Welcome friends!
I know I’ve commented upon the hopelessly confused and unhelpful doctrine of “libertarianism” a number of times now but I recently saw another article in the paper touching on that unfortunate ideology so I thought that might be a good excuse to spend a few more minutes on the issue. Not the sort of thing I want to do very often mind you. Once in a blue moon seems more than sufficient. But good to cover all the bases every once in a while.
The article in question involved a young American man going by the name John Galton, which is apparently also the name of a character in some old Ayn Rand novel. You remember Ayn Rand don’t you? The anti-social novelist, folk philosopher, and enabler and cheerleader of the egocentric and self obsessed? Darling of conservative Republican politicians such as Rand Paul from the great state of Kentucky? Yes, Mr. Paul once said he was so enthralled by Ms. Rand’s writings as a young man they were the main reason he got into politics in the first place. More recently he was in the papers walking that back as they say. Of course, Republican politicians are famously dishonest so who knows what his story may be next week. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. He’s not the only one by any means. But to return to our story, it seems Mr. Galton (the real one; not the fictitious one) had recently fled drug charges here in the USA along with his girlfriend to set up house in Acapulco, Mexico and was shortly thereafter shot and killed by what one can only presume were members of some rival Mexican drug operation. According to the article, Mr. Galton envisioned himself as a sort of prophet of entrepreneurship freed from the constraints of the nation-state. He opined in an interview taxation was theft and bristled at the notion of obeying the law. As far as the nature of his entrepreneurial business activities, he apparently ran what the papers described as a “marijuana laboratory.” However, he also taught classes on “cryptocurrencies,” which I read somewhere is the preferred means of exchange among such people. He noted in an interview “he had always had libertarian leanings” but got excited about anarchism per se while in prison, which suggests he at least had some sort of distinction in his mind between the two philosophies although what it may have been is anyone’s guess as I’ll discuss a little later. His girlfriend on the other hand was described in the article as having been raised by anti-government “hippie” parents ironically dependent on food stamps. She became interested in politics while in college but realized politics “weren’t changing anything,” so she dropped out and took up with Mr. Galton. Young people are funny that way, aren’t they? I wonder what her timeline for politics to change things was anyway? Sometime between the summer and fall semesters? After the beach weekend but before the big campus beer bash? Some of us have been trying to change things for decades and still haven’t given up. Anyway, that was the whole story really. Not all that unique if you think about it. Basically some people wanted to live outside the law and got their wish but ended up being what law-abiding citizens would call murdered by criminals. Happens all the time. But I suppose these people talked it up a bit more than usual, so maybe that’s why it’s a little more interesting than when a local teen from the wrong side of the tracks joins a drug gang and ends up getting shot behind the old liquor store or something like that.
So let me just deliver my customary commentary on this so-called “libertarianism.” It seems to me there are two forms of libertarianism or maybe three if one wants to count the indistinct region between the two separately. First, we have the libertarianism that is really just plain old economic conservatism just not explained very well. Economic conservatism of course is the notion that government should only do certain things, address certain functions, and if it does those things and those things only then everyone and everything will be just fine. These functions turn out to be the things that benefit people who make out well under our current version of a market system, so things like property rights, law enforcement, national defense, and maybe a few other things. The idea comes from either the conviction our existing distributional system is ideal and any potential departure immoral or the notion that all manner of unfortunate unintended consequences will occur if anyone tampers with our existing system so even though it may have a few flaws we need to maintain it as though our lives depended upon it. It’s fine as far as it goes. I consider it hopelessly simplistic and indeed ignorant in the sense that it is sometimes presented as following from or implied by economic theory, which if one looks into it is not the case at all. (Check out my tab on Economics with Hansel if you’re interested in how that happens.) But that’s not my issue here today. If you’re an out and proud conservative you’re ahead of the game as far as my thesis in this post goes. No, what I’m interested in here is what happens when people who don’t really understand the basis of economic conservatism take the extra step of proclaiming themselves “libertarians.”
