In response to this ( http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2006/12/answer-is-no.html ), I wrote the below.
This post doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You can make generalizations about any group, and inside that group there's going to be various sub-groupings that proclaim that they're the "real" representatives of that group.
Yes, there is a subgroup of people who self-identify as libertarians that is only focused on tax cuts. What that actual proportion is I don't know, I don't have any hard data. Then again, neither did the person who pulled the 98% figure out of thin air.
I, when pressed, will generally self-identify as libertarianish. I've never found any group that I agree with 100%. I think everything's open to question, that's why my (woefully underupdated) blog is called I Might Be Wrong.
There are definite overlaps, to me, especially these days, between strains "liberal" and "libertarian" thought. Ending the war in Iraq, reversing the stripping of habeas corpus, ending the wiretapping program, fighting corruption, reproductive rights, those are all common ground, and there are others.
For me, libertarianism at it's core is a desire to not use coercion, unless it must be used. Essentially, seeing coercion as an evil, but a sometimes necessary one. It must be used to only stop a greater evil. Don't arrest a pot smoker, but do forcibly stop a murder. Don't go to war with a country unless there's a certainty that not doing so would be even worse. In other words, fight Hitler, but don't invade Iraq. Where that line is, where coercion becomes needed, is not always a clear one. It's messy, and it's debatable, and should be debated, and in many cases, agonized over.
So, no, private enterprise isn't the answer to everything, and neither is the state. Private enterprise certainly has its coercive elements (usually backed by the state), and the state does, too. And power, whether state generated, economic, religious or any other form, attracts the corruptible, so giving power to someone should be not done lightly, and they must be held to account.
My libertarianism, at least, takes the stance that you have to consider all solutions to a problem, and whether there is a solution to a problem that does not result in greater evil than the problem itself. Instead of saying "there ought to be a law", it's saying "what is the solution, if there is one, that inflicts the least amount of harm in this situation". It's also saying, "if we've decided this is a common good to be worked for, what's the best, least coercive, and most effective way to do it?". Markets, not in a pure economic sense, which seems to be the way they're being interpreted in the comments here, but in the sense of cooperation and competition.
That's a very compact, undetailed statment, and it may be 13 year old thinking, but it's the best I've been able to come up with in my life.
This post doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. You can make generalizations about any group, and inside that group there's going to be various sub-groupings that proclaim that they're the "real" representatives of that group.
Yes, there is a subgroup of people who self-identify as libertarians that is only focused on tax cuts. What that actual proportion is I don't know, I don't have any hard data. Then again, neither did the person who pulled the 98% figure out of thin air.
I, when pressed, will generally self-identify as libertarianish. I've never found any group that I agree with 100%. I think everything's open to question, that's why my (woefully underupdated) blog is called I Might Be Wrong.
There are definite overlaps, to me, especially these days, between strains "liberal" and "libertarian" thought. Ending the war in Iraq, reversing the stripping of habeas corpus, ending the wiretapping program, fighting corruption, reproductive rights, those are all common ground, and there are others.
For me, libertarianism at it's core is a desire to not use coercion, unless it must be used. Essentially, seeing coercion as an evil, but a sometimes necessary one. It must be used to only stop a greater evil. Don't arrest a pot smoker, but do forcibly stop a murder. Don't go to war with a country unless there's a certainty that not doing so would be even worse. In other words, fight Hitler, but don't invade Iraq. Where that line is, where coercion becomes needed, is not always a clear one. It's messy, and it's debatable, and should be debated, and in many cases, agonized over.
So, no, private enterprise isn't the answer to everything, and neither is the state. Private enterprise certainly has its coercive elements (usually backed by the state), and the state does, too. And power, whether state generated, economic, religious or any other form, attracts the corruptible, so giving power to someone should be not done lightly, and they must be held to account.
My libertarianism, at least, takes the stance that you have to consider all solutions to a problem, and whether there is a solution to a problem that does not result in greater evil than the problem itself. Instead of saying "there ought to be a law", it's saying "what is the solution, if there is one, that inflicts the least amount of harm in this situation". It's also saying, "if we've decided this is a common good to be worked for, what's the best, least coercive, and most effective way to do it?". Markets, not in a pure economic sense, which seems to be the way they're being interpreted in the comments here, but in the sense of cooperation and competition.
That's a very compact, undetailed statment, and it may be 13 year old thinking, but it's the best I've been able to come up with in my life.
posted by Tymothi at 7:37 PM
2 Comments:
Cheers, I'm going to reprint my reply to you from that thread; I'm basically in agreement with your follow-up. Mostly I wanted to comment to tell you that your sidebar link to "In Rage" is broken, but figured I might as well add something on topic while I'm here:
Tymothi, what you've outlined sounds like what I think libertarianism should mean: a philosophy which is about maximizing positive and negative liberty for everyone, and shielding them from the effects of power exercised by governmental and non-governmental agencies. And I'm all for it.
But the way that terms are actually used today, that sounds much more like what most people describe as "liberal" than like what most people describe as "libertarian."
The complication, perhaps, is that when we talk about private enterprise's coercive power being backed by the state, we may be talking about property rights; and if the state didn't back private enterprise's coercive power by establishing and enforcing property rights of some sort, there might be no private enterprise at all. Similarly, when you talk about holding the powerful to account (which I'm all for), that entails giving some entity the power to hold them to account; which means some kind of governmental oversight, pretty much.
All of which I'm fine with. If this is what libertarianism means, I'm happy to count libertarians as allies. But there will be a lot of people who call themselves libertarians who won't be pleased.
Yeah, thanks. I need to update my blogroll, I haven't read instapundit with any regularity for quite a while, once he started getting his fascist jones on.
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