Pharyngula

Posted by: Ichthyic | October 26, 2007 1:07 AM

I think the institutionalized selfishness, petty small-mindedness, and bourgeois values run amuck of the libertarians represent the worst of America --

cue cale in 3..2..1...

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 1:21 AM

Still, I've got to admit that making a grab for Garifuna land in the name of property rights is a tour de force of compartmentalization.

Posted by: Michael X | October 26, 2007 1:33 AM

Robert, I agree with you. I've never liked the party because of their horrid economic ideals. Although, I do tend to gravitate more towards civil libertarianism. My right to freedom is worth my paying for yours in the medical arena for example. I won't legislate against red meat even if it causes heart cancer and I pull some of the medical care slack, because (in the most selfish sense) maybe I don't want my enjoyment of bars and beer to get revoked because it infringes upon someone elses pocket book. We all have some joy that could be revoked through the cry of "it costs me money". Our liberties should be worth what we pick up in extra costs from mistakes and human fallibility, ya know?

Posted by: darwinfinch | October 26, 2007 1:41 AM

Saying "I'm a libertarian" is an even surer way to suspend any sense of respect than saying "the Bible is inerrant" in my (silly) little book, since it takes away the strong possibility that the utterer was brainwashed by his family or familiars.
Self-anointed libertarians, the ones who aren't openly and proudly LT (Looney-Toons), are sort of like the Christian Scientists of the political world here in the USA, but much more boorishly loud and unable to exhibit the faith needed to adhere to any of their own, generally faux-Alpha male, preachings, if there is some profit to be made.

Next to Bushites, they are the trash a society like ours is doomed to generate, and which the clever among us must find a purpose for.

Posted by: Jasen | October 26, 2007 1:48 AM

EVE Online is an awesome game, but only if you know lots of other people playing it and join/form a corporation.

Speaking of games and libertarianism, the recent game Bioshock seems to be at least partially a critique of the idea of a libertarian utopia. You stumble upon an underwater city built by a rich visionary. His philosophy is basically this:

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well. "

Of course, by the time you get there the place is falling apart and its crazed, genetically modified inhabitants are killing each other over weapons and raw genetic material. I am not sure whether the fact that guns were being sold in vending machines was a symptom or cause of this degeneration...

Like many, I sympathize with the amount of social freedom advocated by libertarians but find their economic policies to be ludicrous. Unfettered capitalism just can't be trusted to produce a society that is livable for most people. Of course complete regulation doesn't work so well either. The key is finding just the right balance to encourage hard work and entrepreneurship while avoiding exploitation, and that isn't easy. Unfortunately, many people would rather blindly hold to a simple ideology than deal with a difficult truth.

Posted by: Azkyroth | October 26, 2007 2:19 AM

Aside from their unworkable economic policies (as my father observed at one point, they seem to mostly be people who took Economics 1A and then pronounced themselves experts), I've noticed that pretty much all the Libertarians I've met have been unclear on this point.

Posted by: rrt | October 26, 2007 2:31 AM

I assume Freedom Ship was one of the things Bioshock's creators had in mind with Rapture, though their main target is Rand ("Andrew Ryan?") Phenomenal game, though I don't know Rand and/or libertarians well enough to say how effective its criticism was. No doubt others will have strong opinions. They clearly weren't blaming the genetic maguffin for the fall of Rapture, despite the role it played. And yeah, of course the science was horribly wrong, but they knew that. How else could they mix tweaked steampunk with symbiotic deep-sea slugs and "magical" powers?

Posted by: uncle frogy | October 26, 2007 3:00 AM

libertarianism is what everyman for himself?
that the government should stay out of our personal lives given some boundaries is OK.
If there are no taxes and no government then what do we have?
the dark ages? where the local strong man was the face of order we have done that.
libertarianism could only develop in a prosperous stable society and only exist as an idea having some influence it could never be the founding principle of anything stable by itself.
it is blind and ignorant to think that any where in the modern world you "earn you bread" by your self and are not dependent on the rest of society. the wealth depends on a stable market, On what does a stable market depend?

In the real world who would protect this "magic island" from the rest of the world.

Posted by: Heterocronie | October 26, 2007 3:09 AM

"Yup, and when they get there, they have their big chance to shoot their way to the top- literally."

Yes sir, that's what libertarians are all about - shooting our way to the top.

Libertarians are almost universally opposed to the initiation of force. Do you people even know what a libertarian is?

Posted by: Dan | October 26, 2007 3:22 AM

Libertarian ideals are merely impossible. What you're describing, PZ, is corporate greed pretending to be libertarian, which is far worse and actually happens. It's based upon lobbying for deregulation, tax breaks, and so on ... but instead of for everyone, as in the impossible libertarian ideal, it's only given to the absolute richest people, who then become a hideous outgrowth of government, de facto subsidies since everyone poorer than them is paying the taxes to keep the society they profit off of running.

It is, in effect, the exact opposite of what libertarianism is "theoretically" about. The fact that the "theoretical" libertarian types have no solutions for this, and often refuse to acknowledge it, is really the most damning part of the impossible idealism.

Except for those little quirks, and the fact that actual libertarianism would create a power vacuum akin to a sucking chest wound, it remains a pretty neat ideal.

Posted by: Heterocronie | October 26, 2007 3:49 AM

"as my father observed at one point, they seem to mostly be people who took Economics 1A and then pronounced themselves experts"

You mean amateurs like Mises, Hayek, and Alan Greenspan? Greenspan is still a libertarian/objectivist at heart, he just understood that the country wasn't ready for it, and that if he did the regulating himself, then the damage could be minimized. In case you didn't know, Greenspan was Ayn Rand's buddy, a fact that he's still quite proud of.

Posted by: Nandan | October 26, 2007 4:09 AM

Eh...typo in link earlier.

Posted by: Loren Petrich | October 26, 2007 4:46 AM

These floating-city schemes remind me of George Orwell's Animal Farm -- a would-be utopia that turns out much like the old system that its inhabitants had rebelled against.

Posted by: Julius | October 26, 2007 4:51 AM

Nandan: Your idealism is very sweet, but in a truly libertarian society - i.e. pretty much no state intervention in anything - saying that "it allows the individual to pursue something close to her heart" is a bit optimistic, don't you think? It allows the individual to pursue this *if she's already rich enough*. If you put all your savings/resources into some personal project (business idea) and it fails - well, too bad. Good luck eating now, without money, a job, or the qualifications to get a job quickly. Or how about healthcare? Fairly simple argument - do you think it's fair for the poorer part of the population to die of severe but curable cancer because they can't afford the treatment?

Or, to phrase it positively: I would argue that a functioning welfare state, including free healthcare for all and some sort of benefits that allow you to live in dignity, are an *absolute* necessity to allow true individual freedom - the freedom to pursue things dear to your heart, without fear of starving if it goes wrong. Not to mention a working police force/law enforcement/justice system...

I think that's related corporate element of libertarianism that PZ criticizes, as well: in a completely libertarian/anarchic system, corporations (i.e. ultimately, groups of people that gang up to pool their resources) will have unlimited freedom and hence power. But for individual freedom, it seems obvious to me that you need a welfare state and strong regulation of corporate activity.

Posted by: Jen | October 26, 2007 5:45 AM

Thank you, efrique, for making the distinction between two types of libertarians. Most who identify with libertarian values understand the need for some government regulation in order to keep freedoms intact. Maybe they're just the quieter, more sensible ones, so they don't get considered.

Posted by: tacitus | October 26, 2007 5:56 AM

Shawn: Libertarians have a big disadvantage over their Donkey and Elephant counterparts: We don't actually KNOW if their way of doing things would work or not. We've never tried it. PZ will admit that with Dem/Rep it's a lesser of two evils. No libertarian experiment has been conducted, to my knowledge.

We already know what happens when governments emasculate their own agencies, like the EPA and FDA, charged with protecting people from the excesses of industrial greed. Just look at the last few years of Republican one-party rule. The environment is ravaged, food and toys are poisoned, home owners are bankrupted, and shareholders swindled. People died.

All that with just a relaxation of government oversight. Now imagine what happens if someone like Ron Paul abolishes these agencies altogether. I can, but I can't for the life of me understand why libertarians never seem to. I've yet to find anyone who yearns for the return to the days of the robber barons.

Posted by: Gordon S | October 26, 2007 6:01 AM

The people saying that a "true Libertarianism" experiment has never been tried sure are short on their history.

Milton Friedman can pretty safely be called a Libertarian. He wanted the state to have no role in anything except controlling the federal reserve bank and matters of war.

You can see the effect of these crackpot economic theories on the people of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil, among others. These 'reforms' did nothing more than make people poor, homeless, and dead. Most of these countries got their 'reforms' purely on the economic side, and in most cases under the thumb of brutal military junta's, but this was something Friedman and his ilk were entirely comfortable with.

Posted by: MH | October 26, 2007 6:24 AM

Just because public healthcare has failed to work in some countries, it doesn't mean that it fails to work in all countries. It all depends on how it's funded and managed, and there are plenty of examples of good public healthcare around the world.

Libertarianism is not something that would work in any country, though.

Posted by: Kris Verburgh | October 26, 2007 6:36 AM

Interesting discussions here, but of topic: has anyone read the books of China Miéville? They are really good ;-)!

Posted by: Gordon S | October 26, 2007 6:42 AM

Nandan: You're blathering on about state-run hospitals being inefficient and uncaring (and then citing examples from India and Bush-era America, rather than France, Canada, or Britain) is completely ridiculous. Rather than attack, however, the mere issue of private vs public health care, an issue that has been so completely covered and so obliterating to the argument for private hospitals, I will rather take on the big one: that private business is efficient, in anything, at all.

It isn't.

The libertarian economic argument relies entirely on the premise that private business is efficient, and that competition magically lowers cost and increases quality of any service or product, or at least provides a reasonable cross-section of quality/price choices.

It seems to me, looking at real world examples of this, that there is absolutely no factual basis for this. Let me provide a few examples, and I'd like to see your responses.

1) The OECD ranks countries health care systems based on a number of metrics. The United States currently publicly outspends all but three other rich, Western nations on health care, per capita. Then, there is the private expenditures that, of course, dwarf every other country by an enormous margin. And, all the other countried use this money to insure all citizens, whereas the US provides no health care for more than 40 million of it's citizens. So, it is safe to say that the US hugely outspends all other countries on health care, to cover less people. What is gained out of it? You should, obviously, have a hugely better health care system, right? Wrong. You have a health care system that is worse than even Canada, which has the worst of the public systems, in every single health metric the OECD measures except for, surprise surprise, elective surgery wait times.

So my question is: If private business is more effective, why has it failed America so spectacularly?

2) I live in BC, Canada. In BC, we have a publically owned corporation, ICBC, which offers car insurance, among other things. It has a monopoly. Many other provinces, such as Ontario and New Brunswick, have purely private systems, where different companies compete, freely. According to libertarians, the provinces with private companies that compete openly and freely, should offer cheaper services than a system which is run by a state-owned monopoly, which would, of course, be inefficient and uncaring, to use your own words. We find the opposite. The provinces with public systems, or even mixed public/private systems, have consistently and significantly lower rates for auto insurance.

My question to you is: Why is this so? Why has the private system failed to lower costs?

That's all I really want to ask.

My answer to both those questions is straightforward. Libertarians believe that the free market lowers costs by competing for customers, and that customers will move to the company which offers some balance between being cheap and being reliable. This is wrong. In reality, the competition between free market forces is not to attract customers by being the cheapest or best, but by charging as much as possible while still retaining clientele. This works especially well for essential services such as banking, health care, and insurance.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 26, 2007 7:11 AM

While we wait for Cal to descend on the (un)suspecting thread, I can offer my own analysis, because there is a lot about this post and the article that immediately jumps out to me.

Much as I think areas of society can be outright condemned, religion being a prime example, I do think such a judgment should be based in factual claims. I don't see much of that when it comes to politics in general or libertarianism here. It seems as in the post being kneejerk reactions, often based in earlier conflicts.

