« 100 Greatest Trips | Main | The Capitalist Vanishes »
The Paradox of Libertarianism
Here is my response to Brian Doherty's CatoUnbound essay, and here is opening bit:
Brian Doherty asks: "Did this libertarian movement . . . actually accomplish anything of unquestionable significance?"
Yes: Bigger government.
Or try this:
The old formulas were “big government was bad” and “liberty is good,” but these are not exactly equal in their implications. The second motto — “liberty is good” — is the more important. And the older story of “big government crushes liberty” is being superseded by “advances in liberty bring bigger government.”
Libertarians aren’t used to reacting to that second story, because it goes against the “liberty vs. power” paradigm burned into our brains. That’s why libertarianism is in an intellectual crisis today.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 12, 2007 at 07:17 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
The desire to change with the times, to challenge assumptions in the light of new evidence, is understandable. We should be careful to avoid, though, progressivism for its own sake (or at the very least be self-aware enough to admit that we are doing so.) In many ways increases in wealth have given us more liberty, which has corresponded with an increase in the size of government; but as a good scientist knows, correlation does not imply causation and little in your article pointed to any causative mechanism in which an increase in government has led to increased wealth. If the contention is that we have become freer in part *because* of the increases in government, this is certainly a very questionable claim and requires and deserves more detailed exposition. If the argument is, on the contrary, that liberty has increased *despite* increases in government size in certain spheres of life, many will agree with your assessment and share your optimism without losing focus on the remaining areas where interventionism is positively destructive (war on drugs, universal health care, etc).
Apart from this argument, there is the seperate, very challenging argument about public goods and society's ever dependence on government to supply various public goods, perceived or otherwise. There remain serious questions as to what extent this relationship is "addictive" or whether it is a pure public good that cooperative or local solutions cannot tackle (through prevention, local quarantines, etc); or of course whether it is some combination of the two. Few serious modern libertarians would brush off such concerns or problems dismissively, but historically the classical liberal seeks cooperative solutions over the coercive and interventionist, for a whole host of practical reasons. Your challenge is important insofar as your elucidation no doubt reflects an emerging strain of thought, but as you almost conceded, such a hodge podge solution is inherently "progressive", with a very real chance of degenerating due to its lack of clear foundation or principle. So today's "prudent judgment" transforms into all out progressiveness, bound by a very sophisticated sense of taxable capacity. Whatever this new view is, it is more an "enlightened progressivism" than traditional liberalism.
And this is the reason "principled" libertarians will cringe at your vague compromise. Your provacative essay attempts to shift the traditional focus of the libertarian, from the cooperative, spontaneous solution. We can forgive the stateman for such a pragmatic compromise, but the armchair economist has no excuse.
Posted by: John Goes at Mar 12, 2007 9:23:00 AM
Or we have all the libertarians who appear to want to get rid of
tenure in academia. Thus they want to weaken academic freedom
and free speech. We have this strong bent within libertarianism
that supports an "all power to the CEOs" worldview, a worldview
that begins to resemble a sort of fascism of its own, a militarized
and authoritarian society in which all must bow down and genuflect
before the new leaders, the Ayn Randian egomaniacs, who demand
unwavering allegiance and unlimited power over their fellow human
beings.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 12, 2007 9:44:41 AM
Wow, if Bigger government and liberty were proportional, we would live in the freest place on earth here in Europe Oo Or you define government different from my take on it :)
Posted by: Max at Mar 12, 2007 10:10:40 AM
My vision for classical liberalism consists of a few points:
A deep belief in human liberty, but seeing positive liberty (“what can I do with my life?”) as more important than negative liberty (“how many regulations are imposed on me?”)
This is exactly the line of thought that turned the liberal movement into the social democratic movement.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Mar 12, 2007 10:12:17 AM
I mischaracterized the argument a bit in my original comment. Professor Cowen didn't say that big government led to increased liberty, but that increased liberty led to big government. The judgment is the same. If the increased government were caused by increased liberty, this claim must rest on something besides correlation to escape being merely "dialectical."
