Liberals and Markets

Thats as good as saying “Libertarians are conservatives who like personal freedoms”

Reminds me of a discussion I once had with a teacher. She was saying that teachers should be paid well because they serve an important function in educating people. I was trying to explain water and diamonds and marginal utility. And not very well I might add.

I think this goes towards your point number six in which liberals(gross generalization coming up) feel that government needs to create a fair system based on perceived values of fairness and justice.

Daniel Kuehn,

I have read several of your replies to Arnold on Liberals and I am not seeing it. I think on 3,4,5,6 liberals do in fact hold more of those beliefs than libertarians. Not that the absolute magnitude of that belief is right or wrong for either group, just that liberals are more likely to hold that belief as important.

It seems to me that you are a libertarian leaning liberal (hey you read this site for starters) and are projecting your views on the rest of liberal population.

Maybe I am wrong though. So to help me understand can you tell me what person that I might know (politician, academic, blogger, historic figure,etc) is the embodiement of middle of the road liberal ideals (as in the median “liberal”, not a liberal who is near the median of the general population). The folks that come to my mind when I think liberal (Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Paul Krugman, Yglesias, Klein, etc) seem to believe more of 3-6 than similar libertarians.

What about the fact that some liberals support hate-crime or hate-speech laws? I’ve found that some liberals only support civil liberties as a means to some “progressive” goal.

eccdog –

I certainly have a lot of views in common with libertarians. I grew up as a conservative, dabbled with libertarianism in college, but then became disillusioned by it. There was absolutely nothing that attracted me to libertarianism – the civil liberties focus, the respect for markets, etc. – that was unique to libertarianism. What was unique to and defining of libertarianism was a disproportionate bias against the state and what I guess I’d describe as an atomized view of the human species: a rejection of the idea that collectives or communities are meaningful units. Over time, I grew to consider that a very naive and distortionary view. Everything I liked about libertarianism was just classical liberalism – a solid part of the liberal tradition going back centuries. The special contribution of libertarianism to that broader liberal tradition was not appealing to me.

So yes – I’m a “liberal” in the Enlightenment sense of the word, and I’d even say “classical liberal”, which means I do enjoy reading and listening to libertarians, and I do have a lot of common ground with them. I’m not sure if I “lean libertarian”. I guess I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t see why I would be “leaning” libertarian simply by accepting the foundational tenets of the liberal tradition. That seems like an odd way of putting it.

I’d caution against picking out any politicians as being representative of any political philosophy. They are politicians, after all. They’re going to have soundbites. They’re going to speak with a degree of naivete on certain issues. If I want to know what socialism “is” or what a socialist supports, I’d go to Marx, not Stalin. If I want to know about what to expect when socialism is put into practice, I’d have to take the example of Stalin into account. But I wouldn’t go to him to understand the political philosophy. You list Krugman at the end, and he’s a great example. Krugman waxes poetic too now in his op-ed, but the idea that Krugman somehow “doesn’t like” markets absolutely baffles me. Of course he does. It’s self-evident in almost everything he writes. What he does do is understand that you have to use the right tool for the right job. Maybe his analysis is wrong sometimes, and he is liable to making those soundbites too, ever since the NY Times gig. But to suggest he’s a “libertarian that doesn’t like markets” is absurd. As a side note, I’m not always in line with Krugman – I often feel like a linear combination of Krugman and Mankiw… somewhere in there. But I do respect Krugman a great deal (as I respect, I should note, Arnold a great deal – I enjoy reading his posts probably more than anyone elses on econlog).

“what I guess I’d describe as an atomized view of the human species: a rejection of the idea that collectives or communities are meaningful units.”

i.e. – meaningful units with interests that can, at appropriate times, over-ride the interests of the individuals that compose the collective or community.

I know libertarians are fine with voluntary association, etc. – but they still reject (at least I think they do) the idea of a community as an independent, relevant, unit of agency, standing, etc.