And what is the article based in? It describes an utopian (and thus naive) project that involves tax invasion and a model of a ship based society in all probability ruled by international laws of the sea. Then it loosely ties the ever popular tax evasion phenomena, supported and realized by other political movements, onto a movement that has never been at power AFAIU.

It also skips over laws at sea as rule by captain. I'm not familiar with if there are such laws and what they encompass. But I can't believe it is a lawless sector.

And the article is abridged reprint of a chapter of a book criticizing neo-liberalism. (Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism.) Isn't there a whole lot of conflation going on here?

Further expressions such as "institutionalized selfishness, petty small-mindedness, and bourgeois values" are moral values based on a different view. But how does the politic works for real, if it works at all? Hopefully someone will tell us. Right, Cal? :-P

Posted by: truth machine | October 26, 2007 7:21 AM

At the same time I see how fucked up government run institutions are (my mother has had nothing but nightmare scenarios with the VA hospital system)

Usually fucked up by people who don't care about those institutions. It isn't necessary for these institutions to be fucked up. This is the fundamental stupidity of libertarianism -- they blather about problems with government programs, but they have no principled theory of why government programs must be bad. The fact is that there are many government programs that are excellent (often stuff we take for granted, like police, firefighters, roads, tree trimmers, water treatment, and on and on) that libertarians won't talk about, and lots and lots of private "programs" like health insurance that are just horrid. Libertarianism is juvenile and can't survive intellectually honest scrutiny.

Posted by: truth machine | October 26, 2007 7:25 AM

Libertarians are almost universally opposed to the initiation of force.

Whether true or not, libertarians turn a blind eye to coercion.

Posted by: truth machine | October 26, 2007 7:30 AM

I've met the braying, deluded Ayn-Randian rabid nutjobs, and I've met quiet, thoughtful, tempered-with-hefty-doses-of-realism children-of-the-Enlightenment libertarians, opposed to excesses of bad government and bad markets equally.

Eh? How would or could these libertarians control excesses of bad markets? Market interference isn't allowed.

Posted by: truth machine | October 26, 2007 7:38 AM

Milton Friedman can pretty safely be called a Libertarian. He wanted the state to have no role in anything except controlling the federal reserve bank and matters of war.

You can see the effect of these crackpot economic theories on the people of Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil, among others.

Indeed, and those who claim that the political philosophy is independent of the crimes are ignorant, lying, or in denial -- read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" which documents the truth about it.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 26, 2007 7:46 AM

Nandan:

Here in India, some of us keep saying that we are held back by the 'system'

I believe I just realized that there could be a problem in India, but I haven't had time to check it out. Yesterday I had the choice of watching a television documentary on market protections or Miller's Crossing. The movie classic won out, but I glimpsed a segment comparing an India car manufacturer with a Japanese.

For 50 years the India car kept to the same model and yearly output, while we all know what happened with the Japanese cars. It was blamed on market protections. (Well, considering the documentary focus, duh!) I would certainly want to know more about India's specific situation, not least because so many individuals are affected.

When you added the combination of democracy and free market, I can tentatively agree with you. I believe this combination of politics has raised living standards the most, including among the ~ 20 % or so that free markets leave in the lower or no income segment. (But I can never remember where I heard that - another documentary I believe. So its hearsay.)

On the other hand, it doesn't seem to be strictly necessary for a reasonable economy to work. According to Gapminder the earlier bimodal distribution of national economies are coalescing into a unimodal one. Also, IIRC Rosling in that TED speech notes that nations that pushed social medicine first and market economies later will still converge on the main trend.

On a more petty level I wish the web would have a larger flat cost. That could reduce the amount of spam considerably. :-P

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 7:51 AM

Interesting discussions here, but of topic: has anyone read the books of China Miéville? They are really good ;-)!

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | October 26, 2007 8:04 AM

"its hearsay" - it's hearsay.

"the main trend" of health and capita income.

Btw, IIRC it has with the recent unimodal economical distribution now become a fairly linear relationship with some oddities. I have a vague memory that US is as most always the bad kid in the class.

Posted by: reason | October 26, 2007 8:25 AM

atlas1882

At the same time he apparently holds the view that the government is a benign and enlightened actor whose interventions usually achieve the goal at which they aim.

However, I find little evidence to support this belief, and abundant evidence to contradict it. Is this not also an instance of unjustified faith?

But talking about unjustified faith - what about your faith in the unregulated market.

Posted by: Bee | October 26, 2007 8:33 AM

Every self identified Libertarian I've encountered on the internet (I have never met an actual real live one) has been blithely dismissive of any call to aid the people who for whatever reason are unable to help themselves. Every man for himself, in my estimation, means every child for himself as well, and if your parents are disfunctional or dead, well, that's just too bad - starve in the gutter, kid.

When this subject is brought up, (and my categorey includes the disabled, the addled senior, the mentally ill, etc.), the Libertarian tosses off a line about how 'charities' (usually he means 'churches') will take care of such human problems. At this point it is obvious the Libertarian is either a religious nut or is living in a total dreamworld.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2007 8:41 AM

Unfettered capitalism just can't be trusted to produce a society that is livable for most people.

Unfettered capitalism is not even stable. Capitalism has to be protected from itself all the time. Look the other way for a few years, and corporations form cartels with monopolies.

Like in biology, where competition is selected against, too, because it's a waste of energy.

I've come to really really despise Libertarians. It's almost like they live in some kind of a fantasy world where roads, bridges, sewer systems, etc just happen- somehow.

Oh, if someone gets the idea and finds a way to make money with it, they will happen.

If not, they won't.

Case in point: the US health insurance system.

Greenspan is still a libertarian/objectivist at heart, he just understood that the country wasn't ready for it, and that if he did the regulating himself, then the damage could be minimized.

And Lenin and Stalin truly believed that the state would "die off" over time, they just understood that it was necessary to have "socialism" before "communism", and if they themselves led the "dictature of the proletariate", the damage could be minimized"...

I'm well aware that this is a comparison across plenty of orders of magnitude. But the principle sounds similar. Doesn't it?

Or, to phrase it positively: I would argue that a functioning welfare state, including free healthcare for all and some sort of benefits that allow you to live in dignity, are an *absolute* necessity to allow true individual freedom - the freedom to pursue things dear to your heart, without fear of starving if it goes wrong. Not to mention a working police force/law enforcement/justice system...

Bingo.

Posted by: yoshi | October 26, 2007 9:09 AM

A science professor that works in the public university against libertarianism. Wow - that's original.

Sorry PZ - unlike you most of us have to operate in the real world.

Posted by: Thadd | October 26, 2007 9:20 AM

Not all libertarians are 100% free market Ayn Rand nut jobs, some have the sense to realize that altruism is an evolutionary illusion of a largely social species, and that Ayn Rand's philosophies and the free market both entail trespasses on the freedom of individuals and that they subsequently do need some control.
I find the fact that some members of the skeptic/atheist/pro-science movements are so oppose to all libertarians on principle to be relatively distasteful, and hypachritical (as someone pointed out before) and more likely based on objects to the wacko libertarians than all libertarians.
Many libertarians believe that government is necessary and that it can do good. Personally, I believe the most important aspects of the government are to serve people, ie put out the California fires or provide affordable (read free) education, and protect the freedom of the individual, which I believe means that the government does have a duty that runs contrary to having a free market.
I also certainly have no problem paying taxes, as I am getting something in return, and see this as comparable to the idea that many libertarians have of paying charities or businesses for the same services.
I guess for me it is an issue of ideals vs. reality. I have no illusion of altruism, and so see that a free market etc cannot work without ruining people's lives and subsequently see the necessity for government, yet I self identify as a libertarian because I believe in the ideal of a government that allows as much freedom as possible to the people who live under it. It seems that most of those who vehemently hate libertarians do so because of vocal minority of loons, not because of the larger more moderate group of people that have similer ideas.

Posted by: CalGeorge | October 26, 2007 9:27 AM

Libertarians have a few simplistic, reductionist ideas, which they have lathered up with lots of enthusiastic, patriotic lingo.

They do nothing but spread stupidity.

It's the American way.

They should stop bothering the rest of us, go find an island somewhere, and start up Libertopia.

Everyone would be able to haul around a gun, which they will use to patrol their sacrosanct little properties as they spend their days finding ever new ways of being selfish and greedy.

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 9:30 AM

I repeat: no respect for libertarians, even when their concerns happens to be in phase with my own, without prior demonstrations of sanity.

And by 'sanity', you mean "agreement with my own prejudices".

What's remarkable is that so many people claim to reject the philosophy, yet utilize it so frequently - like the teaching professor of science.

Shall we take a look at how the professor's classes are graded? Or how the scientific community deals with research and ideas? Sink or swim. Publish or perish. You get what you earn, and no more than what you earn. Do the work or fail. It's been said that liberals want to minimize the number of people who fail, and conservatives want to maximize the number of people who succeed. Somehow I don't think PZ lowers the standards in his classes to make it easier for people not to fail.

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 9:35 AM

Thadd:

Many libertarians believe that government is necessary and that it can do good. Personally, I believe the most important aspects of the government are to serve people, ie put out the California fires or provide affordable (read free) education, and protect the freedom of the individual

And that is one of my problems with libertarianism -- it claims to adhere to rock-solid, uncompromising principles, but when you get down to it, those principles largely seem to be "the government should protect me from the stuff that threatens me, like people stealing my property, but should stay out of my life for the stuff I'm not worried about (since I can afford health insurance)." It is vastly short-sighted, vastly impractical, and vastly lacking in compassion.

Posted by: Steven Alleyn | October 26, 2007 9:39 AM

Libertarianism as a social philosophy - as the idea that we should be completely free to do whatever we like as long as we don't infringe on the rights of others - is a far, far better thing than the current knee-jerk system of banning whatever the hell society feels is the current evil pariah.

Financially, in some cases the market is a good tool to get things done without intervention; the areas where some small amount of government control is required, in my opinion, are essential services with little or no competition - where the consumer has little or no choice but to paid the gougy prices.

Posted by: Moses | October 26, 2007 9:42 AM

Posted by: Robert | October 26, 2007 1:17 AM

I like the fact that they pretty much think that you should be free to do what you want as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others ideal. I realize that many people profess such an ideal, but few really seem to mean it like they do.

First, they don't mean it without the caveat that "your rights are what I say they are." Thus living in a self-defined situation where they are free to violate the rights of others, only rationalize their putrid behavior away.

Second, the minute someone applies that principle to them, they whine.

Third, the second they need help from government, they abandon these principles faster than I'd drop a bad cheese.

Fourth, it's just an excuse for selfishness and self-centeredness. They talk the talk, but they don't walk the walk.

Posted by: windy | October 26, 2007 9:46 AM

Often we see "the ghost of competition past": niche partitioning -- species having become very specialized and thus avoiding competition.

I wouldn't say that's avoiding competition, since the species can only get that way and stay that way by out-competing their less fortunate conspecifics.

Posted by: Bill C. | October 26, 2007 9:47 AM

You know you might temper your criticism of libertarians if you realized the fact that a large percentage of them are fellow unbelievers, PZ. You really should stick to science and godlessness because you are insufferable when it comes to politics.

Posted by: brent | October 26, 2007 9:54 AM

A science professor that works in the public university against libertarianism. Wow - that's original.

Sorry PZ - unlike you most of us have to operate in the real world.

The belief that the public sector is somehow isolated from the "real" world is rather strange but, in my experience, common among conservative libertarians in particular. It is especially strange when one considers that it is libertarian ideals which fail to survive contact with "reality." Individual liberty is, of course, something to be desired but cannot exist unless collective society decides to protect the individual's right to it. This is precisely where the dreaded public sector comes in.

Posted by: Jim A. | October 26, 2007 9:57 AM

(putting on my pedant hat)Gee, I find Ayn Rand's writings pretentious rather than portentous. I wonder whether this is a typo?

