Liberals and Libertarians

Brutality on the part of overly militarized police forces. Too many people in prison due mainly to a war on victimless crimes. Routine torture. The national surveillance state. A president who believes he can remotely kill anyone he wants without trial or due process.

Assett forfeiture. States and cities that routinely take away people’s property rights without compensation or take people’s property with compensation to give to private developers on the pretext that, because the new owners will pay more taxes than existing owners, it is in the public interest.

These are a few of my least-favorite things about America today. This list heavily overlaps eleven reasons why liberal Dave Lindorff is ashamed to be an American. On most of these issues (except, perhaps, regulatory takings), liberals and libertarians are in full agreement.

Yet on so many other issues, liberals regard libertarians as kooks who are in the thrall of the evil Koch Brothers and their scheme to make everyone dependent on the petroleum industry. The Antiplanner has personally been attacked many times by people who used to call me their friend.
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All of the above policies, along with all or nearly all of the policies on Lindorff’s list that aren’t on mine, involved government action. The difference between liberals and libertarians is that the former see these policies as aberrations from the norm that can fixed by putting the right people in charge, while libertarians see them as predictable consequences of giving government power. As P. J. O’Rourke says, “giving government money and power is like giving teenage boys whiskey and car keys.”

Many if not most libertarians today are former liberals who realized that the problems they saw were not unusual but merely examples of all the problems with government. This is hardly a new idea, as it goes back through Henry David Thoreau to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Despite its ancient lineage, proof of the pervasive failings of government managed to win James Buchanan a Nobel Memorial Prize in economics.

What will it take to convince more liberals to become libertarians? When will Naomi Klein realize that her support for light rail will do more to enrich a lot of corporations than it will to fix climate change? When will supporters of subsidies to wind power realize that they are really just supporting the natural gas industry? When will endangered species advocates realize that the best way to save many species may be to privatize them?

I don’t know the specific answers to these questions. But I do know that progressives need to seriously question whether their proposals to give government more power over people’s lives and property are compatible with their rejection of the NSA, CIA, the war on marijuana, and other big government programs.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

9 Responses to Liberals and Libertarians

  1. Frank says:

    “The Antiplanner has personally been attacked many times by people who used to call me their friend.”

    Sorry to hear, but when you begin to question state intervention in the economy, people of all political stripes take it personally, and instead of engaging in discussion, some launch personal attacks.

    “Many if not most libertarians today are former liberals who realized that the problems they saw were not unusual but merely examples of all the problems with government.”

    Yes, and I’m perhaps the poster boy for this statement. When I lived in Portland, as mentioned, I was essentially a pseudo-Marxist who thought that all food and housing should be free. Guns should be banned. Cars are evil. People should be forced to live in cities and forced to take transit. Never saw a tax increase I didn’t like—and why wouldn’t I since I never paid all that much in taxes?

    But, and I’ve told this story before, flipping through the channels in 2007, I saw Ron Paul take on the GOP cronies about US unconstitutional involvement in wars. It was empowering. Did research. Ron Paul supported the Second Amendment? No way! Can’t go there.

    Did more research. Found this blog. Read Hayek. Applied my own experience with the NPS and found it to be rife with corruption, fraud, waste, abuse and that the federal government has done more to damage the ecosystem than any single corporation. Applied my experiences as a student and teacher in government schools. The very same corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.

    Read more. Thoreau. Jefferson. Mises. Rothbard.

    Was a minarchist for awhile, but logic dictates what Thoreau observed: The government that governs not at all is best. And when we’re ready, that’s the kind of government we’ll have.

    It’s not just liberals who have given government more power over our lives. And it’s really not individuals who have given government more power over our lives. It’s government that has taken that power, even when not authorized by that oh-so-imperfect second founding charter. The entire idea of checks and balances is laughable when the POTUS claims the power of executive order, which is not an enumerated power. The idea of checks and balances is laughable when SCOTUS is INSIDE the government and has been stacked by the POTUS and has broadly expanded government power through Marbury v. Madison and fabricated “implied” powers. And on. And on.

    “property are compatible with their rejection of the NSA, CIA, the war on marijuana, and other big government programs.”

    Perhaps most importantly: The US empire and our never ending unconstitutional wars and adventurism. This is tied to everything from fiscal and monetary policy to civil rights. This is perhaps the strongest similarity to liberals, and this should be a primary basis for outreach.

  2. metrosucks says:

    Totally agree, Frank. Though, I have one small correction:

    Sorry to hear, but when you begin to question state intervention in the economy, people of all political stripes take it personally, and instead of engaging in discussion, some launch personal attacks.

