Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

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Hype
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Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#1 Post by Hype » Thu Dec 15, 2011 10:09 am

Hey Hoka, I'm working on this stuff at the moment, so I thought I'd point you to some strong opposition to your political assumptions that you might want to check out one day, if you've got some time.

This guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Cohen seems to me to be the strongest defender (by which I mean the most reasonable arguer) of the view most directly opposed to Libertarianism, and one of the strongest critics of Nozick, whose libertarian arguments are, though crazy, and wrong, probably more defensible than Hayek's are.

If you can find the article, or the book, you might want to read "If You're an Egalitarian, Why Are You So Rich?", as well as "Why Not Socialism?"

My view these days roughly rests on the simple empirical fact that a partially, or even completely, realized implementation of the libertarian ideal of maximization of negative liberty would in fact collapse into absurdity when we attempt to put it into practice precisely because in the process of removing legal constraints on the liberty of individuals we would soon see the need to implement laws preventing the constraint of individual liberty by other individuals or groups, and this just is socialism. :wiggle:

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#2 Post by Hokahey » Thu Dec 15, 2011 2:37 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Hey Hoka, I'm working on this stuff at the moment, so I thought I'd point you to some strong opposition to your political assumptions that you might want to check out one day, if you've got some time.

This guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Cohen seems to me to be the strongest defender (by which I mean the most reasonable arguer) of the view most directly opposed to Libertarianism, and one of the strongest critics of Nozick, whose libertarian arguments are, though crazy, and wrong, probably more defensible than Hayek's are.

If you can find the article, or the book, you might want to read "If You're an Egalitarian, Why Are You So Rich?", as well as "Why Not Socialism?"
Awesome. I'll definitely take a look.
My view these days roughly rests on the simple empirical fact that a partially, or even completely, realized implementation of the libertarian ideal of maximization of negative liberty would in fact collapse into absurdity when we attempt to put it into practice precisely because in the process of removing legal constraints on the liberty of individuals we would soon see the need to implement laws preventing the constraint of individual liberty by other individuals or groups, and this just is socialism. :wiggle:
Can you provide specific examples of what this would look like?

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#3 Post by Hype » Thu Dec 15, 2011 2:57 pm

hokahey wrote:
My view these days roughly rests on the simple empirical fact that a partially, or even completely, realized implementation of the libertarian ideal of maximization of negative liberty would in fact collapse into absurdity when we attempt to put it into practice precisely because in the process of removing legal constraints on the liberty of individuals we would soon see the need to implement laws preventing the constraint of individual liberty by other individuals or groups, and this just is socialism. :wiggle:
Can you provide specific examples of what this would look like?
Yeah. I have to toss out some preliminary stuff first, but I'll try to come up with a concrete example of how it would play out.

The general distinction between positive and negative liberty goes like this:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberty-positive-negative/ wrote:As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.
But I view it as even worse than that. I'm not contesting the negative definition of liberty. I'm saying that if we presuppose the negative definition, we end up having to support non-liberal institutional organization anyway. This amounts ot a reductio ad absurdum of a position that only takes into account negative liberty (this is the defining feature of libertarianism), since by its own lights it ends up having to support the very thing it denies in order to sustain itself.

So let's say your libertarian principle of the maximization of negative liberty (in Berlin's sense), lead you to abolish all or almost all federal programs that involve any kind of restriction on people's ability to choose the way their lives would go best.

Given that your reason for doing this was that the principle of maximization of negative liberty demands that you remove external constraints on people's ability to satisfy their preferences, so long as satisfying these preferences doesn't infringe on the rights of anyone else to satisfy their own, a paradox arises. Once you remove all government intervention, you have no general or iterative oversight mechanisms in place to handle subtle conflicts between individuals. This is not the same thing as leaving laws based on prohibition of direct harms to others, since libertarians allow that these should be handled by the state, even if they general prefer, in the American context, that it be handled at as local a level of governance as possible. Even if we allow for that, the problems arise as soon as you recognize that even if the market will correct for injustices after the fact, once they are discovered, e.g., companies that are found to systematically and harmfully mislead consumers will be found out and will be driven out of business, the fact that this goes on at all constitutes a violation of my right not to be misled in ways that result in harm to myself that I could not have been responsible for avoiding (since being misled implies that in the first place). But this just is a reduction in my negative liberty, and demands correction, according to the principle of maximization of negative liberty. But the way this is most efficiently and most justly corrected is not through the market, but through explicit legal means, i.e., the formation of laws, and institutions to oversee the implementation and adherence to these laws (like the FDA or the EPA).

