Refuting the "Libertarian Dem"

Libertarianism has been gaining a lot of steam in recent years, primarily among young people. We saw this culminate in Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign, which generated unexpected success financially and at the ballot box. A consequence of its growing popularity is an increase in the framing of positions in terms of individual liberty. This isn’t something new: Americans are instructed from elementary school that America is a “free country,” and politicians have routinely throughout history attempted to appeal to this sentiment. But the frequency of politicians referring to individual liberty has noticeably increased over the years, be it appeals to liberty when speaking in favor of tax cuts, free trade, civil liberties, or going to war to “defend liberty.”

In 2006, Kos authored a post titled “The Libertarian Dem” in which he attempts to frame the “progressive” policy agenda in libertarian terms and speaks, correctly, of the political returns to be had from doing so. Naturally, I found this post to be quite repulsive on a number levels, and as such feel the compulsion to refute it, focusing on specific points he makes. So, without further adieu, I’m off and running.

“A Libertarian Dem believes that true liberty requires freedom of movement -- we need roads and public transportation to give people freedom to travel wherever they might want.”

Well, there’s always the walking, sailing, or flying options; but the presence and improvement of public infrastructure substantially improves the functioning of a free market economy and a free society. However, the implication here is that roads and public transportation can only be provided by the government. This is a flawed assertion. Any way they are provided, one has to pay for these services to be available, be it an excise tax, private toll, or transportation fare, so it doesn’t really matter who provides the roads.

“A Libertarian Dem believes that we should have the freedom to enjoy the outdoor without getting poisoned; that corporate polluters infringe on our rights and should be checked.”

Fair point. But how does this diverge from mainstream libertarianism? Due to the general lack of understanding of economics that he routinely displays on his blog, I’m going to assume that Kos has never heard of the work of Coase (ha!) regarding to enforcement of property rights and its role in preserving the environment and reducing the negative externalities of activities. It is a central tenant of libertarian thought that the role of government is to enforce property rights and contracts, which is the foundation required for functioning of a free market economy and free society.

Furthermore, Kos ignores where pollution has been driven by government intervention through ways such as corporate welfare subsidies (which drive, for instance, discharge of water effluent by inefficient subsidized agricultural production, environmentally destructive and inefficiently high oil and mining production, etc.) and regulations restricting competition (and thus concentrating market power in the hands of large industrial firms, who can then pollute and have the resources to prevent retribution for such).

“A Libertarian Dem believes that people should have the freedom to make a living without being unduly exploited by employers.”

This is why libertarians support the right of workers to form unions and collectively bargain with employers. This is why all mainstream libertarians support enforcement of labor contracts. However, people should also be free to choose to work without having people like Kos, when they get elected to government, tell them that they have to join a union to do so. They should also have freedom from the inevitable government-induced reductions in salary that occur from the Payroll Tax and mandated or tax-subsidized employer-provided health insurance. (But expecting Kos to acknowledge the exploitation of people by the government is obviously expecting a bit too much.)They should also be free, if they choose, to work for less than an arbitrarily set minimum wage that is mandated by the government.

Furthermore, the question that Kos both fails to ask or answer is: how do exploitative employers get into this position? More often than not, they get into this position as a result of government intervention via mechanisms such as corporate welfare subsidies, using force to break up strikes, laws restricting/hampering unions (for example, right to work laws), and protective tariffs and other policies restricting competition.

Of course, if employees voluntarily choose, given understanding of pretexts, to work in dangerous conditions and/or low wages, exploitation doesn’t occur. Yet one could easily get the sense that the policies Kos would advocate would, in fact, prevent people from voluntarily making this choice, because after all: who would make this choice? There is no possible way that anyone could conceive this situation to be in their self-interest, so we should let omniscient messiahs like Kos who know what’s REALLY best for everyone save us from ourselves.

“A Libertarian Dem understands that no one enjoys true liberty if they constantly fear for their lives, so strong crime and poverty prevention programs can create a safe environment for the pursuit of happiness.”

Is Kos seriously implying that mainstream libertarians do not support government-provisioned crime enforcement? Has he even bothered to read the Libertarian Party platform, or the work of scores of libertarian writers? Furthermore, this statement by omission reeks of a very strong antipathy toward the role that self defense has in “crime prevention.” I think we all know what I mean by this, and the role that a certain something plays in self defense. But of course, we all know that curbing this right that is “not clearly guaranteed” by the Bill of Rights will reduce crime. Oh, wait.

On the topic of poverty, notice how Kos ignores the very concept that government can be the source of poverty through mechanisms such as monetary inflation, taxation, fiscal deficits, zoning laws, seizure of land through eminent domain, and the lack of enforcement of property rights and contracts. (However, in the article, he does acknowledge the stupidity of some small business regulations. Good for him.) Furthermore, Kos makes two fatally flawed assumptions. The first is that social spending effectively reduces poverty, an assumption that is clearly flawed given that social spending on the federal level (including welfare payments, education, local economic development, etc.) has tripled as a percentage of GDP since the 1960s (the increase has been the same if you include Social Security and Medicare) while poverty hasn’t been dented.

Secondly, he assumes that those heartless mainstream libertarians don’t care about people in poverty. This is a disingenuous and intellectually dishonest assertion. Libertarians have no problem with helping people get out of poverty. What we have problems with are 1) stealing other people’s property to do it, 2) spending the stolen money of others while not reducing poverty, and 3) the ways in which government creates poverty. Furthermore, the idea inherent in this assumption is that poverty can only be reduced through government action, and those who oppose this action oppose poverty reduction. Private organizations, both domestically and internationally, have shown to be tremendously effective in reducing poverty.