    Most people launch personal attacks, not some. Unfortunately, government have convinced the majority that it has a legitimate role in the micromanaging of society. Until the Fed-fueled madness results in a total financial collapse, this trust will continue. Afterwards, I hope libertarians will have a system ready in place to offer to replace the current corruption.

  3. FrancisKing says:

    @ Antiplanner:

    “A president who believes he can remotely kill anyone he wants without trial or due process”

    I understand, but the problem runs deeper than that. On the one hand is the traditional (and to my mind, obsolete) principle of a difference between home soil and foreign soil – that some things which are illegal at home, like extrajudicial killings, are legal abroad – and the more modern principle, as seen in paedophile laws, that the laws are the same wherever someone is.

    If the US government had used drones in the USA, to kill without due process, there would be outrage.

    I hold a controversial point-of-view. I consider warfare to be obsolete, and that includes the use of drones. Instead, efforts should be made to uphold the law, by means of international arrest warrants. If someone decides to use force in order to block the use of the warrant, well, that’s what the armed forces are for.

  4. msetty says:

    Thanks to Frank for explaining his background a bit. From a “pseudo-Marxist” to “libertarian,” e.g., the easy swing from one sort of extremist “true believer” to another. The same sort of change made by David Horowitz and similar “true believers.” Also explains Frank (and probably Metrosucky’s) vitriol and hatred towards anyone who dares to disgree with their quasi-religious beliefs.

    For the record, I’ve read Hayek and others of his ilk, but also Eric Hoffer. Between Eric Hoffer and de Mesquita and Smith, one will get a realistic, pragmatic view of how government and political power actually works. Let’s just say that the fatal libertarian blind spot is not offering any solution to the problem of society and individuals being dominated by powerful, unaccountable private concentrations of power in the absence of effective government, e.g., like during the Middle Ages, in feudal Japan prior to the Shogunate, or any post-apocalyptic scenario you choose.

  5. metrosucks says:

    Msetty, weren’t you going to retreat to your own private echo chamber, and stay there? You don’t see me going to ALL the different lunatic smart growth blogs and posting there, do you?

  6. MJ says:

    Let’s just say that the fatal libertarian blind spot is not offering any solution to the problem of society and individuals being dominated by powerful, unaccountable private concentrations of power in the absence of effective government, e.g., like during the Middle Ages, in feudal Japan prior to the Shogunate, or any post-apocalyptic scenario you choose.

    The libertarian response is that government does more to create and uphold concentrations of power than it does to protect anyone from them.

    Feudal society is a classic example. In a feudal society peasants were (literally) tied to the land. Feudal lords granted fiefdoms, through which they obtained the support of the vassals. In a time, when virtually all production was agricultural, land was the most valuable good. Being able to extract “taxes” in the form of pledges of military support enabled lords to exert power over the unlanded peasantry. It was only when industrial innovation and the increased trade that came with it broke the power of the landed gentry that such a form of economic and social organization could be overthrown, something that could only come about via bottom-up, voluntary forms of organization.

    It was much easier for governments to impose control when the source of prosperity was a fixed asset, like land. Now the most important inputs to production, capital and labor, are mobile, making it much more difficult to extract rents.

    Still, we presently have governments that have empowered themselves to not only pick winners and losers among industries and firms through the administration of taxation, subsidies and regulation, but also the ability to intervene in bankruptcy proceedings to arbitrarily redistribute assets among parties. This is the kind of thing that people like Lindorff really ought to be ashamed about, but refuse to recognize or gloss over because the action meets their arbitrary definition of ‘fairness’, a sort of ‘might is right’ rationalization.

    I will never agree with this, and that is part of why I find it so difficult to find common cause with contemporary political liberals. I don’t expect them to adopt my beliefs, but I certainly won’t cater to theirs.

  7. MJ says:

    Instead, efforts should be made to uphold the law, by means of international arrest warrants.

    Who would administer and/or uphold such warrants?

  8. CapitalistRoader says:

    @FrancisKing: “I hold a controversial point-of-view. I consider warfare to be obsolete, and that includes the use of drones. Instead, efforts should be made to uphold the law, by means of international arrest warrants. If someone decides to use force in order to block the use of the warrant, well, that’s what the armed forces are for.”

    So, how would that have worked after Russia invaded the Crimea? Who’s armed forces? And who pays for it? And what if the person to be arrested has control over nuclear weapons, as Vladimir Putin does?

  9. the highwayman says:

    Libertarians want a private police state.

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