Incidentally, though the term liberal has long ago been ceded by libertarians to progressives, this is the first attempt I know of to wrest away "classical liberal" away.
Posted by: John Goes at Mar 12, 2007 10:59:32 AM
Good stuff Tyler. You are in fact a modern day liberal!
This dovetails nicely into my own paradox for libertarianism which is how do you go about enforcing your normative philosophical beliefs regarding liberty on the (vast?) majority of people that simply disagree?
You mention that this embodies itself in criticism of everyone else as stupid, etc., and I think that is a major problem with libertarianism.
Posted by: theCoach at Mar 12, 2007 11:37:36 AM
Splendid article, Tyler. This is precisely the intellectual direction classical liberalism ought to go. And I loved your russian roulette analogy! Brilliant.
Posted by: Rice Grad Student at Mar 12, 2007 11:43:43 AM
Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will
demand.
What examples of this can you cite?
If deregulation leads to productivity and wealth, citizens may tolerate more redistributive measures. But all government programs tend to just grow and grow. When have Americans said, "I like how that worked" and demanded more government?
We need to recognize that some of the current threats to liberty are outside of the old categories.
OK, worst case bird flu and global warming scenarios may prove difficult for libertarians to solve. They imply high externalities where property rights may be hard to define.
But how in the age of Bush/Cheney can anyone suggest that "liberty vs. power" is irrelevant? When libertarians decry the imperial presidency, the denial of habeas corpus, torture, and warrantless wiretaps, are they "scar[ing] peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty"?
Posted by: John Kunze at Mar 12, 2007 12:16:17 PM
But how in the age of Bush/Cheney can anyone suggest that "liberty vs. power" is irrelevant? When libertarians decry the imperial presidency, the denial of habeas corpus, torture, and warrantless wiretaps, are they "scar[ing] peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty"?
Exactly. Which is why this liberal (in the contemporary sense of the word) has moved in precisely the opposite direction as Mr. Cohen. Looks like he and I may soon be meeting in the middle ideologically, so to speak.
Posted by: LarryM at Mar 12, 2007 12:47:48 PM
ti is unlikely someone as ill-equipped for the Presidency as Bush/Cheney can win again. Their record will server as a serious warning on its own. Additionally, the 2000 election was, at best, barely won by Bush, after an such an extended period of decent governance that most people assumed this stuff was easy. Then 9-11 happened giving Bush an enormous shift up in the polls that got him re-elected despite the nearly continuous slide back down to his natural approval of about 29%.
If that kind of guy has a chance it is feasible that, with some luck, a Libertarian might get some traction.
Posted by: theCoach at Mar 12, 2007 1:57:17 PM
(from the essay): In short, I would like to restructure classical liberalism, or libertarianism — whatever we call it — around these new and very serious threats to liberty. Let’s not fight the last battle or the last war. Let’s not obsess over all the interventions represented by the New Deal, even though I would agree that most of those policies were bad ideas.
Yes, we should move on, and yes, the future brings greater threats to our liberty than the past. But what about all those bad old laws/programs/ideas (e.g. Social Security)? Don't they continue to cause problems in society?
Is the thinking such that if we focus on emerging issues, we can demonstrate how correct we are, and then society will entrust us to handle legacy issues? I guess this could be more effective than imagining fantasy scenarios where Social Security and its ilk never existed...
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Mar 12, 2007 2:03:06 PM
Christopher,
By most measures Social Security is an extremely successful program, and it remains very popular and has no problems in the forseeable future.
Posted by: theCoach at Mar 12, 2007 2:57:38 PM
The problem for libertarians is that they are thinking in the long-term while everyone else is thinking in the short. While everyone screams, "The Government Must Do Something!" the libertarians scream "The Government Must Not Do Anything, except for these narrowly defined areas where the government is the best solution."