Thus, the principle of maximization of negative liberty to which libertarians are committed tacitly commits them to an increase in the size of government in any instance where negative liberty is infringed upon by others in ways that make peoples lives go worse in ways they could not have been held responsible for. What's worse, their desire to see institutions arranged in the most efficient way commits them to arrangements that ape socialist arrangements, since as has been handily argued by people like Joe Heath (Toronto) and others, many institutional arrangements can be empirically and mathematically shown to be more efficient when they are arranged as public services (specifically, any form of insurance, education, and welfare).

Some more background that might help that stuff make sense:
Critics of libertarianism, on the other hand, typically endorse a wider conception of constraints on freedom that includes not only intentionally imposed obstacles but also unintended obstacles for which someone may nevertheless be held responsible (for Miller and Kristjánsson this means morally responsible; for Oppenheim and Kramer it means causally responsible), or indeed obstacles of any kind whatsoever (see, Crocker 1980, Cohen 1988, Sen 1992, Van Parijs 1995). Thus, socialists and egalitarians have tended to claim that the poor in a capitalist society are as such unfree, or that they are less free than the rich, in contrast to libertarians, who have tended to claim that the poor in a capitalist society are no less free than the rich. Egalitarians typically (though not always) assume a broader notion than libertarians of what counts as a constraint on freedom. Although this view does not necessarily imply what Berlin would call a positive notion of freedom, egalitarians often call their own definition a positive one, in order to convey the sense that freedom requires the presence of abilities, or what Amartya Sen has influentially called ‘capabilities’ (Sen 1985, 1988, 1992).

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#4 Post by Hokahey » Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:20 pm

But all of that is arguing against complete anarchy, not libertarianism, which is about limiting the federal government, not completely eliminating law and order. You also seem to be completely ignoring the ideas of contracts and lawsuits.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#5 Post by Hype » Thu Dec 15, 2011 3:33 pm

hokahey wrote:But all of that is arguing against complete anarchy, not libertarianism, which is about limiting the federal government, not completely eliminating law and order. You also seem to be completely ignoring the ideas of contracts and lawsuits.
No man... that's not what's going on in what I said. I explicitly note that "This is not the same thing as leaving [behind] laws based on prohibition of direct harms to others, since libertarians allow that these should be handled by the state, even if they general[ly] prefer, in the American context, that it be handled at as local a level of governance as possible." [I fixed a couple of typos I made in the original post here...]

I'm talking about issues of distributive, or social, justice. These are precisely the sorts of things that libertarians deny have any merit. Hayek EXPLICITLY denies that there is any such thing as 'social justice'. What I argue above is that on the libertarian's own grounds, their commitment to maximization of negative liberty (the same thing as what you mean by 'limiting the federal government') commits them tacitly to considerations of social justice whether they like it or not, because maximation of negative liberty --- the principle which justifies their limiting of the federal government in the first place --- actually results in having to increase the size of the federal government.

I am not ignoring contracts and lawsuits. I explicitly deal with this when I said: "[In spite of the fact that Libertarians generally assume that] companies that are found to systematically and harmfully mislead consumers will be found out and will be driven out of business, the fact that this goes on at all constitutes a violation of my right not to be misled in ways that result in harm to myself that I could not have been responsible for avoiding (since being misled implies that in the first place). But this just is a reduction in my negative liberty, and demands correction, according to the principle of maximization of negative liberty. But the way this is most efficiently and most justly corrected is not through the market, but through explicit legal means, i.e., the formation of laws, and institutions to oversee the implementation and adherence to these laws (like the FDA or the EPA)."

You can't respond to that by pointing to legal measures that are implemented AFTER injustice has been done, because the whole debate is about the best way to structure just institutional arrangements, i.e., how we should set up the most just form of government. It's blatantly obvious that a system in which wrongs that could have been prevented are not prevented and are only dealt with after they inevitably occur (to deny this is insane) is a less just system than one in which we find ways to prevent these wrongs from happening in the first place without thereby doing more harm than good. And in fact, the Libertarians' own principles result in the need for socialist institutional arrangements, since the maximizing negative liberty requires preventing those things from occuring which constrain my ability to choose the ways my life could go best -- this is precisely the REASON why they want to limit the federal government in the first place. But this is a short-sighted view that ends up making itself look absurd.