I might consider also focusing on the differences that liberals and libertarians have towards individuals as opposed to their views regarding governments and markets. For example, a liberal is that lady who walks down the street and yells at you for letting your kids play outside unattended. A libertarian is someone who wouldn’t even notice, or would send their kids out to play with yours.

Aside: This is a rather bold, and inaccurate, statement. “Everything I liked about libertarianism was just classical liberalism – a solid part of the liberal tradition going back centuries.” It’s certainly wrong about the liberal tradition starting around 1900.

BZ –
I was worried my initial point came across this way. Read my addendum, that’s more what I was getting at. I agree with your representation of the libertarian view of community.

Yancey, I think you’ll find that third-ways are a brand in their own right.

If liberals have a romantic view of democracy, then libertarians most certainly have a romantic view of markets. In theory, sure, when you shop for goods and services the seller should be responsive to your needs, because there are plenty of alternatives out there. But in so many American commercial interactions, when is that actually the case?

Signed,

A guy waiting from 12 to 5 for the cable installer

As I read professor Kling’s post, I kept thinking that libertarians are really on their own. They arent “conservatives +X” or “liberals +y”. They are a completely different animal. Rejection of the initiation of force is a pretty isolating position. The left and right are often arguing from the same world view, just with different values.

Now lets all donate our money to the Seasteading Institute so we can escape the madness!

Labels are either dangerous or helpful depending on your association to them. Essentially they are rendered meaningless by ignorance. You can’t describe anybody in one word so why bother debating, or are we all happy to just associate ourselves with those who “think like us” without thinking ourselves? This should be obvious given the increased secularization that exists today.

“The government is where we go to channel compassion, kindness, and community spirit.”

RE: “This always strikes me as odd that liberals view the government as playing this role. What is the evidence for these things?”

Don’t discount the possibility that they DON’T, in fact, view government as playing this role. If it sounds fishy the claim itself might be wrong.

I think that is the way liberals think because I have spoken to them and read them.

A search on google books for “Community Spirit” finds books focused on government.

Have you ever heard of the term “Compassionate Conservatism”?

Have you paid attention to the debates on government provided health care? Did anyone mention it was a basic human right? Did anyone bring up the deserving poor?

You are right that trust is not a very clear term.

Lets say in more clear terms that liberals are more likely to see market failures than libertarians/conservatives are and are less likely to see government failures. Thus liberals support higher levels of government involvement.

That is not to say which one is right.

I think this post by Mankiw nails it.

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-do-right-and-left-differ.html

I think an additional difference with libertarians how much market failure is tolerable before you act and how much evidence you need before you act.

I do not believe the market is perfect in anyway, but as a free society I belive we need strong evidence of very meaningful market failures before we act. Others might be more quick on the trigger even if we agree about the facts of the case.

I think this can be inverted. I’m a left-leaning person who loves markets. I just think traditional libertarians wildly overlook negative externalities and collective action problems.

“What was unique to and defining of libertarianism was a disproportionate bias against the state and what I guess I’d describe as an atomized view of the human species: a rejection of the idea that collectives or communities are meaningful units.”

Talk about a gross and rather stupid caricature.

What you don’t get and perhaps never will get is that liberals have different notions of community means; that it is not coerced, but voluntary in nature. Libertarians quite frankly are rather romantic about the notion of community.

“…but they still reject (at least I think they do) the idea of a community as an independent, relevant, unit of agency, standing, etc.”

How exactly can a community have agency? Heck, even Marxists do not ascribe agency to a community; they argue that humans have agency within a community.

How can a community be independent of its parts, of the individuals that make it?

As for standing, well, groups of people can having standing, but is always because of some individual harm to the various members of that group.

eccdogg,

I think the basic difference between liberals/conservatives and libertarians is that the former a more prone to moral panics. We must stop sprawl! Homosexuality is a sin! Etc.