Posted by: reason | October 26, 2007 9:58 AM

Like David Marjanović I have a problem identifying Thadd as a libertarian in the sense that is meant here.

I see liberty itself as a difficult concept (your freedom to smoke and my freedom to breath clean air might just come in conflict) this:

I believe in the ideal of a government that allows as much freedom as possible to the people who live under it

Posted by: j.t.delaney | October 26, 2007 10:00 AM

I find PZ's vehement opposition to libertarianism hypocritical. On the one hand, he goes to great lengths to discredit those who profess an unjustified faith in the supernatural. At the same time he apparently holds the view that the government is a benign and enlightened actor whose interventions usually achieve the goal at which they aim. However, I find little evidence to support this belief, and abundant evidence to contradict it. Is this not also an instance of unjustified faith?

Nobody here has made the arguement that all government policies are inherently benign -- only that government isn't inherently evil, and that the free market isn't the solution to every human problem.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2007 10:04 AM

I wonder whether this is a typo?

Not necessarily. Aren't her writings uncanny and scary?

Posted by: jeffk | October 26, 2007 10:04 AM

I've always found libertarians less offensive than conservatives, because while their beliefs may be rooted in bad philosophy, at least they're not dependent on things that don't exist. An atheist can be a libertarian, but not a conservative, so far as I can figure.

The problem with libertarianism is that I would consider it a non-neutral philosophy in the sense that it can't solve communal problems. When a libertarian encounters something the free market can't fix, they're forced to deny its existence, which makes them the worst of cranks.

Posted by: Graculus | October 26, 2007 10:13 AM

Being in favour of individual liberty makes you a liberal, not a Libertarian.

Posted by: Kseniya | October 26, 2007 10:16 AM

People have this illusion that academia is a privileged fantasy land where we nestle in our well-insulated ivory towers and lie to one another about reality.

And drive Porsches and have trophy wives.

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 10:21 AM

PZ likes to paint broad strokes in bold, vivid color: Day-Glo on black velvet. Then he flaps his matador's cape at us and incites us to frenzy.

Posted by: Moses | October 26, 2007 10:24 AM

I can cite the example of my country, India, which spent close to four decades under 'socialism'. It might sound funny, but we had to wait for up to 8 years to get a 'land line' (telephone)from the Government controlled telephone supplier (the phone instrument and the connection both took 8 years). Today, thanks to the entry of private players, it takes much, much less.

Yes, the old Libertarian canard about the efficiency of the market and lure of profits. Yet it's quite accepted, by non-ideologues, that if government didn't step in, much of rural America would still not have telephones or electricity. Because it doesn't PAY to have telephone and electric lines in rural areas and Corporations are otherwise not in the business of providing goods and services when there is no hope for profit.

As for the anecdote, I suspect the reason for the telecom boom that allowed the faster obtaining of lines has to do with technological and economic reasons well beyond the removal of the "State Monopoly." Especially when I consider that many European countries are still either state monopolies or heavily regulated and don't suffer from the social, economic and technological barriers that, apparently, made getting a phone line such a chore in India. I would also point out that many of the Central American lassie-faire economies you'd avoid like the plague for their ills, had the same problems, even when privatized.

So, really, no thanks and so what. Libertarianism has yet to demonstrate anything beyond it is a con-game for people who believe they'll be on top of the laissez-faire economy. Nice and sexy if you luck out. But a life of squalor and poverty if you don't. And this comes from the economic principles being enacted in the real-world; ultimately, it's just going backwards to the gilded age.

Posted by: Kseniya | October 26, 2007 10:26 AM

Being in favour of individual liberty makes you a liberal, not a Libertarian.

True, you use the classic definition of Liberal, but there's no denying that modern American liberalism has at times concerned itself with legislating for personal safety over personal liberty. It has produced legislation like mandatory helmet use by motorcyclists, a liberty-reducing (but life-extending) restriction and gun control (ditto). The flip side of the coin is the conservative penchant for telling people what God to pray to (and when) and how to have sex (and with whom). So far, the liberals haven't written up any legislation requiring people to wear helmets during sex, so despite conservative claims to the contrary the liberals have a slight edge in the personal-liberty sweepstakes. But only slight. ;-)

Posted by: Moses | October 26, 2007 10:29 AM

We already know what happens when governments emasculate their own agencies, like the EPA and FDA, charged with protecting people from the excesses of industrial greed. Just look at the last few years of Republican one-party rule. The environment is ravaged, food and toys are poisoned, home owners are bankrupted, and shareholders swindled. People died.

All that with just a relaxation of government oversight. Now imagine what happens if someone like Ron Paul abolishes these agencies altogether. I can, but I can't for the life of me understand why libertarians never seem to. I've yet to find anyone who yearns for the return to the days of the robber barons.

Posted by: tacitus | October 26, 2007 5:56 AM

People forget that Libertarianism was practiced in America. It was called "The Gilded Age," and while the elites became fabulously wealthy, the rest of America was horribly poor. For all but the wealthy, and a small middle class, it didn't take just a husband to support a family, but the wife and children as well.

Yet these people want to just piss away all these things that have made their lives possible. On the delusion that they're going to, somehow, be on top.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2007 10:30 AM

Are you channeling Lynn Margulis? :)

I hope not :-)

Sure, you can define natural selection as being about avoiding competition instead of about competing succesfully, but that's just an unnecessarily complicated way of saying the same thing.

I'm not trying to define anything here. Where I come from is 1) the immense diversity of life with all those specialized species, specialized sexes and specialized life stages, and 2) the mid-20th-century knee-jerk reaction of attributing every extinction in the fossil record to competition, no matter what the evidence says (if it even says anything). Again: species outcompeting each other does happen. The dingo was introduced to Australia, and suddenly there were two species in the same place in the same ecological niche, of which one was considerably better at it (or at least most of it), so the Tasmanian tiger died out on the Australian mainland. If the Tassie tiger had had another food source that was less accessible to the dingo, it would most likely had survived, not much matter how well adapted the Tassie tiger actually was for it.

I played that game. The laize-faire economy sucked and evolved into, essentially, a hydraulic-despotism/oligopoly structure.

Wow. Exactly what I'd have predicted.

Posted by: roystgnr | October 26, 2007 10:34 AM

On the other hand, I've met a disproportionate number of really unpleasant, crass arrogant, rude people online who call themselves libertarians.

Did they show up and unpleasantly interrupt one of these little bash-fests where because of their political beliefs they'd been called "selfish", "small-minded", undeserving of any "sense of respect", "trash", "spoiled children", "deluded", despicable, etc?

How disproportionately rude of them.

Posted by: Sean | October 26, 2007 10:39 AM

Moses, re comment #74.

Back up your claims or kiss my ass you slandering piece of shit. I have not gone through self-inflicted, hellish periods of my life trying to live up to my ideals just to have you flounce along and in one post make broad accusations of rights violating, putrid behavior, whining, running to the goverment and selfishness.

Your post reminds me of any number of fundie posts ranting about baby eating atheists, their genocidal urges, arrogance of denying God's existence, and general evilness. Equal parts strawmen, misconceptions and flat-out lies.

Posted by: steve s | October 26, 2007 10:40 AM

PZ's just reminding us that he has little education in economics or poli sci. Nothing to get too worked up about. If he ever wants to learn about a really destructive political/economic group, he should look into a little-known movement called 'communism'. 20th century ring a bell?

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 10:47 AM

I see a lot of emoting, but not much actual argument going on here. Perhaps there are greedy libertarians, but there are greedy people in every group. I fail to see why that is a critique of libertarian ideas.

Someone commented that the government was interfering with his "right to own slaves." I'm not really sure why this person thinks that libertarians would support slavery, since they do not. Slavery is coercive, and coercion is anathema to libertarians.

I think a lot of people, including Mieville, don't really know that much about libterarian thought. They're not all cultish Randians. Perhaps some are, but there are many, I would include myself, who have reached this position after much careful thought. I am influenced by thinkers such as Locke and Jefferson.

For a reasoned approach to political liberty, everyone should check out the excellent blog Positive Liberty: www.positiveliberty.com

In a simple video, Milton Friedman explains how markets can indeed be beneficial to human flourishing:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU

Posted by: Thadd | October 26, 2007 10:48 AM

"There is no easy way to work out the moral issues involved in the possibility of increasing one persons freedom at the expense of another, since it is difficult to make interpersonal comparisons. (This is especially true if you consider not just negative freedom - i.e. freedom from constraint - but also positive freedom - the availability of choices.) Thinking that it is always obvious what is meant by increasing freedom is just naive."
Well duh, that is why I am happy to live in a democracy, where there is at least some ability for people to adjust bars and decide this on a case by case basis, which is necessary.
Ideally it would be nice if everyone could have no constraints and a nice free market, it is certainly my ideal, and why I identify as a libertarian, but I realize that the constraints of humanity and the impossible nature of altruism keep this ideal from ever actually working. At present (and forever, baring some amazing change that is beyond human prediction at this point), the presence government seems not only to be a necessity, but the closest we can come to the ideal I believe in. There have always been leaders and rulers (within the social history of H. sapiens) and so I don't think we can actually expect there not to be at some point.

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 10:53 AM

Thadd:

if the government could offer something like health care in an effective way I would be all for it as a service [...] As for pollution control or licensing, I think these are fine

Posted by: steve s | October 26, 2007 10:57 AM

tu quoque would be if I said libertarianism is good because communists are bad too. That's not what I said. Read for more comprehension. I just said communists were worse.

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 10:58 AM

PZ likes to paint broad strokes in bold, vivid color: Day-Glo on black velvet. Then he flaps his matador's cape at us and incites us to frenzy.

Once again,

1) Caledonian makes unsupportable assertion;

2) Unsupportable assertion gets dismantled;

3) Rather than admit his position is untenable, Caledonian moves the goalpost to personalities rather than the issue.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It is still entirely surreal to expect that charities will take care of everyone.

It is entirely surreal to expect that everyone should be taken care of.

And apart from this, it makes basic help a mercy instead of a right.

Precisely!

For once, I will give Caledonian some props here, though--unlike most Libertarians, he is refreshingly candid that it's not *really* about the individual.

To get back to the issue at hand, the Garifuna land grab attempt has been carried out many times historically in the developing world. If Libertarians were really interested in individual and property rights above all, I'd expect them to be all exercised about those violations, and demanding remedy.

Strangely enough, I never see that.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2007 11:00 AM

In a simple video, Milton Friedman explains how markets can indeed be beneficial to human flourishing:

Of course they can be. Just not the way he tried it in Chile.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | October 26, 2007 11:05 AM

I just said communists were worse.

You didn't state that in relative terms, but in absolute ones: you wrote communism is "really destructive" while libertarianism is not. And that is wrong.

'liberalizing' the economy is perhaps the only lever that growing economies like India and China have to lift a large population out of poverty. And the results are showing, though slowly.

I agree, and I think everyone here agrees.

But this is not libertarianism. Libertarianism is much, much more extreme.

Posted by: Jim A | October 26, 2007 11:12 AM

And drive Porsches and have trophy wives. Well one of my professors drove a Fiat Spyder and Married one of his students...Don't know about the car, but he didn't keep the job or wife for long.....

Posted by: Sarcastro | October 26, 2007 11:19 AM

Whatever happened to Syndicalism?

Posted by: Jenn | October 26, 2007 11:24 AM

Look, people, let's stop this.
While we all love PZ we have to cut him some slack. He isn't all-knowing, now is he? Every human being has flaws. One of his flaws seems to be having a scared cow thing about libertarianism. He just supplements his emotions for rational thought/debate about the subject. We all do it sometimes.
What we have to remember is that he is a biologist using the forum that he has as an giant in his field to spread his opinions on a subject in which he is not an expert. Would we all care if Paris Hilton went on TV and spouted what she thought about evo-devo? No, we wouldn't even give it a second thought.
As a libertarian atheist enviromental scientist, I just glance over the things he writes about us. It's not worth it to even respond to his emotive language-filled posts on the subject. So please, fellow libertarians on this site, lets not fight with PZ.
When we comment on all his posts about it, it just encourages him.
Let's just let him have his way, and concentrate on promoting good science.