One thing that tends to happen when people start talking in terms of libertarianism rather than conservatism is they begin to have difficulty perceiving the nature of distributional issues, that is, in the issue of how to resolve conflicts of desires between different people. The way a sensible person looks at such things is to say if two people have conflicting wants or needs or desires then we need some way to resolve that conflict so we make laws that govern distributions: property rights, market institutions, etc. If someone comes along and points out what he or she feels are ethical issues then of course we’re certainly willing to entertain their ideas and potentially revise the rules. What happens when so-called libertarians look at these issues is that they are so thoroughly committed or convinced of the rectitude of existing distributional arrangements they see the issue as whether whoever currently has the legal right to do something should have the “liberty” to carry on or whether some scoundrel will interfere with their liberty to do so. For example if we imagine a little two person world where let’s say we distribute all resources by who is shorter and the taller of the two consequently kicks the bucket from want most of us would sit down and say maybe we need to rethink that particular distributional system. We wouldn’t think of it in terms of liberty per se. When a libertarian looks at this issue he or she will think something like look we’ve already decided the shorter person gets all the resources so the only thing left to talk about is whether the shorter person will have the liberty to use those resources as he or she feels fit or whether the taller person or his or her agents will be able to unfairly interfere with the short person’s liberty. Basically it does something akin to assuming the conclusion of the discussion we’re meant to be having. In other words, this form of libertarianism is intellectually empty. It doesn’t actually add anything to the conversation. It just passes issues along. The justification for the underlying distribution assumed as a given within the libertarian system isn’t being derived within libertarianism. The justification has nothing to do with liberty in the abstract. They don’t present arguments showing we would have more total liberty if one person got the resources than if the other person got those resources. To discuss the underlying distributional issues sensibly you’d have to ignore the “libertarian” red herring entirely and move on to the conventionally conservative element, that is, what’s so great about the distributional mechanism we have right now anyway? Why is the claim of one person for whatever it is ethically stronger than the other fellow’s? How do markets really distribute goods and services and does it really correspond to what we consider ethical?
Where libertarianism as confused conservatism begins to devolve into anarchism is when libertarians sidestep not only the moral issues involved in addressing and resolving distributional issues but also the role of government power in enforcing those arrangements. In some ways this might again be thought of as a confused or not very well explained form of conservatism. Conservatives after all are famous for saying things like they want to “minimize government” despite the fact they want government to fulfill certain important functions they find important such as enforcing property rights. It’s an inherently confusing way of talking. What they should say is they feel government should be restricted to those functions they support. Because when one says minimize of course there’s no real reason we can’t minimize government entirely and create anarchy. Indeed, the essential difference in this context between conventional conservatives and libertarians is that conservatives recognize when they talk about “minimizing” government they’re simply talking rhetorically and what they really mean is minimize to the extent consistent with government fulfilling the functions they want it to fulfill. And those aren’t small or minor functions by any measure. Having government power enforcing property rights implies government involvement of a sort in every transaction and of course the entire mechanism of enforcing those relationships: police, judicial systems, prisons, etc. With libertarianism these important government functions recede so far into the background and become so invisible and taken for granted and unrecognized and so immune to discussion that many libertarians lose sight of them altogether and start talking about really minimizing government to the greatest extent possible, that is, eliminating it. In other words they become indistinguishable from anarchists. Why don’t conservatives express the notion of “minimizing government” differently to avoid the sort of confusion that leads to the sort of libertarianism that equates to anarchism? Probably because everyone thinks government should be “minimized” to those functions they think are important. Liberals and leftists think that every bit as much as conservatives. It’s not really a distinctive position. All the substance, the contentious bit, is a step back from that and involves what those functions are and why one thinks or doesn’t think government has a role. The whole libertarian canard appears most likely the result of a rhetorical ploy meant to exaggerate the differences between conservatives and liberals, avoid discussing the real issues, and avoid drawing attention to the role of government power in the conservative view of the ideal society. Libertarianism is basically the unholy offspring of the unfortunate underhanded way some conservatives choose to disguise and defend their values.
And what’s the inevitable and entirely predictable result of some conservatives’ inability to talk straight and possibly even to think straight about distributional issues and the resulting bit of confusion known as libertarianism? We get people like the recently deceased John Galton: conservatives who become attracted to “libertarian” claptrap and from there are drawn inexorably into the anti-social pie-in-the-sky nonsense of anarchism formerly associated mainly with the most unrealistic and utopian of what in the past anyway was conventionally considered leftist hippiedom. Sad to think how much harm mainstream conservatives are willing to inflict on other people rather than do what liberals and leftists have always done: argue honestly and transparently for their values.
References
An American ‘crypto-anarchist’ fled the country. He was just killed in Mexico’s ‘Murder Capital.’ Isaac Stanley-Becker. The Washington Post. February 4, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/04/an-american-crypto-anarchist-fled-country-he-was-just-killed-mexicos-murder-capital/?utm_term=.0fa91cdafd3a.