As a card carrying liberal, Arnold doesn’t describe me – or anyone I know – very well. Its like he smeared together a bunch of stereotypes that might be valid for some subsection of liberals and treated it as a valid generalization to the whole.

Here’s my thoughts . . .

(2) I think most liberals would answer “yes, but . . .” when asked about markets. The reason is that just saying “yes” would be perceived as supporting conservate free-markets always positions, so they need to give a more nuanced answer. (Most conservatives and even libertarians would give “yes, but” if pressed – think applying the market to national defense – but they don’t need to qualify their statements because its their side’s talking point).

I don’t think the failure of the market to promote culture would be very high on most lists – though certainly there are some. The problems most liberals would cite having with unregulated markets are:

(a) They’re unfair or promote ripoffs (they promote class perpetuation between generations; pollution externalities; the continued existence of almost all weight loss pills, homeopathy, most herbal remedies, etc).

(b) Markets aren’t as good as they’re sold as being / conservatives want to use them in the wrong places. (i.e., lack of perfect information, irrationally, failure to truly allocate assets according to their highest valued uses where the highest valued use can’t be easily monetized).

(c) Markets don’t always take moral imperatives into account.

(3) I think its fair to say that liberals trust technocrats more than libertarians. Liberals do, however, have a tendency to distrust certain facets of government – i.e., use of force most obviously.

(5) I don’t think this represents any liberals I know. No one thinks that the government somehow inherently reflects all of our best impulses. Most liberals are suspicious of the government in many respects.

We want society to reflect our best impulses. And government, despite its flaws, can be improved upon and help society to reflect our best impulses more fully. Just look at how the condition of the poor and elderly has changed in the past 100 years. Charity is great, but poses massive holdout problems. Market forces are only somewhat useful, because they’re inherently biased towards the people who already have power (i.e., despite claims that markets move assets to their highest valued use, the market would allocate water to a wealthy developer’s pool before it would direct it to a parched but penniless pauper).

I just wanted to say: the comments to econblog are often as interesting and entertaining as the original article. How many places can you say that about?

I’ll probably spend the rest of the day hitting refresh in my browser for this thread.

roversaurus,

Excellent observation.

DK, I am still get trying to get at what is inherent to liberalism. What is the essence of liberalism in your view.

Is it communitarianism?

Evan,

Every “third way” I have seen in recent history (the last 3 centuries) are simple amalgams of what are now called liberalism and conservatism, but all questing to acquire and exercise the power of the state. Now, there are certainly a fair of number of false libertarians, but true libertarianism has a core principle that can always be used to disguintish.

If I had to summarize the difference between authoritarians and libertarians, it would be like this- the former state, “There should be a law”, and the latter ask, “Should there be a law?”

“Moreover, Arnold suggested that liberals somehow magically forget that the same self-interests and incentives operating in the market also operate in government.”

Actually, they do; this in part is why a whole public choice rose up since the 1950s, because there were a whole bunch of naive conclusions about how human beings act in government as opposed to in the market.

“…(1.) we want society to reflect our best impulses…”

We do? That seems rather wrongheaded. I want society to have very high levels of freedom, prosperity, etc. That has very little to do with impulses, motivations, intentions, etc. In fact, I find this notion to be a rather dangerous one.

“…(2.) the government can do good in the world and can serve good purposes.”

Markets outclass government in any field that I can think of.

“There’s nothing inherent in liberalism that is hostile to markets.”

While that may be true in theory, that’s not the case in practice. Liberals in government are highly inimical to the free market. One sees this in the comments that President Obama makes about business – he favors the businesses that favor his policies – including boneheaded notions like say the ethanol scam (but hey, it helps Illinois farmers with a massive subsidy!). That is corporatism; and corporatism I would argue, along the lines of Rexford Tugwell, is what liberals in the main favor.

Also, my last post got moderated, so it will be up later, but DK is right – my point has nothing to do with what Rover ascribes to it.