Just as a further point, it might be the case for any particular federal policy or agency or institutional arrangement, that it would be better, or more just, if we got rid of it or trimmed its size or made other sorts of changes (the Office of Faith Based Initiatives irritates the hell out of me, btw, I'd axe that if I were Obama), but this is not the same thing as adhering to Libertarian principles of justice, since these are, as principles, applied universally.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#6 Post by Hokahey » Thu Dec 15, 2011 4:16 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote: I'm talking about issues of distributive, or social, justice. These are precisely the sorts of things that libertarians deny have any merit. Hayek EXPLICITLY denies that there is any such thing as 'social justice'. What I argue above is that on the libertarian's own grounds, their commitment to maximization of negative liberty (the same thing as what you mean by 'limiting the federal government') commits them tacitly to considerations of social justice whether they like it or not, because maximation of negative liberty --- the principle which justifies their limiting of the federal government in the first place --- actually results in having to increase the size of the federal government.
I'm still not seeing an example of how this applies to a Libertarian society.
I am not ignoring contracts and lawsuits.

But the way this is most efficiently and most justly corrected is not through the market, but through explicit legal means,
Wut
i.e., the formation of laws, and institutions to oversee the implementation and adherence to these laws (like the FDA or the EPA)."
I disagree. The threat of your company being completely ruined by an efficient legal system, one not bogged down by ant civil liberty drug laws for instance, is a great motivator to do it right the first time. I'd argue that this is more effective that having a beaurocratic government agency attempting to regulate it.

What happens now when these agencies fail at their jobs (as they often do)? People sue. Companies recall their products.
You can't respond to that by pointing to legal measures that are implemented AFTER injustice has been done, because the whole debate is about the best way to structure just institutional arrangements, i.e., how we should set up the most just form of government. It's blatantly obvious that a system in which wrongs that could have been prevented are not prevented and are only dealt with after they inevitably occur (to deny this is insane) is a less just system than one in which we find ways to prevent these wrongs from happening in the first place without thereby doing more harm than good.
And what evidence can you provide that shows it is more effective, and provides more liberty, to have a beaurocratic entity implement laws for an entire nation (composed of many different types of agriculture, geography etc.) than it is to have local laws and local agencies dictating those laws? For instance, the anti drug laws. People in various locales have voted to allow medicinal marijuana, yet the federal government comes in and shuts them down because there is a federal law against it. Why does the federal government better understand the needs and best safety measures for that particular community? That can be extrapolated out to cover a wide range of federal laws and regulations.

[/quote]Just as a further point, it might be the case for any particular federal policy or agency or institutional arrangement, that it would be better, or more just, if we got rid of it or trimmed its size or made other sorts of changes (the Office of Faith Based Initiatives irritates the hell out of me, btw, I'd axe that if I were Obama), but this is not the same thing as adhering to Libertarian principles of justice, since these are, as principles, applied universally.[/quote]

I think the larger Libertarian point is that these types of measures are best handled as locally as possible. People seem to get confused in to thinking the elimination of a federal entity meands the elimination of the goals or even accomplishments of that entity. It's simply a desire to allow the states, the cities, the towns to determine whether a ban on marijuana, or a ban on raw milk, is appropriate for that locale.

If people don't like the laws of that locale, they're free to pursue one that offers the type of living they subscribe to.

That style of living will likely be the most sought after resulting in more people living in that area and supporting it. Locales with kooky ideas and laws that dont work will eventually find it difficult to thrive.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#7 Post by Hype » Thu Dec 15, 2011 5:22 pm

I'm still not seeing an example of how this applies to a Libertarian society.
I think there is some confusion here. My reductio ad absurdum of the libertarian principles aims to show that there could never be a libertarian society. Asking me to apply what I'm saying to a presupposed Libertarian society is to stack the deck---arguing circularly, and therefore fallaciously, since it assumes the very thing I'm showing can't be the case.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#8 Post by CaseyContrarian » Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:01 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
I'm still not seeing an example of how this applies to a Libertarian society.
I think there is some confusion here. My reductio ad absurdum of the libertarian principles aims to show that there could never be a libertarian society. Asking me to apply what I'm saying to a presupposed Libertarian society is to stack the deck---arguing circularly, and therefore fallaciously, since it assumes the very thing I'm showing can't be the case.
This. THANK YOU. :tiphat:

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#9 Post by mockbee » Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:17 am

hokahey wrote:On a related side note, I was just reading an article in the local paper about a small business owner that cannot put a sign on his store because it has to be the same signage as on every other local store (material, lettering etc.) and it's near impossible to have that created because the business that made the signs no longer exists! So now his business is failing because no one knows it's there. Gooooo government.
..............
hokahey wrote: I think the larger Libertarian point is that these types of measures are best handled as locally as possible. People seem to get confused in to thinking the elimination of a federal entity meands the elimination of the goals or even accomplishments of that entity. It's simply a desire to allow the states, the cities, the towns to determine whether a ban on marijuana, or a ban on raw milk, is appropriate for that locale.

If people don't like the laws of that locale, they're free to pursue one that offers the type of living they subscribe to.


That style of living will likely be the most sought after resulting in more people living in that area and supporting it. Locales with kooky ideas and laws that dont work will eventually find it difficult to thrive.


Uh-ohhhhhhhhh...... it looks like it could be about time to move. :sad: :wink:
At the very least you know that guy should get the hell out of town if he doesn't like his local government and it's not changing.

I think the broader point is that people are pretty poor at governing at all levels. However, certain things, due to the economy of scale are best provided or facilitated at a Federal level. Other things are best at State or Local levels. There is no silver bullet ideological solution. There are just steps that should be taken that I think most people could agree on. First off is dealing with money in politics. Why are election cycles like 2 years long, and there are major elections every 2 years. Raising money to fight money. Only big money wins in this scenario. The little people and the legislation that would help them never get dealt with. Maybe that would be an argument for severely limited government at the top but, as has already happened, multinational corporations would fill the holes of big government at the top and you already have the same problems at state levels with money in politics.

There are no easy solutions. I think the best thing would be for the 90% of people to find what they do agree upon, such as Wall Street should not be using the general public's bank account for Credit Default Swaps. Ludicrous...... It's really unfortunate politics can't be more straightforward and logical. I think Ron Paul is a good start being straightforward and honest in his ideas, it's just too bad that many of them would lead to terrible results, but it's a good start for real political discourse.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#10 Post by Hokahey » Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:32 am

mockbee wrote:I think the broader point is that people are pretty poor at governing at all levels.
And the larger the scale the worse it gets.
However, certain things, due to the economy of scale are best provided or facilitated at a Federal level.
Considering the state of the economy I'm amazed you could manage to type that. Truth be told, there should be no management of the economy by the Fed. It doesn't work. We've gone over this. You can't manipulate the market to work the way you want it to. You only create bubbles wherever you're pumping money in to. Those bubbles inevitably burst. Histpry shows this. Over and over.
Other things are best at State or Local levels. There is no silver bullet ideological solution. There are just steps that should be taken that I think most people could agree on. First off is dealing with money in politics. Why are election cycles like 2 years long, and there are major elections every 2 years. Raising money to fight money. Only big money wins in this scenario. The little people and the legislation that would help them never get dealt with. Maybe that would be an argument for severely limited government at the top but, as has already happened, multinational corporations would fill the holes of big government at the top and you already have the same problems at state levels with money in politics.
The power created at the federal level if because of the amount of money and influence they have. That creates the environment for corporations and lobbyists to attempt to get their way/funding. The ignorant blame the corporations and lobbyists for working the system instead of the system and the people running it.
There are no easy solutions. I think the best thing would be for the 90% of people to find what they do agree upon, such as Wall Street should not be using the general public's bank account for Credit Default Swaps. Ludicrous...... It's really unfortunate politics can't be more straightforward and logical. I think Ron Paul is a good start being straightforward and honest in his ideas, it's just too bad that many of them would lead to terrible results, but it's a good start for real political discourse.
[/quote]

And why would the results be terrible? Which ideas do you not like?

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#11 Post by Hokahey » Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:38 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
I'm still not seeing an example of how this applies to a Libertarian society.
I think there is some confusion here. My reductio ad absurdum of the libertarian principles aims to show that there could never be a libertarian society. Asking me to apply what I'm saying to a presupposed Libertarian society is to stack the deck---arguing circularly, and therefore fallaciously, since it assumes the very thing I'm showing can't be the case.