When the government grows to "ensure" a particular liberty, it wields that "liberty" as a club. Affirmative action, regional milk-prices, farm subsidies, Social Security, Welfare, Medicare, the Drug War, the War on Terror: All these things, good in the short term, but in the long term they are all used to control the lives and livelyhoods of the citizens, remove their choices, and hinder their liberty.
Posted by: Xmas at Mar 12, 2007 3:24:06 PM
Thanks for the bit about positive and negative liberty. I never really understood what was the passion behind libertarianism before you clarified that.... I remember an exchange with a libertararian expressing his opposition to liberalism/socialism/communism that boiled down to anger at the township refusing to allow him to build the kind of shed he wanted in his back yard.
I now see where that rage leads to. This explains why the big source of outrage in the libertarian community over the last years has been eminent demain while torture and loss of habeas corpus has been going on.
Posted by: Robb Lutton at Mar 12, 2007 3:40:16 PM
"This dovetails nicely into my own paradox for libertarianism which is how do you go about enforcing your normative philosophical beliefs regarding liberty on the (vast?) majority of people that simply disagree?"
Market Anarchists don't want to, and see that as the biggest problem of minarchist libertarians.
Posted by: Francois Tremblay at Mar 12, 2007 4:32:03 PM
Negative liberty can be easily understood with slippery slope arguments. First they won't let you build a certain kind of shed in your yard; next thing you know they'll confiscate your property and sell it to a condo developer. As a libertarian, I can see why this type of reasoning appeals to me. It's very straightforward and is like a simple logical "if-then" statement. If you let them take this, then they'll take that. It's very easy to draw anything out to its logical conclusion along a libertarian/statist axis. Things either end up in one camp or the other.
Positive liberty doesn't have that comfortable logic. You can't look at something like the increase in entertainment options or the increase in disposable income and extrapolate that to some sort of logical conclusion about liberty.
To put it another way, negative liberty allows for deductive reasoning...you can take a bunch of indicators and funnel them into a concrete logical conclusion. I think this appeals to those with scientific, numbers-based minds (a disproportionate number of libertarians seem to fall in to this category). However, positive liberty requires inductive reasoning. You have some phenomenon (e.g. greater disposable income) and you have to think through the potential implications, including any implications with respect to liberty. This type of reasoning doesn't come as naturally to many of those who self-identify as libertarians.
Posted by: Christopher Monnier at Mar 12, 2007 4:36:37 PM
This article reveals Tyler's true self. Not a libertarian, nor a classic liberal, Tyler is a modern liberal.
Posted by: Kevin Nowell at Mar 12, 2007 8:21:48 PM
I think that Margaret Thatcher inadvertantly channelled that socialist Geoge Orwell when she said, "There's no such thing as Society." One critique of Cowen's position would begin with an analogous Orwellian examination/rejection of another collective abstract: "There is no such thing as Government."
Posted by: TStockmann at Mar 13, 2007 12:07:50 AM
I couldn't disagree more with the love for positive rights. To me positive rights is antithetical to libertarianism and a perfect spring board for liberal (in the current sense) intrusions into our lives. I believe Prof. Machan has the right view one this distinction (http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2993) and Prof. Cowen is horribly mistaken.
Posted by: R. S. Porter at Mar 13, 2007 3:54:59 AM
An appreciation for positive liberty as an outcome of decentralized, voluntary processes of trade and affilliation is no threat to a free society; arguably, it is the strongest selling point for a free society.
But an attachment to ever-increasing positive liberty as a right, to be guaranteed collectively and through the power of the government, is a danger to negative liberty, economic progress, and individual dgnity. It basically amounts to guaranteeing to each person a growing set of economic goods unconnected to any effort that person makes or value he or she provides to his fellow man, hence severing outcomes from personal responsibility. Those guarantees also imply reciprocal obligations on others to provide such goods, and if those are enforced by government they represent serious and deep restrictions on providers' freedom.