I agree Joe

But this

“There’s nothing inherent in liberalism that is hostile to markets. There’s nothing inherent in liberalism is naive about the pursuit of self-interest in government.”

Suggest that there is something that is inherent in liberalism.

eccdog –
Classical liberalism has split into various strains through the centuries. I suppose one good way of putting it is that liberalism is the communitarian strain of classical liberalism.

That may not even be a good way of putting it, though. Liberalism isn’t as coherent as libertarianism. I don’t think it has to be. Almost like talking about “neoconservatism”. There are some very specific things you can point to that are “neoconservative”, or “socialist” for that matter or “libertarian”. Other political philosophies – like “conservatism” or “liberalism” aren’t as compact, and I don’t think there’s any real reason for them to be. But as a general statement I think it’s fair to say that contemporary American “liberalism” is the modern communitarian branch of classical or enlightenment liberalism. Sounds like as good a definition as any to me.

Mommsen –
“Actually, they do; this in part is why a whole public choice rose up since the 1950s, because there were a whole bunch of naive conclusions about how human beings act in government as opposed to in the market. ”

I hate to break it to you mommsen, but there’s no dispute between public choice theory and liberalism. I’m a huge fan of Prof. Buchanan. And interestingly enough, when he began his work he was accused by some of his colleagues of being a leftist.

“Markets outclass government in any field that I can think of.”

How about providing universal education? You know from my conversations on Cafe Hayek that I’m not a big fan of many “universal” initiatives. I don’t like this push for “universal health care” for example. But I do think universal public education is a worthwhile initiative. Can the market provide universal education? It can provide education – and quite well – but it simply cannot provide universal education. Maybe some day – when that day comes I probably won’t be a big fan of public education anymore.

Joe wrote:

Rover,

You’re misinterpreting me – I thought I explicitly distinguished that issue. The point DK was responding to was arguing, as I read it, is that liberals think that the government does channel happiness and joy and lollypops. Most libs would only say that was partially true.

How does:

We want society to reflect our best impulses. And government, despite its flaws, can be improved upon and help society to reflect our best impulses more fully.

Differ from:

“The government is where we go to channel compassion, kindness, and community spirit.”

About all I can think of is that you could interpret A.K. as saying liberals think government is the ONLY place to go for that and your statement does not imply it is the only place – Only that it is the place to go to do them “more fully”.

The problem with both liberals and conservatives is that they fail to see the world through a normative lens. Both groups are willing to abandon fundamental principals to correct perceived problems. This leads to absurdities like liberals claiming that a women has the right to an abortion but doesn’t have the right to work for less than minimum wage . . . In the end we will all be libertarians, it will just take a long time. People learn very, very slowly . . . .

“the continued existence of almost all weight loss pills, homeopathy, most herbal remedies, etc.”

There is a market demand for drugs that would help with weight loss but the FDA won’t allow drugs that have *any* risk of negative effects to be sold for purposes of weight loss, even if the drugs are quite effective and the risk of death is on the order of a being-struck-by-lightning. So time and again somebody invents a weight loss drug that works, it gets popular, so enough people take it that a few weird unexplainable deaths can be attributed to it, and the FDA bans it. This is what happened with fen-phen, ECA/ephedrine, and a few others.

If it weren’t for the government we’d already have several weight-loss drugs that work; those are what people would buy. There would be risks, but the expected risks wouldn’t be out of proportion with the expected benefit as perceived by consumers. It’s only because the government makes all the weight-loss drugs that *work* illegal that what remains for people to buy is weight loss drugs that have *no* risk because they have no benefit – they don’t do anything.

In short, if you make effective drugs illegal, the demand for those drugs will be met by relatively ineffective drugs. So is that really a failure of the market or is it yet another failure of regulation?

DK described what he wrote in the past:

1. I never said the state could provide universal education – I said it’s something that the state is closer to achieving than the market.