Posted by: nathan | October 26, 2007 11:25 AM

I've noticed a few (imho) wrong beliefs underlying this discussion.

1. Capitalism is unstable.I'm not sure what is meant by this, unless people here think that capitalism caused the Great Depression (which it didn't -- that was poor intervention on the part of the Fed in the money supply. Even the Fed itself recognizes this.)


2. Capitalism makes the poor poorer.You pick an econometric measure, and you'll see that the plight of the poor has radically improved in the last couple hundred years. The poor are getting better off over time, not worse. This is partly due to the fact that, unless violence is involved, transactions only take place when it would make both parties better off in the ex ante sense. I like ice cream more than I like this $5 bill, and you like the $5 more than the ice cream. We are both better off for it. Similarly, I like my paycheck better than I like staying home and sleeping all day. So I go into work and put in some labor. My employer and I are each better off.


3. Libertarianism is inherently selfish. From the libertarian point of view, people with guns taking your money is, in every case, theft. No special exceptions are made if the thieves have been sent by some group of voters. There are no special moral categories at all, just people. So government largesse does not seem generous, since the money doesn't really belong to the people handing it out. I realize this is hard to believe, but there were quite a lot of voluntary aid societies before governments started trying socialism in the 20th century. I think these would return in a free society. You are free to disagree, of course, but please do not call me selfish -- I give to charities and would do so even more if I did have to pay taxes.

People have a hard time accepting free market economics for the same reason they have a hard time accepting evolution: it is counterintuitive. Life looks intelligently designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that there must be an intelligent designer -- a God. Similarly, the economy looks designed, so our natural inclination is to infer that we need a designer -- a Government. In fact, emergence and complexity theory explains how the principles of self-organization and emergence cause complex systems to arise from simple systems without a top-down designer.

PZ mentioned he was with Jefferson about government. I would point out that Thomas Jefferson would count as a libertarian under any reasonable definition of the term. "That government is best which governs least", etc. Indeed, I do not think it would be inaccurate to think of the American Revolution as a libertarian revolution.

Just because I feel like sharing, here are some other nice Jefferson quotes:

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

And last, but certainly not least:
"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

Are you sure you're still with Jefferson, PZ?

I am a libertarian. I am not, so far as I know, crazy or particularly selfish. I would not call myself "rabid" -- I am perfectly willing to discuss these things calmly, and I don't think you're all idiots for disagreeing with me. (I held similar views to the prevailing ones here only about ~4 years ago.) I'm not out to fuck the poor, kick puppies, etc. What I believe about good government is fairly in line with Mr. Jefferson, actually.

I don't expect to convince any of you that I'm right, but I do hope a few of you will stop thinking we're all crazy, heartless, baby-eating monsters. (The parallels between atheism and libertarianism are striking...)

P.S., I think the Freedom Ship and Seasteading are indeed pretty fucking stupid ideas. ;-)

Posted by: Nandan | October 26, 2007 11:29 AM

Tulse:
"For extra credit, explain how government-overseen "special incentives" are not interference in the free market by the State."

Ummm...I never said that I believe in absence of Government, I have said in my earlier comment that a 'minarchy' is a better option. For your reading pleasure from my earlier comment:
" I am not saying that we have anarchy: we are not ready (enlightened enough?) for it. We need the State and no realistic/practical person would say that we do not need Government. A minarchist position is closer to what I think will help society (Democratic society). I am in favour of a limited government that looks after basic things: protection of civil liberties and rights (including property rights), looking after defence and enforcement of contracts. "

So, when will I get my new grade sheet with the extra credit?

Posted by: Grand Fromage | October 26, 2007 11:35 AM

I'm confused. You're with Jefferson but hate libertarians? Jefferson is /the/ prototypical libertarian.

Posted by: H. Humbert | October 26, 2007 11:40 AM

After reading through this thread, it seems a Libertarian is what you get after you take god belief away from a religious Conservative. They're still lazy, selfish, greedy and cruel, but at least any lip service about the sanctity of human life has been done away with.

Posted by: jiggscasey | October 26, 2007 11:42 AM

H Humbert.

Please define this lazyness. And also how does the government forcing individuals to pay for social programs make those people forced to pay for them more compassionate?

Posted by: Kazim | October 26, 2007 11:45 AM

Thanks for the links, PZ. If there's one thing I enjoy, it's another shredding of libertarianism.

To your observations, I add my own:
http://kazimskorner.blogspot.com/2007/10/floating-libertarian-dictatorship.html

From the article:

On Freedom Ship there will be a jail, a "squad of intelligence officers," and a "private security force of 2,000, led by a former FBI agent, [that] will have access to weapons, both to maintain order within the vessel and to resist external threats." And while technically the law applied would be that of whichever state lends its flag, Freedom Ship officials make no bones that "the captain's word will be final."

Who the hell is going to be stupid enough to sign up for that?

It's perfect. In the absence of "big government," justice is distilled to obtain the smallest possible government: one guy. One completely unaccountable guy who makes all the rules. And if you don't like his rules, maybe you'd like to take a little swim instead.

Posted by: negentropyeater | October 26, 2007 12:02 PM

Somehow, it seems to me that this discussion has a bit of "old news" feeling to it. Come on, the moral imperatives of this centuries politoco / economic sytems are not going to have much to do with last centuries.

Striking the right balance between social democracy and free markets are 20th century problems. Friedmann, Jefferson, or Marx are going to have very little impact in defining this century.
We already know what the key issues are going to be :
1. how do we avoid that 20% of the world's population continue living under the poverty line (less than 1$/day) ?
2. how do we avoid that 20% of the world's population continue emitting 80% of the total greenhouse gazes of the planet ?
For this, 20th century politoco / economic models are not going to be very helpful.

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 12:07 PM

I'm not sure how #1 is specifically a 21st-century problem. It seems that for most of history that has been the case. Is it somehow more problematic in this century than it has been previously?

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 12:13 PM

What are you going to spend your money on?

What do libertarians want to do with all that money?

See, this is the problem - how is it anybody's business but my own, how I spend my money? And "all that money" is slightly misleading - I make $1500/month. Needless to say, I would like to keep more of my money, and have the government take less of it.

Posted by: jdw | October 26, 2007 12:21 PM

It might be nice to entertain a libertarian fantasy now and then. But in the real world, we have to serve someone (as the dylan song goes), whether or not you call it a government or a corporation. In the end, I'll be back in my tech job, slaving away in my miserable cubicle - forever. The pink floyd song comes to mind - "where did you go, what did you dream? Welcome my son, welcome to machine."

Posted by: Thadd | October 26, 2007 12:22 PM

"Tear up your Libertarian membership card, Thadd, 'cuz it's clear you ain't one."
Why, I choose to pay for and live under this government, I could leave it if I wanted, and I can actively vote for change if I feel it necessary. If others out vote my opinion, that is a balancing act of freedoms, part of necessity.
If you look at governments as part of a free market of where you live and pay taxes they make a good decision. The problem is that libertarians in general look to government as a single force they are stuck with and that is naturally an evil thing. That is way too 1950s and provincial, in todays world, the libertarian ideas of free market can be extended to the level of the government (at least in western democracies). The idea of "if you don't like it then leave" is only wrong if its forced, if its offered as a method of voting with one's feet, it's a freedom.
One can be libertarian without hating the government, one simply is for minimizing government control.
The idea of free market/anti-government libertarians is a bit of a stereotype of a much broader system of thinking.

Posted by: Cody Jassman | October 26, 2007 12:28 PM

Apparently PZ equates having the right to keep the money you earn -- and by extension, having a right to your own time (time is money) with selfishness.

If I wish to donate my own money for the good of others' lives then that is a decision I should be making. A decision based on compassion rather than force.

PZ, I'd be interested in hearing exactly what your so-called "real community of liberty" entails. Please describe the laws of your ideal country.

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 12:29 PM

What I wonder is why anyone thinks "Africa" is their problem to worry about. Who gave any invidual, or group, or country, the right to go around and try to fix other parts of the world?

To Tulse: I never said I wanted to get rid of all taxation. Clearly no government can function without tax revenue. That doesn't mean that many of the government programs are in principle or in effect good. When government starts to get its fingers into things, it is going to balloon. It seems to me there are great problems, say, with universal healthcare.

I don't want my tax money going to pay for medical care for people willingly endanger themselves, say by smoking. I work on a medical floor in a fairly large hospital and you wouldn't believe how many smoking related illnesses we see. Should the government, then, tell people they can't smoke if they are going to receive health care benefits? What about eating fast food, food with lots of trans fats, people who don't exercise regularly? Why should people who don't make an effort to keep themselves in good physical shape receive money to pay for their health care, money which might not be necessary otherwise? Who decides what sort of health care a person should receive? If the person is receiving government-funded health care, it will undoubtedly be the government. But why should I want the government to be in charge of making my health care decisions?

What about controversial issues like abortion? Will that be covered by universal health care? Why should Christians who believe it is immoral be forced to pay for it?

It is proposals for things like universal health care that I see as problematic, not police services. Although, police budgets could be tweaked quite a bit if the ridiculous war on drugs was ended. That money could go for things that mattered - like catching rapists and child molesters and prosecuting them more successfully.

Posted by: brent | October 26, 2007 12:33 PM

See, I have never had a corporation take my money by force. If a corporation does not serve my interests, I do not utilize their services. However, the federal government threatens me with jail if I decide to remove myself from paying for the "war on drugs" it wages against its own citizens.

Corporations do not taken by force only because the government prevents them from doing so with laws and a publicly financed police force. The fact that you have a choice of services is also due to the fact that governments creates rules that prevent monopolies and allows for competition. The fact that this needs to be explained is absurd but here we are.

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 12:35 PM

CalGeorge - I do not own any guns, and don't ever plan on owning any. Also, it seems obvious to me that freedom of choice is a good thing. Why do you think it is not? Why should freedom of choice have to be "proved good" before it is accepted? (Also note, I have nowhere said I want to get rid of all taxation.)

Matthew Dean - excellent point.

Posted by: Nandan | October 26, 2007 12:44 PM

Tulse:
Ahh...Shifting goal posts. Yes, theoretically, it should not be the job of the State. but practically, a workable option is when the interference is kept to a minimum and the number of reasons for which the Government has to use force is minimized. Taxes are monies taken by the Government to do what they promise to do. The assumption here is that they want to spread telephone connectivity to the boondocks. If that is not a mandate, it will not happen. But when it is, that's where democratic representation, interest groups and individual freedom/ entrepreneurship get into a royal 'crossed connection'. A higher probability towards an optimal solution comes from following the basics of libertarianism and democracy...individual freedom and consent. (of course, consent in a democratic set up may mean I end up paying for something I don't agree with, but that is the tyranny of aggregates and inevitable in the real world.)

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 12:45 PM

brent
Corporations do not taken by force only because the government prevents them from doing so with laws and a publicly financed police force. The fact that you have a choice of services is also due to the fact that governments creates rules that prevent monopolies and allows for competition. The fact that this needs to be explained is absurd but here we are.

Monopolies, you say? Like US Steel and GM? 30 years ago everyone was hand-wringing over what the government should do to break up those gargantuan monopolies. Now everyone is talking about government bailouts for their inevitable downfall. All it took was a little foreign competition (which was prevented from competing in the US by the government) to kill those titans, what other "monopolies" does the government need to break up?

Why do people keep talking about the government as though it's something imposed from afar? In the US anyway, the government is a reflection of the people, elected by the people, and carrying out the majority of the people's wishes. If people don't like what the govenment is doing they can vote them out and vote in a different government. You may not like what the government does but if you can't convince a majority that you're right, well that's one of the drawbacks of living with this system. You kind of have to go along with what the majority wants.