All based on the assumption that negative vs positive liberty exists in a Libertarian society. That theory must be proven before it can be be used in that way.

I agree that in total anarchy the liberties granted aren't as great as the liberties likely removed. That's easy to see. But you're attempting to paint a situation of limited federal government as some lawless society where the only law is that of the economic market. That's silly.

If you truly want to show that Ron Paul ideas will result in negative liberty then do so.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#12 Post by Hype » Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:03 pm

Gah. Sorry Hoka, I guess I didn't explain the negative/positive liberty distinction properly. 'Negative liberty' doesn't have negative connotations, it just means 'freedom from coercion' or 'freedom from state interference'. This isn't something that was placed on libertarianism by its detractors, it's the stated notion of freedom libertarians themselves claim to be working with. They don't think freedom is anything else but that. That is, in their own writings, they deny that there is such a thing as what socialists, after Berlin, would call 'positive liberty'. Positive liberty could be called 'freedom of capacity' or 'freedom of empowerment'. This involves a recognition that individuals left unconstrained by overt state interference aren't necessarily any more free, in any meaningful sense, than those who aren't. And socialists go further, saying that it is the duty of the state to enhance positive liberties, through such policies as promote 'equal opportunity' in hiring, access to social services and other necessities, access to goods, etc.

I think you must have misunderstood why I was talking about the distinction, because it has nothing to do with whether it exists "in a libertarian society", but rather it has to do with what the political theories themselves are concerned with promoting. Libertarian political theory is, by its own admission, only concerned with promoting negative liberty. They think this is the way to have a truly just society. They, as Hayek so strongly argued, deny that there is any such thing as 'social justice' (or distributive justice), which would be the sort of justice that promotes positive liberty, often by reducing negative liberty. Hayek's argument rests on the view that there are no such things as unjust states of affairs, but that justice is only concerned with the actions of individual people. That is, for the libertarian, only individual people can be concerned to be acting justly or unjustly, and only in these cases is it the state's business to correct those who act unjustly (i.e., through law enforcement, which is solely concerned with the reduction or amelioration of harms perpetrated by individuals on other individuals). The libertarian denies that there is such a thing as injustice in a society as a whole, e.g., in the form of vast income-gaps and disparities in the quality of life for groups. They don't deny that these states of affairs exist, but they simply deny that they can be characterized as 'unjust', because if these states of affairs are unjust, then the state would be obliged to get involved. But this is precisely what libertarians deny.

My argument, in rough form above, says that this, ironically, entails that if we attempted to put an ideal libertarian society into practice, we would very quickly find that on the libertarian's own terms there wouldn't just be the kind of injustice they deny exists (that is, of states of affairs being unjust), but there would also be unjust treatment of individuals by other individuals that would be beyond the reach of merely criminal law. I gave some examples of this unjust treatment: marketing deception which causes harm to consumers (arguably you could place this under criminal law, but currently it is usually considered civil law), which is inadequately dealt with if only considered after the fact. There are others that are even more problematic, but I won't bring them up here. The problem for libertarians is that they can't avail themselves of broadly preventative measures. They must rely either on the after-the-fact ability to successfully sue for damages (which is seriously problematic, since large corporations have teams of lawyers, and individuals, even if they organize a tort, can't match corporate funds for these purposes. The law is only as effective as it is fair.); or they must rely on the capricious good will of private individuals to decide to advocate for the interests of consumers. But this is impossible to guarantee to all, or even many of those who will be harmed in an unregulated market, since there is no centralized oversight, and there is no coercive means of acheiving or verifying compliance with desired consumer-advocated policies. Only a government can do this. But if the libertarian admits that on the very grounds they assumed for justice considerations, harms of these sorts will be done at all, then the libertarian has conceded my point, and must resort to policies resembling socialism.

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Re: Another Libertarianism/Socialism, etc., thread

#13 Post by Hype » Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:40 pm

You might also want to check out Ron Dworkin's latest book. Here's a review: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/s ... ode=414939

Dworkin criticizes the positive/negative liberty distinction in a few really interesting ways. In many ways I'm closer to Dworkin than I am to Cohen, but Cohen's more strongly socialist.

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