DK wrote this in the past:

How about providing universal education? […] But I do think universal public education is a worthwhile initiative. Can the market provide universal education? It can provide education – and quite well – but it simply cannot provide universal education.

DK wrote this about the market providing universal education

Can the market provide universal education? It can provide education – and quite well – but it simply cannot provide universal education.

That is probably why someone interpreted you as saying “the state could provide universal education” Because you had just written that it was one of things where the market did not out class government.

Rover,

My only tongue-in-cheek comment was replacing compassion and kindness with happiness and lollypops.

Daniel pointed out the core of where we’re disconnecting. Arnold (and the poster Daniel was responding to) were basically positing that liberals are naifs who believe that we direct our good into government and our evil into markets.

The part about government is an accurate statement about how some liberals would like the world to be ideally. And certainly, we think that government can be moved further in that direction.

However, it was made as a statement about how liberals think the world is. And liberals don’t think about government so naively, so the statement is only partially true. (The government does channel compassion and kindness in some respects, after all – think the New Deal and Great Society).

(As for the part about markets, I think the issue is more that liberals see unregulated markets as more difficult to perfect than governments. But its late, so I won’t get into that).

The very large number of comments has clearly shown the following:

Libertarians are those who understand economics.

Liberals think they understand economics, but are fooling only themselves.

I would say that there are two threads of Libertarianism.

One is what I call the ‘Moral Libertarianism’, which, to quote Yancey Ward believes the core principle of a libertarian is the eschewing of initiation of force.

I imagine that most moral Libertarians believe that the bulk of the populace would be better off, but that is not actually the point. Even if that wasn’t the case (the discoverer of the cure for the plague refuses to sell it), that would not justify the initiation of force.

The second thread is the ‘Utilitarian Libertarianism’, which tends to be a lot more ‘mushy’. For those, the justification for Libertarianism is the belief that the vast majority of people would be better off. In aspects where freedom conflicts substantially with well-being, such a person might easily choose government intervention, being willing to sacrifice some freedom for a great deal of well-being.

I think that Will Wilkinson’s observation applies to the second group, and not necessarily to the first.

Similarly, Liberals break down into many groups, so finding generalizations that work for the vast majority are going to be equally difficult.

Mulp: “liberal concept of public good”

I don’t view the concept of a public good as liberal, but rather, as propaganda. The public good argument is made in support of instances where the political class has discovered an opportunity to exploit. Roads, for example, are neither a “public” nor a “private” good, but simply a good. They were annexed as a monopoly by the political class because they presented an opportunity to obtain something they wanted at the expense of the population.

Joe Wrote:

However, it was made as a statement about how liberals think the world is. And liberals don’t think about government so naively, so the statement is only partially true. (The government does channel compassion and kindness in some respects, after all – think the New Deal and Great Society).

Now I go back to D.K.

Don’t discount the possibility that they DON’T, in fact, view government as playing this role. If it sounds fishy the claim itself might be wrong.

Corey,

It’s too bad you don’t live where I do. We don’t have to wait for the cable installer. I suspect that’s because the traditional cable company, the traditional phone company, and the town government all compete for local, long distance, and cable customers.

Traditionally, local governments decided that the public interest required a local monopoly and regulation. I like our way better.

George X: What is the toll on the street leading to your home?

If the toll on that street were raised to $10 a trip, what alternatives would you have?

For some people, the street in front of their house is private, with the developer responsible for it, with it then being turned over to the property owners? If the majority of the property owners refused to pay to maintain the street, plowing, paving, fixing culverts, would you o as most such residents do, seek to have the town take over? Or demand everyone pay to fix it? Fix it yourself? Buy an off road vehicle? Get rid of your car and walk everywhere? Move out and take the hit on the lost property value (probably sticking it to the mortgage holder)?