True, but the more the government controls, the less likely a politician is to conform to my particular view, right? If I really like a politicians view on what to do about highways, lets say, but he also thinks that gays should be put in prison and we faked the moon landing, I am in a bit of a dilemma. I will have to give my vote to a candidate who I perhaps don't like so much on highways. Giving states more rights would fix this, as I could choose to move to a state which best conformed to my wishes for how government should be run.

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 12:49 PM

Why do people keep talking about the government as though it's something imposed from afar? In the US anyway, the government is a reflection of the people, elected by the people, and carrying out the majority of the people's wishes. If people don't like what the govenment is doing they can vote them out and vote in a different government. You may not like what the government does but if you can't convince a majority that you're right, well that's one of the drawbacks of living with this system. You kind of have to go along with what the majority wants.

Indeed, and that is why we try to convince people of our viewpoint through argument, and not coercion.

Corporations do not taken by force only because the government prevents them from doing so with laws and a publicly financed police force. The fact that you have a choice of services is also due to the fact that governments creates rules that prevent monopolies and allows for competition. The fact that this needs to be explained is absurd but here we are.

Well, I'm not sure about your first claim. I don't see how it would be in any corporations best interests to take money from people. No one would do business with them, and they would go bankrupt. But suppose you are right. No one I know is proposing that we abolish the police force, so the point is moot.

About your second claim, I think the government might need to make laws about monopolies because of its own interference with the market. If there were no government subsidies of any corporations (as there should not be), then corporations would always have to compete against new entrepreneurs. The way things often are now, though, corporations become established, and then receive government subsidies, thus removing them from the competition of the market. If this were not the case, no monopoly laws would be needed.

A free market means just that - free. No corporate welfare, no government intrusion in contracts between willing partners, freedom of choice for consumers. Again, why is this objectionable?

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 12:54 PM

Who decides what sort of health care a person should receive? If the person is receiving government-funded health care, it will undoubtedly be the government. But why should I want the government to be in charge of making my health care decisions?

Why should you want an insurance company with a strong profit motive to be in charge of making your healthcare decisions?

Posted by: gwangung@u.washington.edu | October 26, 2007 12:56 PM

If we had a free market in health care, medicine would be cheaper

Easier said than done.

A free market requires perfect information flow, which is more readily approximated in consumer, low stake markets.

The big constraint in health care is NOT in institutions, but in time. All individuals cannot get the relevant information themselves--they MUST rely on 2nd and 3rd hand reports, which introduce massive inefficiencies into the market.

Posted by: TheBlackCat | October 26, 2007 12:59 PM

Basically, when pressed, it seems that at least here the libertarians are basically saying government is necessary, they just don't agree with some of the programs it is currently involved in. But does that really need a new name? I am not aware of anyone who thinks government is perfect. I am not aware of anyone who doesn't think certain government programs should be abolished. People disagree about which ones. But how, specifically, is libertarianism different than just being a citizen of a country? You can talk all you want about how great the free market is, you can say how much you like personal freedom, you can complain about the war on drugs, but you don't have to be a libertarian to think those sorts of things. Libertarians do not have the sole claim to those concepts. What I want to know is what the fundamental difference is between libertarianism and everyone else. What is so different about your idea that you need a new category outside outside of "human"?

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 1:01 PM

Why should you want an insurance company with a strong profit motive to be in charge of making your healthcare decisions?

I think I should decide. If I disagree with an insurance company, I can get different insurance, since the insurance company isn't coercing me into taking their services. With government insurance, I would be coerced, and thus could not vote with my dollars.

Posted by: nathan | October 26, 2007 1:02 PM

the organized 'big L' Libertarian movement is mostly a bunch of wankers.

Posted by: jcw | October 26, 2007 1:04 PM

David M,OM said,"Excuse me? I live in a functioning welfare state with free healthcare for all EU citizens."

If you are being serious with that statement just how does that work? Are all services, buildings, pharmaceuticals, and equipment donated? Is anyone in your healthcare system paid? Do any taxes support the system?

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 1:06 PM

TheBlackCat
Basically, when pressed, it seems that at least here the libertarians are basically saying government is necessary, they just don't agree with some of the programs it is currently involved in. But does that really need a new name? I am not aware of anyone who thinks government is perfect. I am not aware of anyone who doesn't think certain government programs should be abolished. People disagree about which ones. But how, specifically, is libertarianism different than just being a citizen of a country? You can talk all you want about how great the free market is, you can say how much you like personal freedom, you can complain about the war on drugs, but you don't have to be a libertarian to think those sorts of things. Libertarians do not have the sole claim to those concepts. What I want to know is what the fundamental difference is between libertarianism and everyone else. What is so different about your idea that you need a new category outside outside of "human"?

Of course government is necessary! We aren't anarchists here. I also don't think that libertarians have many "original" views if you look at current American politics (as in, there is no issue libertarians have to themselves that neither "liberals" nor "conservatives" don't agree with, or at least pay lip service to). But just because we think that some government functions are good does not mean that we agree with much of what goes on with government, and libertarians would like to dramatically reduce the size of government more then either liberals or conservatives propose on their own.

Posted by: Jolly Bloger | October 26, 2007 1:09 PM

Oh PZ, you've slighted me. I agree with you everywhere else, but I'm a proud libertarian. You've completely misunderstood the position! It's not greed for being-a-dick's sake, there is compelling moral reasoning behind it. You don't have to agree, but common, we're a far cry from creationists.

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 1:13 PM

What I wonder is why anyone thinks "Africa" is their problem to worry about. Who gave any invidual, or group, or country, the right to go around and try to fix other parts of the world?

The fact that the West played a huge role in breaking it in the first place, and continues to benefit from it.

Like I said, a lot of libertarians seem awfully selective about the corporate violations of individual and property rights that they get exercised about.

Well, treated like shopping for any other service. If we had a free market in health care, medicine would be cheaper (AMA couldn't artificially restrict the doctor supply by keeping med students out, and if you are bargaining over health services doctors will have to compete on price as well as service). Think about it -- how come prices in medicine are going up with technology rather than down?

And in the case of surveillance for infectious disease or malaria antibiotic resistance, a delay of 3 days in detection can mean thousands of lives lost. So exactly how many individuals' actual lives, quality of life, and transaction costs are you prepared to sacrifice to time lost while Medicine-VHS vs. Medicine-Betamax plays out at every single leaf node?

Posted by: negentropyeater | October 26, 2007 1:19 PM

Americans really have a problem with Health care. When they are told that they rank #37, on par with one of their poorest neighbours, Cuba, of course the answer is that the UN is anti-american. And please note that those same people will tell you that free markets drive the cost down but they fail to explain why Americans are those who spend the biggest % of GDP on healthcare despite having such a poor track record.
If there is one clear example of where free market economy doesn't work, it's healthcare.
In France, we are very pleased with our system. Our only problem is that it makes our companies slightly less competitive because there are still many countries in the world that view healthcare as a luxury. If every country handled healthcare the way we do in France, the discussion would be over.
Health care is a basic human right and should be handled that way. And please, don't start with those slippery slope arguments about what should constitute a good normative behaviour. "I don't want to pay for someone who smokes" "well, I don't want to pay for someone who eats red meat" "and I don't want to pay for someone who drives a car" "and I don't want to pay for someone who is older than 60" "and I don't want to pay for someone who doesn't masturbate often enough" "and I ..." How pathetic.

Posted by: Brownian | October 26, 2007 1:23 PM

It must be a sign that our bloated governments have too many employees that there are so many Dilbert fans, since no non-government worker could possibly relate to such an inefficient workplace.

I just wonder why Scott Adams chose not to name the particular government his characters work for, instead setting the cartoon at a privately-owned corporation. It must somehow make the cartoon cheaper.

Posted by: nathan | October 26, 2007 1:27 PM

Ah, the free market 'magic' that makes everything cheaper (except for when it doesn't). Provide evidence that 'the free market makes things cheaper' and explanatory mechanisms for any evidence provided or stop citing it as some fundamental law of the universe.

I cited two explanatory mechanisms in the very paragraph you quoted. I shall now amplify on each one in order to be a little more clear.

The first part was the AMA. The AMA is a powerful union. They use government force by proxy in order to restrict the supply of doctors in order to keep doctor wages high. How come we can only have one medical licensure organization, and it has to be compulsory? If licensure organizations had to compete, they could not cartelize and restrict entry into the profession. More doctors -> cheaper medicine.

If you look at the high wages and long hours worked, it definitely looks like we are in an artificial doctor shortage. The high wages should be attracting more doctors to the profession in droves, but compulsory licensure keeps many of them out. Only the doctors themselves benefit from this, and everyone else is poorer for it.

The second mechanism was simple bargain-shopping. When you buy a car, you shop around, and car dealers have to compete on price and quality. If you could do the same for doctors, the prices would come down: Doctor A charges X dollars and has such and such rank in, say, Doctor Ratings Monthly [or whatever doctor-ranking publications/sites you happen to find credible]. Doctor B is cheaper, but his success rate with my operation is, say, some 5% lower. Then I can decide what level of risk I want to take vs. how much I want to spend.

Doctors would have every incentive to have better stats, and ratings orgs would have every incentive to come up with more and better ways to rate doctors.

With the system as it is now, we are very decoupled from the price system when we make medical decisions, and it becomes very difficult to allocate resources in a rational way. I think that more medicine would be available to more people if we really had an undistorted market.

You are of course free to disagree with me. I defend my position mostly to show you that I'm not just pulling this free market stuff out of my arse. I sincerely believe these things. Maybe you think I'm crazy, but please at least believe that my intentions are good.

If you cannot, then please accept that reality is more complicated than your naively simplistic economic theory.

Of course reality is complicated. That's why I fear some group of experts thinking they can dictate a health care system that I am forced to take part in. I fear any such attempt is both naive and doomed. I think decentralization is nearly always a better way to deal with massive complexity than top-down directives. (Wee, more parallels with evolution vs. creationism.)

Posted by: TheBlackCat | October 26, 2007 1:36 PM

But just because we think that some government functions are good does not mean that we agree with much of what goes on with government, and libertarians would like to dramatically reduce the size of government more then either liberals or conservatives propose on their own.

Lots of people who aren't Libertarian do not agree with much of what goes on with the government. Lots of people who aren't Libertarian have problems with the war on drugs, with war in general, with nationalized healthcare, with overregulation. But just saying they want to shrink the government meaningless without specific rules about what is and is not good to have. And I have not seen any such rules here that are both feasible and any different than the sort of rules lots of non-libertarians support. So I will ask again: But how, specifically, is libertarianism different? Having a small government is a nice ideal, but without specifics about what is good and what isn't then it just a bunch of hot air.

Posted by: negentropyeater | October 26, 2007 1:40 PM

Mathew, what you fail to understand, is, where does your argument start and end.
The Law is supposed to be there to define what one is allowed to do or not. If one breaks the law, one shall pay a penalty or go to jail. As far as I am concerened, whatever the Law is at a particular moment, any human being should be entitled to the same minimum health care as anybody else, whatever he has done or not done in his life.
It is much simpler to organise society that way than to start defining all kinds of rules and conditions such as, this guy was taking cocaïne, so if he has a heart condition, it's his problem ,not mine. And this guy was smoking cigareetes so again, why should society pay, etc...
If you want to organise the world that way, it will never work.
Just think of health care as part of the basic human right that comes with being born on this planet and get done with it. There are sufficient other inequalities in life so that you can have the feeling of being special.

Posted by: Robert | October 26, 2007 1:41 PM

Sad to see that PZ is such an enemy of liberty, along with many of this blog's readers. It appears your beef with religion is not so much the control it attempts to exercise over us, but that you're not the one who's currently doing the controlling.

