Let’s put it this way: if a world dictator imposed a system like today’s Somalia or Thirty-Years-War Europe on us, where the other option was US military dominance, that would be an immoral act.

If Mayor Balko decided to reduce taxes to fund the city police force to zero and rely on community action or voluntary blah blah, the resulting anarchy and violence would be both criminal and immoral.

It’s an immoral act to allow a society to predictably descend into violence. Extracting taxes from people to fund militaries and police forces qualifies (in the grand scheme of things) as a moral act, and I would guess that only a very small sliver of educated people over age 25 – including certain libertarians and militia types – disagrees.

You’re kidding, right? Armies? Taking money from citizens at gunpoint to pay men to kill other men is one of the “most positive moral institutions ever invented by man”?

You could make an argument that they’re necessary. But hardly moral. And if you read this site regularly, police forces and judicial systems aren’t doing so well either. Again, perhaps necessary. But not moral. And certainly not among the “most positive moral institutions ever invented by man.”

Private institutions, on the other hand, are voluntary. You don’t have to associate with them if you don’t want to (with the exception of some public goods issues, such as the environment — but then, government is a far bigger polluter than private industry). You don’t have that option with state agencies. Yes, some private companies have done some terrible things over the years. But they only have coercive power if it’s given to them by a government.

It would be, except that the actual arguments made by libertarians contain virtually no pro-government arguments. I suppose you think you’re the lone voices in a world gone mad with pro-government euphoria, but that you basically never offer any frank assessments of where markets get it wrong and collective action is required. You expect everyone else to respect the no-doubt moderate position you hold in your head, but seriously, why aren’t you *in actuality* exactly like the strawman you put forward? What is it that the educated layman (policy maker, academic, voter) is actually hearing from libertarians?

Where is this libertarian commentary that makes corrective assessments of actual capitalist outcomes – rather than apology after apology, “oh it just wasn’t done right” kind of crap. The defensive assessments of the capital market meltdowns remind me of communists “50 years of Mao and Stalin just wasn’t a fair test”.

Could it be that the external effects capital markets made them weird and special like insurance? No no it’s because deregulation wasn’t quite right and Fannie Mae getting black people in houses and blah blah blah.

I love how coercion to coordinate and solve collective action problems becomes “immoral” to libertarians – that’s the icing on the cake, the full-monty demonization. Not only is it inefficient, but it wants to eat your children! While the actual bad outcomes (I mean fraud and manipulation and death) produced by capitalism are just the cost of doing business. Gotta break some eggs and all that, right?

Modern liberal democratic police forces, healthcare systems, armies, judicial systems, etc to be some of the most positive moral institutions ever invented by man. They make taxation at gunpoint (to put it in libertarian terms) one of the best ideas anyone ever thought of. Those institutions that run on profit run the gamut from immoral to praiseworthy but they do not deserve any more respect than a tool that works well under certain circumstances (same goes for government or nonprofit or community organization or whatever).

Richard Posner has a new book on the subject, called _A Failure of Capitalism_.

BTW, let me reiterate, I am not an anarchist. I don’t hold that any government is immoral, just that proper government is an exercise in minimalism – the least government possible to defend individuals’ from nonconsensual direct harm to their persons and property. If I were arguing for no government, then I wouldn’t be arguing that it is obligated to do anything.

Surely there are other nations with other governments (or non-governments) that are more appealing.

Please name a place where the government is substantially less coercive. And, that’s not to be snotty; I’d be happy to find out that there was a place with a government whose footprint didn’t extend beyond dealing with individuals doing direct, nonconsensual harm to someone else’s person or property (or posing clear and immediate threat of same). I haven’t heard of one.

I’m not an anarchist (though I don’t confuse lack of government with lack of order), but I would also be curious if there were a habitable area with no government. I haven’t heard of that, either.

Meanwhile, we are right back at the point: Whether you agree with him or not, Hasnas thinking that his libertarian views are consistently right and his opponents are consistently wrong is simply not the same as his thinking that the libertarian approach leads to a world without flaws. I assume that Hasnas subscribes to the view that a perfect world (without inequity or suffering or fraud or whatever else) isn’t an option and that libertarian political philosophy doesn’t offer an exception to that reality.