It is often stated that the level of effort taken to help the needy is the mark of the degree to which a society is compassionate. But where is the compassion in government officials elected by either plurality or majority forcefully taking the property of the minority who did not elect them to office and using it to help others? Love can only emanate freely from the heart; it cannot be imposed on society or even extracted from others by forceful coercion. Relationships in which one or more of the partners do not hold for the other true love freely emanating from the heart are loveless relationships and, more often than not, fail. Thus, the level and intensity of compassion required to effectively help the needy can only occur in a free society where government does not force one person to help another. The idea that individuals should love their fellow man and help those in need and the onus for them to do so are undermined by a central authority taking their property and doing it for them.

One last observation on this point that I would like to make pertains to the opening statement of this excerpt: “A Libertarian Dem understands that no one enjoys true liberty if they constantly fear for their lives.” I cannot help but notice the eerie similarity in the context of this statement to those made by the Bush Administration in arguments for their various War on Terror policies, be it the Iraq War or various anti-4^th Amendment measures they have sought. (Patriot Act, domestic surveillance, etc.) The “fear for your life” card is a common rhetorical tactic played by those who advocate greater government intervention and control, the implication being that if you do not accept their worldview and policy proposals, then you or others around you will die. I find it quite interesting how Kos and others of his ilk have roundly condemned such rhetoric from the Bush Administration, yet as demonstrated by this statement, they are more than willing to use it to browbeat others into giving them their property so they can pursue their agenda. (Or Kos and the IRS will come and take it from you at gunpoint.) These are not the arguments of people interested in liberty; they're the arguments of people interested in authority.

“A Libertarian Dem gets that no one is truly free if they fear for their health, so social net programs are important to allow individuals to continue to live happily into their old age. Same with health care. And so on.”

I think this point almost entirely captures the essence of his overall thesis, so I will use it as a broad umbrella to address the entirety of his post. Kos’s argument resembles a common argument made by many on the left in rebutting mainstream libertarianism by attempting to frame their worldview in terms of individual liberty. Upon examination, the argument has five major flaws. Firstly, it confuses freedom for power. Freedom is the ability to make choices without coercion from others. Power is the ability to make particular choices given an array of choices. There’s a big difference between the two concepts. So when Kos talks about providing public transportation, social safety nets to “allow individuals to continue to live happily”, and reducing people’s “fear for their health,” he is talking about providing a more numerous and greater quality array of choices, and thus more power (to some). What he proposes does not actually increase individual freedom, and in fact reduces it if these services are to be provided by stealing the property of others through income or broad-based consumption taxes. (At least certainly in the case of safety nets, although possibly in the case of public transportation, as well, if it is to be funded through either of these taxes.)

Secondly, as I discussed earlier regarding poverty and public transportation, this argument presumes largely that only government actions can provide greater power for individuals in some of the areas Kos discusses. As I mentioned earlier, this ignores the ability of private associations to provide these services and the preconditions of human relations required for their effectiveness. But what it also ignores is the essential and irreplaceable role that individual responsibility plays in establishing this power. For instance, an individual’s health isn’t a function of the third-party health care financial coverage one has: it is a function of the individual’s lifestyle choices and, to some extent, the externalities of the actions of others. Government action cannot force better lifestyle choices out of people, both because these choices must result from self-initiative and because the enforcement of such measures is completely impractical and ineffective. To the extent that negative externalities of others’ activities negatively impact an individuals help, then a libertarian government mandated to protect property rights (and one’s body and value of one’s labor are properties of the individual) must enforce retribution.

Thirdly, this argument ignores where government is responsible for the ills Kos identifies. I’ve addressed this on the topics of pollution, labor relations, and poverty, but this is most certainly true of the health care industry, as well. Subsidization of employer-provided health coverage, patent laws, restrictions against alternative medicine providers, medicine distribution schemes (the prescription drug benefit, VA control of flu vaccinations, etc.), AMA monopoly power over medical accreditation, restrictions against purchasing insurance across state lines, and laws restricting nurse practitioners are all examples of ways in which the government has increased cost and decreased quality of our health care system.

Fourthly, this argument confuses libertarianism for anarchism. Libertarianism advocates for the existence of government and the limit of its power to preventing coercion of individual liberty, protecting property rights, and enforcing contracts. Anarchists advocate for no government. There is a huge difference, and realizing this difference invalidates many of the criticisms of the mainstream libertarian framework brought up by Kos and others.

Kos later on in his post states that these perspectives are consistent with “maximizing individual liberty.” Thus, we arrive at the final major flaw inherent in this argument. To Kos and others who promote these ideas, liberty is a variable to be somehow objectively manipulated. Liberty is not a variable. Liberty is a principle. It can either exist completely and entirely in a society or it can’t. This is representative of the general ideas behind the thought of Kos and his ilk: 1) their worldview and system of values is so perfect that it should be forcefully imposed on everyone else through government; 2) they are so smart that they know what every single individual wants; and 3) they have the ability to create optimal outcomes through the mechanism of government, if only they should get this chance. This worldview is not consistent with the idea that everyone should have the ability to make their own choices without coercion by others or the government because it presumes that the ability of some to make choices should be restricted in order to provide others with a greater array of choices. In other words, this worldview is not consistent with the principle of liberty.

On a personal note, I do not want this to be an anti-Kos blog. While I clearly disagree with him on a vast array of issues and find much of his rhetoric and tactics to be despicable on the level of Karl Rove, I do have respect for him. He is intelligent and quite politically savvy, however misguided many of his ideas are. This post is no exception.