And to the banal objection that "we're ruled by the majority," once again you conveniently forget a little document called the Bill of Rights. I know, an outdated and irksome thing which you undermine at every turn while paying it lip service. Sorry if some of us object to your plans for a New Socialist Order in which we're merely pawns to your grand social engineering schemes. They don't exactly have a very successful track record.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 1:47 PM

TheBlackCat
Lots of people who aren't Libertarian do not agree with much of what goes on with the government. Lots of people who aren't Libertarian have problems with the war on drugs, with war in general, with nationalized healthcare, with overregulation. But just saying they want to shrink the government meaningless without specific rules about what is and is not good to have. And I have not seen any such rules here that are both feasible and any different than the sort of rules lots of non-libertarians support. So I will ask again: But how, specifically, is libertarianism different? Having a small government is a nice ideal, but without specifics about what is good and what isn't then it just a bunch of hot air.

OK, heres a basic definition:

The libertarian strives always for freedom, both individual, and economic. The government should not get involved in decisions the individual makes, unless those decisions directly harm others. The individual may harm himself in this process, but that is the responsibility of the individual, and the government should not get involved in those decisions.
The government should also get involved as little as possible in fiscal decision-making. The individual knows best how to spend their own money, and the bureaucrat sitting in his office in Washington will never be able to efficiently manage that individuals funds for him. If the individual squanders his money, that is no ones fault but his own, and he will suffer the consequences for it.

There is more to it then that, but that is the baseline for a "libertarian".

Posted by: Brownian | October 26, 2007 1:50 PM

The second mechanism was simple bargain-shopping. When you buy a car, you shop around, and car dealers have to compete on price and quality. If you could do the same for doctors, the prices would come down: Doctor A charges X dollars and has such and such rank in, say, Doctor Ratings Monthly [or whatever doctor-ranking publications/sites you happen to find credible]. Doctor B is cheaper, but his success rate with my operation is, say, some 5% lower. Then I can decide what level of risk I want to take vs. how much I want to spend.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is nothing but hand-waving dreck.

a) When you buy a car, you shop around,
b) car dealers have to compete on price and quality.

So that's your claim? A leads to B because you say it? And that's the ideal to which you're comparing doctors?

Do you understand what I mean by providing evidence (as compared to simplistic allegories)?

If you could do the same for doctors, the prices would come down: Doctor A charges X dollars and has such and such rank in, say, Doctor Ratings Monthly [or whatever doctor-ranking publications/sites you happen to find credible]. Doctor B is cheaper, but his success rate with my operation is, say, some 5% lower. Then I can decide what level of risk I want to take vs. how much I want to spend.

I'll just say it. Your little thought experiment sounds fine if you're talking about elective surgery. Last time I was hit by a car, I was a little to preoccupied to consider which hospital emergency would give me the most bang for my buck.

At any rate, a thought experiment is not evidence, nor is the description you provided anything like an explanation robust enough to be considered compelling on its own merit.

Posted by: Rev.Enki | October 26, 2007 1:53 PM

Re: the Friedman discussion (*way) above: anyone who doesn't think Milton Friedman was quite strongly involved with Pinochet is either unaware of the Chicago Boys, is completely daft, or is a nasty little fucking liar. Those, or combinations of them, appear to be the only serious possibilities.

Posted by: Jason | October 26, 2007 1:57 PM

negen,

Americans really have a problem with Health care. When they are told that they rank #37, on par with one of their poorest neighbours, Cuba, of course the answer is that the UN is anti-american.

My answer is that that ranking is basically meaningless. It doesn't tell us anything meaningful about the quality of health care in the U.S. compared to other countries.

And please note that those same people will tell you that free markets drive the cost down but they fail to explain why Americans are those who spend the biggest % of GDP on healthcare despite having such a poor track record.

What "poor track record?" The reasons why America spends so much on health care are complex, but a large part of it is that America is simply richer and that total spending is largely determined by market forces rather than government budgets.

In France, we are very pleased with our system.

In France, your health care system is going bankrupt. It chronically runs huge deficits, and major reform is needed to either cut benefits, raise taxes, or increase out-of-pocket and private insurance costs to French consumers in order to protect the long-term solvency of your public health insurance fund. A similar problem is looming for Medicare in the U.S., which is projected to start spending more than it collects in taxes in about a decade.

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 1:59 PM

If they wanted to buy cyanide pills, let them. Why should we try to protect people from the consequences of their actions?

Your assertion was that tobacco companies do not cause harm by selling cigarettes, simply because people can choose whether or not to buy them. This conclusion does not follow. I asked you whether or not people should be allowed to sell poison; you shifted the discussion to whether or not people should be prevented from buying it, which is a very different issue.

Posted by: Colugo | October 26, 2007 2:00 PM

Notes:

- Friedrich Hayek, pinko:

Hayek, 1982, 'Law, Legislation, and Liberty' v. 2: "There is no reason why in a free society government should not assure to all, protection against severe deprivation in the form of an assured minimum income, or a floor below which nobody need descend."

- Libertarianism is profoundly offensive to progressives because they see it as antithetical to their core value, altruism.

- Denouncing libertarianism is a salient social capital-enhancing signal; it is an announcement that one is an anti-anti-altruist - and hence is a form of indirect altruism.

- Of course, economic libertarians would argue that they are in fact more altruistic because collectivism leads to immiseration and economic freedom raises living standards.

- In reality, the right is anti-altruistic and the left is pseudo-altruistic. Just kidding. Kind of.

- Sure, libertarianism is silly. But remember: No Objectivism, no The Question, no Rorschach - the best character in The Watchmen.

Let's tweak the above excerpt a bit to describe another political tendency: "Claiming a lineage with post-Enlightenment revolutionary Romanticism, as well as in some cases with the resoundingly portentous blatherings of Noam Chomsky, all of its variants are characterized, to differing degrees, by fervent, even cultish, faith in what is quaintly termed "Global" Justice, and extreme antipathy to that vaguely conceived bogeyman, "the corporatocracy," with its manipulative and financial powers."

Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | October 26, 2007 2:03 PM

This thread has gone on so long there's scant chance of anybody reading this, I figure (hell, I haven't even read this whole mess) but I wanted to throw in a metaphor I find both useful and topically appropriate.

An unfettered free market - the libertarian ideal - is essentially equivalent to natural selection on Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" model. It has the same attributes of creating escalating complexity and sophistication through what are essentially undirected, semi-random processes. That is, while individual entrepreneurs may have "intelligent designs" for their businesses, from a bird's-eye view the whole market resembles the teeming mass of the gene pool, trying out different combinations of reproductive strategies, keeping and rewarding what works, and ruthlessly purging what doesn't.

Just like real natural selection, the outcomes will be diverse - the evolutionary process has given us everything from kittens and cuttlefish to hammerhead sharks and cryptosporidia. This is why both sides of the argument never seem to be short of examples - libertarians tend to emphasize the Fords and Microsofts of the world, while liberal-socialist types like myself can point to Enron and Infinium Labs.

The corrolary to all this, and my real point, is that some kind of governmental control over the market is necessary to guide it into producing only those kinds of expressions that are beneficial to society at large, or at least, not overly harmful - to make dogs out of wolves. In short, the function and aim of government in a capitalist society should be to domesticate the free market.

Posted by: nathan | October 26, 2007 2:08 PM

Re: a million posts
There is no free market in health care. Please everyone recognize this. There is significant government intervention in the health care sector, distorting it significantly from what a free market would look like.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 2:16 PM

K. Signal Eingang
The corrolary to all this, and my real point, is that some kind of governmental control over the market is necessary to guide it into producing only those kinds of expressions that are beneficial to society at large, or at least, not overly harmful - to make dogs out of wolves. In short, the function and aim of government in a capitalist society should be to domesticate the free market.

What needs domesticating? The sole example you had, Enron, did harm to lots of people and paid dearly for it. Government courts took care of it, which is not at all inconsistent with libertarianism.

Infinium Labs hasn't harmed anyone, as far as I know, except the boneheaded shareholders who are purchasing stock. And that is there fault, now isn't it?

Can you name an "out of control" corporation which really really needs the government to get into the boardroom and start ordering people around? That goes to anyone, really, I would love to hear it.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 2:21 PM

thalarctos
Perhaps you'll answer my question about a free market in medicine, then:

As other people getting immunized from disease helps me, I have no problem with some government involvement in this sector. But just because government is needed there does not mean our tax dollars should pay for the cancer surgery of man who smokes his lungs black with tar or the drunk driver who wraps himself around the telephone pole (although I would be for a voucher-based universal healthcare).

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 2:22 PM

The corrolary to all this, and my real point, is that some kind of governmental control over the market is necessary to guide it into producing only those kinds of expressions that are beneficial to society at large, or at least, not overly harmful - to make dogs out of wolves. In short, the function and aim of government in a capitalist society should be to domesticate the free market.

Domestication tends to be a deeply destructive process that creates endforms that are unable to survive on their own and require constant human intervention to exist.

Compare dogs to wolves, cows to auroch, cats to wildcats. They're dumber, slower, and weaker, with impaired instincts that would quickly lead to their extinction outside of human breeding facilities.

Guess what happens when you try to domesticate a market?

Posted by: MattXIV | October 26, 2007 2:24 PM

Why do liberals feel so threatened by libertarian secessionism? You guys seem to have some inordinate fear that if people are allowed to leave the system, the whole thing will collapse. The obsession with not allowing people to opt out doesn't just extend to the fear that a handful of libertarians might stop paying taxes while living on a ship in the middle of the ocean (where presumably they won't be consuming any government services), but seems to pervade your approach to all social programs. It's not enough to collect a payroll tax to help the poor in their retirement or to cover their medical expenses - everybody must hand over their money now so the government can decide how to administer it. It's not enough to subsidize education - everyone except those wealthy enough to pay twice must go through the public school system.

This isn't about capitalism as much as it is about choice. I wouldn't begrude socialists an opportunity to set up their own communities centered around their conception of the collective good - indeed, they have as much a right to do so as I do not to participate.

Leaving aside disagreements about how to interpret various bits of evidence on matters related to public policy, much of ideological variation can be explain by different people having different preferences for risk, justice, privacy, autonomy, etc - libertarianism tries to address this by minimizing the rules that apply to society at large and letting people make their own arrangements, since the law applies to all. Liberal, in constrast seem to seek some one-size-fits-all solution based around their own preferences, which they tend to treat failing to share as immoral. The attitude towards paying taxes is an excellent example, since you guys seem to find it inconcievable that someone may view the costs of the useless and harmful applications of government to outweigh the benefits and believe that little of that useless and harmful activity can be effectively constrained without general reductions of the scope of governmental authority, you assume that anybody who wishes to reduce taxes is interested solely in their own pocket book. And yet you're quick to bristle that at any suggestion that anything other that detached altruism shapes your agenda.

PS The Mievielle article is intellectually sloppy crap filled with false dichotomies ("As respectful of "order" as the most polite bourgeois, they cannot conceive of pirates as antecedents, only as threats. ("As indeed they might be, were there any seasteads to plunder.) By distancing themselves from this antiestablishment hydrarchy, the libertarian seasteaders unwittingly identify with the other hydrarchy that Linebaugh and Redicker discuss: the imperialist, maritime state" - Libertarians don't want to be pirates, so they must want to be imperialists. Ok...), flat out unfamiliarity with the subject (Actually, scholarly work on self-organization in the absence of a controlling legal authority by pirates is popular among libertarians of an anarchistic bent),
quote mining (despite noting that the LP advocate open borders (as do most other libertarian groups and publications with a stance on it), it digs up some "journal" that I've never heard of to argue that libertarians are actually racist immigration restrictionists), and self-serving tenuous extrapolations (some libertarians planning on living on a ship want the captain to have the final say on law enforcement matters on the ship becomes all libertarians wanting dictatorships. Impecable reasoning there.), all dressed up in prose which tries to hard to project errudition while laying on the vacuous underlying arguments like a cheap suit. If you're going to link to a takedown of libertarianism, at least chose one that contains well-constructed arguments.