By the way, Gov Jon Corzine proposed raising tolls to fund a separate non-profit which would maintain and improve the road, and implement more congestion pricing, a more market approach, but the NJ residents opposed that market solution, so the improvements to the road depend on taxpayers funding it as a public good. If it were a private enterprise, the tolls would be far higher for sure, which would reduce congestion by diverting traffic to public roads.

hp writes “If it got down to a debate over roads and bridges i think that almost all libertarians would be overjoyed. But total government spending in the US is something like 6 trillion dollars (~35% of GDP or ~$20,000 per person!). There is no way that markets are that inefficient.”

I start with roads because they were an issue in colonial times. I find many appeals to antiquity in libertarian/conservative arguments, “the founders never intended….”, so I look to history to see what the debate and decisions were circa 1800.

One of the earliest controversial actions was Congress authorizing the construction of what is still known as National Road in 1806. As England had many well established turnpikes at the time which collected tolls and used them to improve the roads, one would expect Congress to instead authorize private firms to build and operate the National Highway, but instead they chose the socialist big government solution.

Passage on roads is clearly something that can be sold as it has a capital asset that must be created which provides economic benefit to users in proportion to use. If are you carting two wagon loads of goods to market each day, the benefit of the road is twice that one just one wagon load.

Education is something that doesn’t have as clear a market value. Is the worth of each word learned to read and write equal; can a teacher charge by the word taught? While you can limit your use of toll roads and the tolls paid to only those that provide direct benefit, can you select only the words to learn that provide direct benefit to you?

Roads were socialized government run because that was seen by many as the best way to promote the common interests, a growing economy. The argument to keep the Internet as free as possible to promote economic growth certainly repeats arguments from centuries ago.

Today’s technology allows collecting tolls efficiently so the use of roads can be charged for in direct proportion to the amount of usage. Consider E-ZPass. I do find it interesting how E-ZPass was supposed to cut the cost of collecting tolls by eliminating all the lazy overpaid government workers so tolls could go down, but today many see E-ZPass as a conspiracy to make it easier to hike tolls. Toll collecting is now much improved, but the roads don’t seem to be, and the battles over funding the toll roads and hiking tolls are just as fierce as ever.

But the upcoming technology involves a GPS based transponder that records all the miles driven and then assesses a toll for that. Germany is implementing that for commercial vehicles and the US Federal government is investigating it as a means to charge for road use given the much higher mileage some vehicles get per gallon of fuel, like the plug-in-hybrids.

So, this would be a good point to auction off leases to private corporations for all the toll collecting and all the highways, roads, and streets with each charging tolls to maintain them.

If roads which have clear utility, costs, and methods of charging for them can’t be eliminated as a socialized government run service, how can such things as education be run privately where the utility is so unclear and the method for billing is so unrelated to the utility.

Markets aren’t “tools.” Markets are people.

What makes your idea of how people should operate better than the people themselves? Now, there is a point with externalities and I’d like liberals to limit their ideas to those, even though I don’t like their solutions for them and there are far fewer externalities and public goods than liberals appear to me to believe.

And, as technology allows it, you will see far more toll roads. Gas taxes are a variation of toll road. Also, roads aren’t really handled nationally. They are mostly created and serviced by states. Once it becomes convenient to put a toll collector on a road, it is no longer non-excludable, which ironically happens the more people use it and can’t avoid the tolls (e.g. bridges), as is the case with congestion taxes, which shows they are nont non-rivalrous. Governments often benefit from simply a convenient form of fee collection, so you’d better not make that a tautology for government involvement.

Good point about technology making roads no longer non-excludeable (RFID is part of what I do for a living), and about the gas tax being a form of toll. But the truth is that roads were never really non-excludeable. It would have been easily possible to collect tolls in much the same way that speed limits are currently enforced – i.e., random enforcement.

Thats as good as saying “Libertarians are conservatives who like personal freedoms”
I disagree. Liberals and libertarians believe man is born good, and institutions make him bad. They only differ on the boogeyman– for liberals it is the corporations, for libertarians it is the government.