…

Steve C:

I fail to see how this is anything but “capitalism is perfect”, in effect. When something needs to be done – especially in situations that require coordinated action – there is either the tax-funded coercive entity or the profit-driven entity. Or charity, I guess. Or sitting around.

(As an aside, that is a bit circular. If one starts out accepting the premise that “coordinated action” is “required”, then that directly implies coercion, unless everyone is voluntarily marching in lockstep.)

Anyway, the libertarian position that non-coerced approaches are superior is still not equivalent to “capitalism is perfect” because there simply is no libertarian presumption that the superior solution will satisfy everyone (or be “perfect” however one chooses to define it).

I’m not sure why this is so hard to get across. Look at it this way, if I were to say that all of the pro-regulation people think that a government-regulated market is perfect / without flaws / heaven on Earth, then you could rightly say that I was wrong because the pro-regulation crowd must (presumably) understand that there will still be some problems with whatever regulatory scheme is imposed. Even if they think it is better than a free market approach, I doubt they would say it was flawless. So, someone arguing “you statists think that government is perfect” would be fronting a strawman.

Stating that libertarians think the free market is flawless a strawman of the same sort.

If our government action is so fundamentally immoral, why are you still living here? Aren’t you, as an individual, capable of innovating a solution to your problem? Surely there are other nations with other governments (or non-governments) that are more appealing.

#30 | Sam | June 25th, 2009 at 10:36 am

Out of curiosity, is there anything at all that troubles you guys about capitalism? Is there any aspect of it that concerns you, or is it as perfect to you as Heaven is to the Christian? One of the reasons that some people – not you guys – have a problem with libertarianism in general is its adherents refusal to acknowledge that capitalism, as with all other ideas, isn’t perfect. That might be the reason that Hasnas is having a hard time. He lacks the ability, apparently, to criticize anything other than everybody else.

To add to freedomfan in #34 and to restate Cynical in #33: regardless of the fact that capitalism isn’t perfect, government action in the market is fundamentally immoral on top of being generally futile or even harmful.

Markets would still collapse, but — as it has been stated here or on Radleys post at Reason — businesses will have to get better or die. Does this mean everybody survives or thrives? Sadly, no. But it is necessary in order to force people to be innovative. The universal need for shelter and food on the table is quite a motivator.

Call us heartless if you want, but incentive is the name of the game. Without it, we will snuff ourselves out.

I fail to see how this is anything but “capitalism is perfect”, in effect. When something needs to be done – especially in situations that require coordinated action – there is either the tax-funded coercive entity or the profit-driven entity. Or charity, I guess. Or sitting around.

Where in Hasnas’s writing do you see any indication of doubt? He writes that he is always correct, and that everybody else is always wrong, and he whines about how difficult it is to live in that world. He makes no indication that his political/economic opinions have ever been wrong, and he makes it quite clear that he believes his ideological opponents to have always been wrong. So you’ll excuse me if I won’t personally accept the charge that I’m introducing polarity into this conversation. And of course, you’re the one who introduces the term “statists” which, I’m going to guess, is your term for anybody who supports any kind of government model.

We can argue within polarized confines (statistics versus anarchists) although that’s a conversation that’s going nowhere, a position that I think we both agree on.

Out of curiosity, is there anything at all that troubles you guys about capitalism? Is there any aspect of it that concerns you, or is it as perfect to you as Heaven is to the Christian? One of the reasons that some people – not you guys – have a problem with libertarianism in general is its adherents refusal to acknowledge that capitalism, as with all other ideas, isn’t perfect.

Out of curiosity, where in Hasnas’ piece or in this thread do you find hear anyone claiming that capitalism is perfect? “Capitalism is perfect” is not the libertarian position. The libertarian position is not that the free market is without flaws, it’s that government almost always does a poor job of fixing them, often making things worse overall.

This “you guys religiously believe that capitalism is perfect” meme of statists is such an obviously glib strawman that I wonder how it persists. I can only think that it is yet another example of the bipolar fallacy that opinions only exist at the extremes and being against one view means that one must hold to the extreme opposite view. Since libertarians favor free markets over government intervention, the bipolar fallacy insists not just that libertarians think free markets are superior to the state intervention (which is basically the thinking), but that libertarians somehow think the free market is actually totally without problems (which is not at all the thinking). Total nonsense.