Posted by: nathan | October 26, 2007 2:25 PM

And in the case of surveillance for infectious disease or malaria antibiotic resistance, a delay of 3 days in detection can mean thousands of lives lost. So exactly how many individuals' actual lives, quality of life, and transaction costs are you prepared to sacrifice to time lost while Medicine-VHS vs. Medicine-Betamax plays out at every single leaf node?

Another major benefit is, if Medicine-Betamax is getting expensive or ineffective or even just bitchy on the phone, I can go subscribe to Medicine-DVD.

The threat of people voting with their feet provides a powerful set of checks and balances. It's more accountability than you get from people noisily voting on Turd Sandwich vs. Giant Douche every four years, especially when their core criteria are loving jebus and hating gays.

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 2:29 PM

PZ:

The whole point of a class is to help students learn...and when I see students doing poorly, it isn't an opportunity to hand out an F, it's a responsibility to step in and try to help them learn.

Because that's what they pay for, and what you're paid for.

Do you have an open classroom, PZ? Do you teach and assist anyone who wishes to learn? Or are you paid to work in an institution where people have to pay lots and lots of money for the privilege of being taught?

You may fancy that you can give your knowledge and your spare time to projects like this website and 'education', and it's your right to give whatever charity you wish. But by all means, let's be honest: you're a capitalist, selling your expertise. You don't give it away for free.

Would you continue working in your position if they stopped paying you?

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 2:30 PM

Consumers are making a decision to buy a known poison. That decision directly harms others.
Should people be forbidden to purchase tobacco?

See my post above. You are conflating two separate issues. I do not believe people should be forbidden to purchase tobacco. I do believe that people, and institutions, should not be allowed to sell known poisons to make a profit.

Posted by: CalGeorge | October 26, 2007 2:32 PM

The only people being harmed are smokers, but they chose that, so it shouldn't concern me, as long as I'm not forced to pay for their medical care.

Completely ignores the issue of second-hand smoke.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 2:33 PM

TheBlackCat
Great in theory, but a bit thorny in practice. Take tobacco for instance. The tobacco companies are making a decision to sell a known poison to consumers. That decision directly harms others. So should tobacco companies be banned from selling tobacco? What about if bottled water company knowingly sold water with high levels of dangerous contaminants? Would you oppose punishing them? What if they didn't know, but were lax in reasonable safety precautions? After all, everybody should know that it is possible that something could go wrong with the bottling of the water and thus they are knowingly taking a risk when drinking it. These are all cases where the decision of individuals causes direct harm to others.

Consumers are making an informed decision to consume something known by all to be harmful. If they wish to poison themselves with tobacco, it is none of my business. If they don't know tobacco is dangerous because they never pick up a newspaper, not my problem. They should accept responsibility for their own actions.

As for the bottled water company, they should be punished for inflicting harm on consumers for providing something they said was safe. And government regulation (FDA) sure isn't needed. Who has the biggest incentive to make sure the water is safe? Would anyone buy Dasani if it was revealed that some bottles were infected by E. Coli?

Doesn't the private road corporation have a huge incentive all by themselves to make sure their roads and bridges are really really safe? Does RoadCorp want their name splashed all over the news next to images like this?

Would you ever ride on one of RoadCorps roads again after such a disaster? No? Well you are still driving on government roads, because you have to. Competition makes for much better safety then government.

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 2:35 PM

Madam Pomfrey, why are you so determined to take responsibility away from adults who freely chose to make decisions harmful themselves, but no one else?

Alcohol, in excess, is a poison too. Should we prohibit alcohol sales because every year some irresponsible college first-years CHOOSE to drink too much?

What about people who eat too much McDonald's and have cardiac disease? Should we outlaw trans- and saturated fats and high calorie foods?

Again, I say, treat people as adults, and let them make their own decisions. It is not part of government's job to make decisions for people.

Posted by: Brownian | October 26, 2007 2:37 PM

Of course not, you collection of randomly moving molecules. I'm comparing markets to ecosystems.

No you weren't. None of your examples were ecosystems:

Domestication tends to be a deeply destructive process that creates endforms that are unable to survive on their own and require constant human intervention to exist.

Compare dogs to wolves, cows to auroch, cats to wildcats. They're dumber, slower, and weaker, with impaired instincts that would quickly lead to their extinction outside of human breeding facilities.

Guess what happens when you try to domesticate a market?

However, I loved the play on my d'écran. Was that also a reference to the supposed movement of individuals in a free market?

Posted by: Mathew Wilder | October 26, 2007 2:40 PM

thalarctos, you seem to be making our case for us. There is no clear line to draw between which surgeries/medical treatments people deserve, and which they don't. So, it seems it is better to let people pay for their own medical care, than to make arbitrary judgments just so we can feel good about providing universal health care.

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 2:41 PM

Madam Pomfrey, why are you so determined to take responsibility away from adults who freely chose to make decisions harmful themselves, but no one else?

Matthew, why are you so determined to shift the discussion repeatedly to the buyer, and absolve the seller -- an earlier link in the chain -- from all responsibility? Why does the buyer carry all the responsibility, while the seller has none? How does allowing rapacious profiteers to sell poison somehow turn people into "adults"?

It's an obvious logical error to group items that are largely beneficial but may cause harmful side effects (most prescription drugs) with things that cause little or no benefit and whose primary effect is harmful (tobacco). You guys should know better.

Posted by: K. Signal Eingang | October 26, 2007 2:45 PM

Infinium committed outright fraud, and I think a stronger or more active SEC could have prevented it - or, to make a weaker but more defensible argument, the SEC is the only thing that stands between us and a million Infiniums. It's entrepreneurship imitating "The Producers" - you can make more money on a failed product you *aren't* actively developing than one that you are.

Enron, frankly, didn't get punished for harming people - their entire business was *based* on harming people (see "The Smartest Guys In The Room" for some examples of how Enron made its money). They got punished for failing. The stock market not only failed to rein them in, it rewarded them for their unsound business and accounting practices just as long as the balance sheets keep coming in black. If they'd somehow managed to avoid going bankrupt in the process of bleeding the California energy market to death, they'd still be the toast of Wall Street today. Besides which, it's unclear in a libertarian society whether they would have been punished, or whether their bankruptcy would have been considered punishment enough.

For other examples, cripes, see Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle", see the Ford Pinto, see Halliburton, "missile defense" and the entire defense contractor/war lobbyist axis, see lead-based paint in children's toys and e. coli in freaking SPINACH... An approach that says "well, sure, these guys did grievous harm to society but at least some of them paid for it afterwards" is willful blindness. It's the same philosophy that cuts education and spends twice the money saved on prisons. We need incentives for companies to behave responsibly in the here and now, every day, and that requires oversight. The free market, strictly speaking, cannot provide any incentive to act morally, it can only provide incentives not to get caught acting immorally.

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 2:46 PM

In other words, if a given actor can't run a business profitably while working within responsible norms, then libertarianism becomes the answer because it absolves an actor of any prior restraints regarding forseeable consequences of their actions.

Exactly, which is why in their minds the poison seller is never subject to accountability or even basic responsibility. The consequences are always some other guy's fault.

Posted by: Dustin | October 26, 2007 2:48 PM

Why should health care be different?

I'm not saying it should be. We have ways of ensuring that people aren't starving and that they can find a place to live. Objections to that claim on the grounds that neither of those programs are as effective as they should be should probably be directed to those neocons everyone was getting hot for eight years ago.

Whether most of the housing in the country is privately funded is entirely beside the point. I'm not saying we should provide everyone with a luxury house in the woods, and I'm not saying that we should provide everyone's elective surgery. I'm not saying that we should buy everyone a filet for every meal. I am saying that people should be fed.

The fact is, we have subsidized housing and government housing grants so that people can get on their feet. We have food stamps and grants so that people can feed their children. We have financial aid programs to make sure that people can go to college. How much of any of those sectors is available out of pocket if we care to pay extra for it is beside the point. Why don't we make sure that people can at least be healthy?

And, I'm sure it's been brought up several times already, but the riff that public health care or single payer doesn't work simply doesn't square with the statistics.

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 2:50 PM

Health- and life-insurance companies would have every incentive to watch out for these things and help prevent them, because it would make a huge difference to their budgets.

They also have every incentive to deny care you've already paid in advance for, because not paying out is always more cost-effective in the short term than paying out.

Corporate unwillingness to share proprietary data is one of the biggest reasons why we do not have a functioning widespread electronic medical record system in the US, even though research consistently shows it would lead to improved health care and delivery. The US is getting lapped on EMR advantages, not only by Europe and Japan as might be expected, but by countries in the developing world that are leapfrogging over us.

Insurance companies don't have any monetary incentive to share data on how they're doing, nor on how many claims they're denying in order to avoid paying out money. Why you think they would act against that incentive, I have no idea.

And you can subscribe to Medicine-VHS while I subscribe to Medicine-Betamax and neither of us are the worse off for it. One of the market's chief advantages over democracy is that it's not winner-take-all (contra Stephen Colbert's "let the market decide" jokes). We can all have our cakes and eat them, too. Yay diversity!

You miss the point. As the old joke goes, "that's the beauty of standards--there are so many of them". Except, when there are multiple competing standards of disease reporting, nobody wins: the effectiveness of disease surveillance and response depends on the accuracy of the reports in the aggregate, which in turn depends upon normalization and standardization of the data.

If you miss a huge sudden uptake in emergency-room respiratory complaints indicating H5N1 avian influenza or SARS or whatever in the aggregate population overall, because none of the various reports using different data standards was able to detect it all alone, the virus isn't going to wait to see what standard shakes out of the market. It's a clear case where a regulated standard needs to be enforced, or the data is absolutely meaningless.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 2:52 PM

thalarctos
No surgery at all, or yes on prostate surgery/no on lung surgery, or what combination? Will that criterion change, depending on research shows on correlations between smoking and other forms of cancer than lung cancer? What about an ex-smoker who develops lung cancer 20 years later? Did the cigarettes cause the cancer in that case, and is that the determining factor in whether you would pay or not?
How about a passenger in the car? How about a 350-pound driver who had a single glass of white wine 4 hours before the accident--was he drunk on that amount of alcohol, and did it cause the accident? If not, would that change your decision?

Sounds like excellent decisions for private insurance companies to make. A good argument to privatize healthcare.

What about the people no insurance company will touch because of pre-existing risk, genetic or non-genetic? Are they just screwed by definition under your system?

I don't think that situation would happen in a voucher-based system, but supposing if it did there are hospitals where no one will be turned away, regardless of if the person can pay or not. These hospitals exist with the help of private charity, which I think is an excellent solution for these types of circumstances.

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 2:55 PM

Kseniya:

What ideology do you favor? You've often said you're not a Libertarian.

I favor no ideology.

Here, let me clarify that: I favor no-ideology.

If you could put systems in place, what would they look like?

Wu wei!

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 2:58 PM

Brownian:

No you weren't. None of your examples were ecosystems:

One was.

And in a way, they all were. Just not on the same level of implementation.

Posted by: Caledonian | October 26, 2007 3:00 PM

You want to know what shape society would take? You want to know how to fix the world? I'll tell you.

A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. A master, seeing what the student was doing, spoke sternly: "You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong."

The master turned the machine off and on.
The machine worked.

Posted by: Madam Pomfrey | October 26, 2007 3:01 PM

Also, I don't think there is a real difference between nicotine and "medicine." There is nothing harmful with smoking a cigar every now and then, as say, my uncle, does. At least, no more harm than having a beer with supper every now and then.

Then you don't understand medicine very well, nor did you catch the point I made above about the primary function of a drug or compound versus its side effects. What disease does nicotine cure or ameliorate, compared to diltiazem, amlodipine or ciprofloxacin?

Posted by: Brownian | October 26, 2007 3:03 PM

These hospitals exist with the help of private charity, which I think is an excellent solution for these types of circumstances.

