserve a good kicking, preferring "greed is good" economic views and ignoring the harms of dismantling major institutions is repulsive. Examples include the Friedman and Hayek attitudes towards Pinochet's Chile<ref>Third World Traveller, Milton Friedman</ref><ref>John Quiggan, Friedman and Hayek</ref> and serious defenses of Scrooge.<ref>Michael Levin, Scrooge Defended</ref>

A Catspaw For Corporations



A Long-Running Public Relations Campaign


They have attempted (quite successfully) to subvert the language, to pack propaganda into textbooks and academic publications, to subvert science (smoking, pollution and global warming) with enormous denialist campaigns, to create intellectual shock troops to disperse their propaganda, to stack the legal system with specially trained judges, to direct politicians with think-tank plans and offers of revolving-door employment, and a host of other activities.


Philosophical Fairytales


Most libertarian authors rely on natural rights.<ref>David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer pp.82-87</ref> Natural rights were originally invented to oppose stories such as rights of kings. They are "nonsense on stilts" that is as popular, insubstantial and unprovable as souls.


Objectivism starts with the fairytale of a priori knowledge. "A is A", for example. But that doesn't work for the real world, because the real world has time: A at time 1 is not necessarily the same as A at time 2. It's never the same water in the river, and even protons can spontaneously decay. A priori knowledge at best can build models: whether the models are accurate or inaccurate is a matter of empirical study of the real world.

Economic Fairytales

There are two major bases for libertarian economic fairytales: the pseudoscientific Austrian School (especially Mises, Rothbard and Hayek) and neoliberalism (especially Chicago School and Milton Friedman.) Arguments from both are used to promote capitalism and condemn everything else, but especially to condemn government. The fairytales involve seldom-mentioned unrealistic assumptions such as rational man (in the case of the Austrians) and economic man in the case of the neoliberals. It's no coincidence that those unrealistic assumptions more closely match corporations than they do human beings.

A Justification of Personal Righteousness


A Simplistic Ideology


A Manichean Dualism

All good comes from private enterprise, all evil comes from statism and government interference. These libertarians are fighting the endless struggle of light versus dark, and will make the most ludicrous assertions about how government is behind each and every evil. Denunciation and demonization abound, with salvation in capitalism alone.

A Blinkered Ideology

Libertarianism is often easy to recognize by the things it will not consider. For example: market failures, public goods, benefits from government, benefits from spending tax money, deadweight costs from private sources, threats to liberty from private sources, rights other than property rights, values other than economic values, social harms from private actions (such as drug usage), climate change, anything but methodological individualism, Keynesianism, etc. "There are no market failures, only government failures" and other glib excuses or accusations are characteristic of such denialist ideology.


A Distorting Lens

There is a major streak of spin and revisionism in libertarianism: when the facts don't back your ideology, redescribe the world so that it does match.<ref>Mike Huben, Libertarian Revisionist History</ref> When government does something undeniably good, such as freeing slaves, denounce it for other actions.<ref>Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War"</ref> Always look only at the costs of what governments do and the benefits of what markets do, never the reverse. Promote cost-benefit analysis now that you've stacked the deck against government. If you don't like the tax or gun laws, reinterpret the constitution ahistorically to suit your claims.<ref>Mark Pitcavage, Militia - History and Law FAQ</ref><ref>Dan Evans, Tax Protester FAQ </ref> Rebaptize historical figures (such as Jesus<ref>Bill Butler, The Libertarian From Nazareth?</ref>)and documents (such as the Constitution) as libertarian.

A Cargo Cult




A Millennialist Cult


Technological Utopianism



A Herd of Cats

Libertarianism, with its excessive emphasis on individualism, tends to lack coordinating mechanisms besides markets. Liberalism has markets, politics and government, which between the three of them can coordinate group efforts up to and including eradication of smallpox and total wars. Organizing libertarians is like herding cats: oxymoronic. In 10 years, the Free State Project has only been able to line up half of the 20,000 people it thinks are necessary to be effective, despite funding from the Koch Brothers.<ref>Pam Martens, The Far Right's Plot to Capture New Hampshire</ref>

The Libertarian Party

US third parties are often a joke, but the LPUSA is a particularly funny one. It is by far the most public face of libertarianism, and to many libertarians it is libertarian orthodoxy. Indeed, many LP members don't seem to know that there are other libertarians with other beliefs. Like some other third parties, it was founded with funding from billionaires (the Koch brothers.) The LPUSA has been crippled by internal conflict, corruption, declining membership, purges, featherbedding, grotesquely radical platforms, repulsive candidates and a preference for preaching to rather than serving the public. Consequently, few LPUSA candidates get elected to positions higher than dogcatcher, and then often as stealth candidates in nonpartisan elections.