It’s not about regulation. It’s about who is doing the regulating and how it is done.

To force or not to force, that is the question.

When was the last time a libertarian said “You know what? We were wrong about markets in this case. There are important flaws that, even if the government option is a blunt tool and less optimal than some model we can entertain in conversation, those are models and this is the real world. So let’s accept reality, and some inefficiency, and do what works – what we see works now, that some states/countries like ours are doing.”. I’m pretty sure you can’t be a libertarian and have this kind of practical mentality at the same time.

Perhaps I am a blind ideologue, but I have a hard time looking at the problems in the mortgage and banking industry and then ignoring the fact that government policies were designed to encourage lending to people with insufficient ability to repay the loans. Whether or not CRA and similar policies were ever a large fraction of mortgages, they contributed to housing inflation and, in turn, fueled speculative practices such as interest-only loans and the widespread perception that there was no way to lose in the housing market.

I guess it’s tough for me to see that the two biggest players in that market were government-sponsored enterprises and ignore the instability brought to the market by the implicit (then, now explicit) understanding that following their lead was okay because the government would back whatever they did.

It’s hard for me to ignore that cheap money policies at the Fed contributed to the bubble and it’s equally hard for me to look at the deliberate pumping of more money into that market and not see it as an attempt to keep that bubble inflated. I guess my notion of the government (and, yeah, that includes the Fed) “doing what works” differs from others’. I will admit to laughing hysterically at the non-ironic use of “bubble boys” to describe those not in favor of bubble-producing and bubble-sustaining government policies.

It’s hard for me to look at the government regulations imposed to prevent any further meltdowns (imposed when the meltdown was at the top of the news and during the heat of a presidential election) and not put them in the context of all the regulations that came before – also nominally intending to prevent such meltdowns – and not shake my head. My ability to “accept” the utterly unproven “reality” of “what works” is insufficient to the task.

Further, it’s hard for me to look at a the impact of regulations intended to inspire “confidence” in the market by getting people to believe that the government is monitoring it and making it safe and not worry that, by decreasing people’s sense of caution, the government isn’t encouraging more risky behavior. For instance, it’s hard for me to not to wonder if those buying securitized instruments wouldn’t have pushed for more transparency about the value of insured assets (and the liquidity of the insurers) if there weren’t an underlying assumption that the government was somehow taking care of it all and there was no need for better independent analysis.

Even if I were glib enough to blame the whole problem on “corporate greed” and ignore the incentives put in place by government interference in the market to achieve political goals and contribute to false confidence, I would have a hard time thinking, “Well, at least now government has stepped in and eliminated corporate greed.” It would be hard for me to understand how the biggest players with the most to directly gain or lose by government regulations won’t have the most influence on determining regulations and won’t use that influence for rent-seeking and fiat advantage over less influential competition. I guess I don’t have that kind of “practical mentality”.

Even if I were naive enough to believe that well-meaning bureaucrats were smart enough to understand the market’s complexities and would guide it with their benevolent wisdom if they were uninfluenced by political pressures, it would be hard not to look at how quickly political populism imposed itself onto that scene (scandals over CEO bonuses, corporate jets, etc.) and pretend to believe that political pressure won’t determine regulations.

In short, what is difficult to do is to be a libertarian and at the same time look at a disaster in one of the most regulated businesses around and conclude, “Too little government.”

Yeah, “kind of” what hasnas said. Except not at all. Except his and your vague assertions about government entities and programs implicated in the housing bubble are impotent to explain either the housing bubble or the credit crunch. I mean, good lord man. Educate yourself. There is an explanation. Yours is both incorrect, and nonsensical. Its essentially “fannie and freddie did what everyone else did, and they are preosterous government entitities, and babble = explanation.” Volleying cliches gleaned from reactionary morons doesn’t help anybody. ACORN? seriously? Ya get that juicy nugget from Rush, or you make it up on your own?

Also, by all means, commence dinging my post for not walking in lockstep.