We conservatives believe men are innately inclined toward evil, and institutions make us somewhat good. This is why liberals/libertarians don’t understand war, or crime, or immigration, or family, or related issues. A liberal/libertarian sees the world as an irrational place that can be fixed simply by being rational. A conservative in contrast believes in necessary evils to avoid greater evils.

J.H. Bowden writes:

I disagree. Liberals and libertarians believe man is born good, and institutions make him bad.

What would make you come up with such a statement?

Most libertarians I know think the state should not be involved in marriage at all outside of enforcing the contract between two people and should be totally blind as to whether a person is married or not.

What would make you come up with such a statement?

Well, for one, as a conservative, I believe in coercion. I believe in military coercion, economic coercion, and cultural coercion.

If you want to define coercion as evil, you’re only making my point that liberals and libertarians see society (corporations or government) as the enemy, and the self-determining individual as the hero.

Ultimately liberalism in English-speaking societies is a German import– treat people as ends, and never as a means only. The real is the rational, and the rational is the real. Etc. But if we’re rationally self-determining, it follows that none of us have chosen the nations that exist, the family structure, our historical and strategic position, the corporations that exist, and so forth. As a result, liberals and libertarians believe we have the ahistorical, eternal right to sweep all of this stuff away and start anew, in the name of non-coercion, of course. This Cartesian view is what Michael Oakeshott calls rationalism in politics. Or what Thomas Sowell calls the vision of the anointed. Or what Voegelin calls modern gnosticism. Or what Leo Strauss would call retail sanity, and wholesale madness.

A conservative realizes that men are creatures of habit, imagination, passion, ritual, convention– of course none of us choose where we are born, or what our first language is, or our economic starting position, or the religion of our society. We’re coerced into this without any input. On top of it, not all social conventions are created equally. A conservative believes just because we don’t like something doesn’t mean we ought to change it, since all of the alternatives may be worse. We believe in necessary evils.

The homo economicus taken to its logical conclusion will relativize all ideas of a free society. No human being is illegal! If we would just talk to insane religious fundamentalists, we can find the root causes why they want to destroy us. We just need even more education to fight crime. We can kill our children because we have a right to privacy. These banalities would be humorous if they weren’t so prevalent.

The libertarians are sillier than the liberals, since they don’t see how social breakdown leads directly to more clamoring for government benefits. A single mother will inevitably rationalize that the government “should” pay for her child’s healthcare. Of course, these people are just being irrational, and if they would be rational, problem solved! How easy!

As Aristotle once implied by his remark that men are political animals, how we’re indoctrinated plays a dominant role how society develops. But liberals and libertarians are like parents who try to reason in the grocery store with their child as it tears the place up. It isn’t a homo economicus, it is an animal, a product of evolution, that needs to be trained and conditioned.

Liberals and libertarians don’t see a telos in our society, a transcendent order– rather, they start with our feelings, and believe society ought to conform to our wishes, rather than the other way around. They’re both tragically destined never to realize their visions, because they haven’t asked themselves, what is man? A writer such as Dostoyevsky is far more helpful in this respect than Smith.

This post is interesting. Today I tried to write the basis of my beliefs in as short a space as possible (for my bio page on my blog). I consider myself a libertarian, as is perhaps obvious from the below:

Philosophically I am highly individualist, objective and rational. I apply rationality to my primary aim, the pursuit of pleasure, although I have an unusually low discount rate. In others, I value honesty and candour. I despise collectivism, due to the contraints it puts on human thought and its tendency towards generating tribal conflict. I doubt the sincerity of those who act against their apparent incentives, which I treat as an indication of undisclosed incentives rather than virtue. For these reasons, I value the entry of market-based systems in most areas of life and society.

I can think of a few ways in which this would differ from what a liberal might write, but also some ways (e.g. the pursuit of happiness) that may be the same.