If you want to live in a society of free citizens, enterprising project-pursuers, responsible parents, and deep thinkers, then it is necessary to resist the enmeshing of everyone in a web of political/bureaucratic regulations, obligations, and entiltlements. In the long run, you'll also end up with higher positive liberty.
Posted by: srp at Mar 13, 2007 7:31:49 PM
Why are libertarians more concerned with eminent domain than whatever the CIA is up to? Patri Friedman explains it very well here.
Posted by: TGGP at Mar 13, 2007 9:07:20 PM
Patri Friedman's argument is interesting, because it distinguishes between utility maximization and the idea of fundamental rules of good and evil. He's saying that raising taxes 10% in the US does more net harm that swiping a few hundred people off the streets of foreign cities and torturing them to death, because that 10% tax rise slows economic growth and makes us and everyone in the future poorer.
Now, I think you might argue this in terms of the long-term effects of these policies. Secret prisons and torture and giving the president the power to Jose Padilla anyone he likes into indefinite confinement all have some potential to expand into widespread abuse, and massive surveilance turned on the American people has the potential to seriously undermine our system of government.
But my revusion about the torture, no-trial detention, and secret prisons isn't about numbers and slippery slopes so much. It's about some things just being evil, like sacrificing babies to Baal or keeping slaves. I've seen this outrage from a lot of other libertarians--check out the comments from Harry Browne on the War on Terror before he died, for an example.
As an aside, I think the eminent domain issues would fall into Patri's category of civil rights issues. Hardly any of us will have our homes taken so that some upstanding local businessman who supplies the city council with suitcases full of money will get to put up a TIF-funded strip mall.
Posted by: albatross at Mar 14, 2007 3:06:34 PM
liqingchao 07年8月14日
google排名
google排名
wow gold
wow gold
powerleveling
powerleveling
wow gold
wow gold
powerleveling
powerleveling
wow powerleveling
wow powerleveling
wow power leveling
wow power leveling
wow power level
wow power level
world of warcraft powerleveling
world of warcraft powerleveling
world of warcraft power leveling
world of warcraft power leveling
china tour
china tour
hongkong hotel
hongkong hotel
beijing tour
beijing tour
翻译公司
翻译公司
上海翻译公司
上海翻译公司
北京翻译公司
北京翻译公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
鼓风机
风机
风机
货架
光盘刻录
光盘刻录
光盘制作
光盘制作
光盘印刷
光盘印刷
红外测温仪
红外测温仪
超声波测厚仪
超声波测厚仪
超声波探伤仪
超声波探伤仪
频闪仪
频闪仪
涂层测厚仪
涂层测厚仪
电火花检测仪
电火花检测仪
google排名
仓库
仓库
仓库出租
仓库出租
物流园区
物流园区
集团电话
集团电话
四环素牙
口腔常识
口腔常识
口腔医生
口腔医生
网站设计
网站设计
多媒体
监控
监控
监控系统
监控系统
门禁
门禁
门禁系统
门禁系统
搬家公司
搬家公司
条码打印机
条码打印机
牙周炎
牙周炎
牙周炎
多媒体
world of warcraft power leveling
四环素牙
wow power leveling
SFP
SFP
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
北京搬家公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
翻译公司
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
wow gold
Posted by: wslmwps at Aug 15, 2007 3:34:16 AM
大家好，我是臺灣人，從臺灣一個人搬家來到美國，環境很陌生，感覺很孤單。以前在臺灣幾家知名的徵信社工作過，我是一個優秀的徵信工作者，希望早點找到適合自己的工作。希望通過貴站，認識更多的朋友。
Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 2, 2008 2:05:51 AM
資金を増やそうとするのに不動産投資をするのが手っ取り早い。日本で不動産で東京 賃貸をさがすのはきわめて難しくシステム開発は日本の会社が良い。
Posted by: 不動産投資 at Jul 19, 2008 1:04:11 AM