I--I don't even know what to make of this. What?

OK, so if we would all prosper in a libertarian system because we'd have more incentive to do something because of the profit motive whatchamajiggy and nobody wants to pay more taxes but there will still be free hospital care for the people who fall through the cracks because providing services for them isn't profitable because people will still be motivated to pay for free hospital care even though they're sureshot comsumers who vote with their dollars at the slightest whiff of inefficiency and wha?

The people who hate paying taxes, right? They're going to choose to support the free hospitals through charity?

Does your brain work at all?

Posted by: Dustin | October 26, 2007 3:07 PM

The linear algebra of econometrics had ought to be replaced with the I Ching. Statistics and game theory are rent asunder by the might of magic Taoist principles.

This conversation just got far too stupid for me. I won't be entertaining it any longer.

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 3:13 PM

No surgery at all, or yes on prostate surgery/no on lung surgery, or what combination? Will that criterion change, depending on research shows on correlations between smoking and other forms of cancer than lung cancer? What about an ex-smoker who develops lung cancer 20 years later? Did the cigarettes cause the cancer in that case, and is that the determining factor in whether you would pay or not? How about a passenger in the car? How about a 350-pound driver who had a single glass of white wine 4 hours before the accident--was he drunk on that amount of alcohol, and did it cause the accident? If not, would that change your decision?

Sounds like excellent decisions for private insurance companies to make. A good argument to privatize healthcare.

You got me there, Matthew, because as has been demonstrated time and time again, no for-profit company would ever use ambiguity or exceptions in a contract to hold onto money by weaseling out of providing care to someone who's already paid for it in advance.

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 3:17 PM

$200,000

Oops, typo: should be $100,000. Everything else stands, though.

Posted by: Colugo | October 26, 2007 3:18 PM

Ra's al Ghul once actually had a good point when he asked Batman whether he would rather walk by his side through a wild jungle or an orderly zoo.

Batman, of course, replied "I'll walk by your side nowhere, Ra's." But the larger point still holds; we still have to choose between the two, or at least from within a continuum of those alternatives.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 3:24 PM

Brownian
The people who hate paying taxes, right? They're going to choose to support the free hospitals through charity?

Yep.

Assume there was no government-funded healthcare. Would you donate to a private hospital/health company? I sure would (actually I do right now). If they pulled bastard moves, such as denying people care, etc, I would support someone else.

Does your brain work at all?

Yep.

thalarctos
You got me there, Matthew, because as has been demonstrated time and time again, no for-profit company would ever use ambiguity or exceptions in a contract to hold onto money by weaseling out of providing care to someone who's already paid for it in advance.

Did they breach the contract? If so a court of law will hold them accountable. Even if they put loopholes into the contract, they can still be held accountable by a court if they willfully tried to deceive their clients. After something like that happened, people can (and indeed should) take their voucher money to a different insurance company, one who wouldn't do that. A system like this is already in place in Holland (I think) and is very effective.

The alternative is the government health care system, such as Britains. "Wait 15 months for your chemo" type systems.

Posted by: Jason | October 26, 2007 3:30 PM

Due to an abdominal blood clot and complications from it, I ran up a hospital bill of over $200,000 about 5 years ago. My husband's health insurance was better than mine at the time, so it paid most of the bill. A month or so after my release, my husband was laid off. If I had had the blood clot in December rather than September, I could not have afforded care.

Anecdotes are not a good basis for public policy. You most likely would have received care even if you had not had health insurance. The quality of the care might not have been as high, or it might have left you in substantial debt, but you most likely would have received the care.

There is little evidence that health insurance either improves health significantly, or provides much protection against the risk of major financial loss due to illness. Yes, for a specific person in a specific situation, it can make a huge difference. But in general, the effect seems to be small.

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 3:34 PM

Caledonian:

I favor no ideology.
Here, let me clarify that: I favor no-ideology.

There really should be an HTML entity for "eye-roll".

Jason:

I am strongly opposed to a dramatic reform of American health care to create a British- or Canadian- or French-style single-payer system.

Perhaps if one wants a health care system to maximize "liberty" then it makes sense to oppose universal health care. I for one want a health care systems that attempts to maximize "health". (And that's one of the reasons I am now a citizen of Canada.)

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 3:38 PM

Anecdotes are not a good basis for public policy.

I am certainly not putting it up against a randomized controlled trial (RCT), but a case study is not exactly anti-evidence, either.

You most likely would have received care even if you had not had health insurance. The quality of the care might not have been as high, or it might have left you in substantial debt, but you most likely would have received the care.

Even an actual anecdote trumps your supposition about what might have happened, though.

In any case, I am not asking you to provide RCTs; I am asking you to explain the coherence, as well as the fairness ("fair" as asserted by Matthew above), of a principle under which the same individual deserved primo health care in September 2002 and sub-primo care + massive debt in December 2002.

Posted by: TheBlackCat | October 26, 2007 3:39 PM

The bottled water company claims its product is safe, but sells contaminated products due to poor QA, it should be punished by giving monetary compensation to the victims (and it will be punished by the market by going out of business). The tobacco company sells products it knows are not safe, but people buy it knowing the consequences of their actions. One is the fault of the company, one is the fault of the individual. I don't really see where the problem is?

As I keep saying, people should know that buying water is not completely safe just as they should know that buying tobacco is not completely safe. And I have never heard a bottled water company say that there is zero risk to drinking their water.

No they didn't. They provided a service demanded by the people. You cannot keep people from doing things which they consent to do freely (remember prohibition?).

Tobacco causes direct harm. That is a fact. The people who are selling it are therefor doing direct harm to their customers. That you think the customers should know they are being harmed is irrelevant under the rules you provided. Harm is harm. Under your rules selling tobacco should be illegal. If you wish to change your definition that is fine, but nowhere in your definition does it say that you are allowed to cause direct harm as long as the people you are harming accept the risk. The fact that these sorts of qualifiers are necessary to make the definition work in the real world only proves my point that the definition is useless in practice.

The tobacco tax is the most regressive tax we have.

This isn't about taxes, this is about your own rules, the definition of libertarianism that you provided.

Posted by: Jason | October 26, 2007 3:45 PM

thalarctos,

In any case, I am not asking you to provide RCTs; I am asking you to explain the coherence, as well as the fairness ("fair" as asserted by Matthew above), of a principle under which the same individual deserved primo health care in September 2002 and sub-primo care + massive debt in December 2002.

I'm not saying there is any change in what the individual "deserves." You might as well ask why someone living in a poor African country doesn't "deserve" the same quality of health care as an insured American. What people "deserve" isn't the issue. The issue is how we should organize our health care system.

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 3:53 PM

Jason:

you think the differences in IMR and average life expectancy between the U.S. and other countries are caused by differences in their health care systems.

In part, yes. Looking at Canada, we have very similar lifestyle issues (obesity, smoking, etc.) at the US does, but on almost all meaningful health stats, Canadians are healthier than Americans, while spending about half as much per capita on health care.

What evidence makes you think that?

Posted by: Aaron Kinney | October 26, 2007 3:56 PM

The only pipe dream or utopian fantasy is the one where people think that a state monpoly, which they are forced to give money to, will do right by them.

It is not a utopian pipe dream to say that its better to let consumers CHOOSE how they spend their money. All their money.

Posted by: negentropyeater | October 26, 2007 3:58 PM

Jason,

this is becoming ridiculous. There is not one country in the world that is looking at America as a model of how to manage healthcare.
The USA is THE case study on how not to do it, and the data is there to demonstrate it. Despite this, still a large % of the American population still lives in a delusion that their system is quite Ok (they'll admit to the fact that some improvements can be made, but won't change the system).
It really must hurt the American pride to know that on such a basic issue as healthcare, they are the worst in class.
Of course Jason, we know of the huge body of evidence you are talking about. Paid by the private insurance companies. It's the same as the huge body of evidence against Anthropic Global Warming. Paid by the Oil and Gaz inustry. Or the existence of WMD in Irak. Paid by the CIA. This has become a number one specialty of the big american politico economic system. Don't you think that those arguments are a bit tiresome and fucking immoral.
Sorry but I somewhat lost my temper in reading this neverending defense of the worst healthcare system in the world (oh, sorry, not the worst, still better than Lesotho).

Posted by: Brownian | October 26, 2007 4:01 PM

The only pipe dream or utopian fantasy is the one where people think that a state monpoly, which they are forced to give money to, will do right by them.

It is not a utopian pipe dream to say that its better to let consumers CHOOSE how they spend their money. All their money.

So in lieu of any evidence for observations or mechanisms, we're supposed to be compelled by unsupported assertions and the occasional capitalised word?

Yes, O High Priest, I hear and obey....

Posted by: thalarctos | October 26, 2007 4:04 PM

The issue is how we should organize our health care system.

Yes. I am asking you to demonstrate if there is anything more to your proposal for organization of the health-care system than simply the local minimum which the arbitrary nature of your criteria for rationing care makes it appear to be.

Posted by: Tulse | October 26, 2007 4:10 PM

I typically find that most of the people who argue adamantly against universal healthcare have never lived in a country where such a system exists.

The US system is insane. Only someone in the grip of an ideology could argue otherwise.

Posted by: Matthew Dean | October 26, 2007 4:18 PM

syntyche
I typically find that most of the people who argue adamantly against universal healthcare have never lived in a country where such a system exists. Prove me wrong, Matthew Dean?

Uh, I am arguing for universal healthcare - in a voucher-based system.

Posted by: Kseniya | October 26, 2007 4:22 PM

Regarding the admittedly fine quality of health care available here in the USA, let's not confuse that quality with the fairness or efficiency of the health-care access and financing systems.

Posted by: Jason | October 26, 2007 4:25 PM

Tulse,

In part, yes. Looking at Canada, we have very similar lifestyle issues (obesity, smoking, etc.) at the US does, but on almost all meaningful health stats, Canadians are healthier than Americans, while spending about half as much per capita on health care.

You cannot assume that other differences between Canada and the U.S. are not responsible for their differences in IMR and average life expectancy simply because the countries are broadly "similar" in certain respects. Even a small difference in the rates of smoking, or the amount of exercise their citizens get, or education levels, or some other environmental, cultural or socioeconomic characteristic could entirely account for the differences in IMR and average life expectancy. In order to attribute differences in aggregate health indicators to differences in health care systems, you would need to control, at least roughly, for all those other factors.

The fact that industrialized nations with some form of universal health care all have better health outcomes than the richest nation on the planet.

But this is just factually incorrect, if by "health outcomes" you mean something like "health indicators that are attributable to the nation's health care system." Again, there is a huge constellation of environmental, cultural and socioeconomic factors that contribute to the aggregate health and longevity of national populations. Everything from the rate of smoking, to the climate, to air pollution levels, to stress. These factors vary significantly between different countries. There is abundant evidence that the effects of a nation's health care system on the health of its population is swamped by these other factors.

Are you saying that access to adequate health care has no impact on health statistics?

No, I'm saying that health care has only a small impact on health statistics. You need to describe at least roughly what you mean by "adequate" health care before a clear sense can be given to your question.

Posted by: negentropyeater | October 26, 2007 4:29 PM

"The US system is insane."

when I moved to the US from France, what surprised me was not the insanity of the US system (my company had warned me already, and as an Expatriate, I was lucky to get full coverage for which my employer was paying an astronomical amount).
No, what surprised me the most is how tenacious Americans were in defending their system. Americans have this thing of believing that they are the greatest nation on earth for EVERYTHING. I don't know if it is in the food, but it is impossible for Americans that have not lived abroad to even imagine that on some issues of human developement they are far from being a model for the world.
As Frenchman, I'd been forced to swallow my pride. Afterall, we too believed not long ago that we were comming straight out of Jupiter's thigh. Now, we've realised that we are just a mid size power, that our language is hardly spoken anywhere, and that even our wines are terribly overpriced.