Government spending, taxes and regulations are all on the rise in this country and have been for quite some time. This has happened many times before in history, but there is a odd thing about this time.
Most people seem to think that we have a ‘free market’ government, and that Mr Blair is very ‘pro-business’. I can understand people thinking the government is very close to some businessmen (the people who are connected politically), but there is a view that this is a general ‘free enterprise’ regime.
In the past Marxists held that various Labour governments were “really pro-capitalist” because these administrations were not as collectivist as Maxists would like. However, it is more than a few Marxists today. It does seem to be a common view that a state of affairs where way over 40% of the economy is spent by the state and what is left is controlled by a vast web of regulations is a ‘New Labour’ system where the government has turned its back on ‘social justice’ and is not doing enough to ‘help the poor’.
In the United States the wild spending Bush administration (responsible for the Medicare extension, “no child left behind” and the biggest increase in ‘entitlement’ spending since the days of L.B.J. and Richard Nixon) is held, by some people, to be ‘free market’. But then (like Nixon) Mr Bush is a Republican (who are supposed to be free market – even if they often not so) and has actually cut taxes (by some definitions).
In this country there should be no such confusion – the government is from the Labour party, and taxes (as well as spending and regulations) have been increased and are increasing – yet the view persists that this is somehow a pro free enterprise administration.
Many in the Conservative party seem deeply confused. For example Michael Gove MP writes in Forward! (the journal of Conservative Way Forward – I wonder if the people who control this journal know that ‘Forward’ [in various languages] was the name for first Marxist and then Fascist newspapers in 20th century Europe) that President Bush is not “concerned” enough about the “very poorest” and should have more of a “one nation social obligation” (supposedly John McCain would be more collectivist than George Bush and would, therefore, make a better President)
If this waffle means that President Bush should have spent even more money on the various health, education and welfare programs then Mr Gove knows nothing about what has been happening in the United States (but then Mr Gove has little interest in the United States, other than his desire that it should make war in various places). However, it is clear that Mr Gove (and his master Mr Cameron – the leader of the Conservative party) also think that there is not enough statism here.
The words ‘social justice’ are often used by some people in the Conservative party, as if there was no knowledge that basic point of being a Conservative is to oppose ‘social justice’ (statism – specifically the “redistribution of income and wealth”) and to support justice (private property – to each their own). The virtue of benevolence (what used to be called the virtue of charity) is indeed a good thing – but it is a different thing from the virtue of justice. It does no good (indeed it does vast harm) to confuse the concepts.
So we have a government that is greatly increasing the size and scope of the state and an opposition that seems to think that the government has not gone far enough. I suppose it might be claimed that Mr Gove and Mr Cameron are so deeply moved by the thought that there are poor people that they are willing to try anything, even “social justice”, in the misguided hope that it will reduce (rather than increase) poverty.
However, I am poor and I have not noted Mr Gove or Mr Cameron rushing to me and offering me a job or other aid. I know of no evidence that they have some deep feeling for the poor. At the base of their words does seem to be a belief that they well get more votes by talking and writing in this way – i.e. they think that even after the orgy of spending, taxes and regulations of the last few years, the people of this land are still in love with the “public services” and with “social justice”.
Perhaps they are right. As I have noted, many people do seem to think of Labour statism as ‘New Labour’ free enterprise. It is very odd.
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An odd thing about the decline of the United KingdomApril 18th, 2006 |
 100 comments to An odd thing about the decline of the United Kingdom |
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Loving the poor to death…..
There is a superb book titled “The tragedy of American Compassion” written about 15 or 20 years ago by one Marvin Olasky. In it, the good professor cronicles welfare as practised in the USA from Puritan times to the 1980s. In fact, this book was one of the inspirations for the Welfare Reform act signed into law by then president Clinton (one of the very few useful things he did). The net is that for nearly 400 years, the well meaning have learned and forgotten every generation or so, the lesson that providing cash to people to do nothing only creates more dependency.
Yet another member of the sane section of ‘society’.
Thank you kindly, Mr Marks, a perfectly weighted post.
Your confusion about these admittedly odd political and social tenets is understandable because it is obvious you are out of step with the current intellectual climate.
You actually believe words have meanings, and that when they are used in common parlance, they should have some connection with that widely accepted definition. And that, of course, is the source of your confusion.
Words mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. You live in Alice’s special place, where white rabbits have tea parties, and red queens play croquet.
As a generally rational person, I can imagine it is terribly frustrating for you to try to figure out what the hell everybody’s talking about when the terms they use bear little or no resemblence to the reality you see in front of you every day. But, of course, there is where you have made a fatal error.
There is no reality. There is only a fluid plasma of unspoken ideas and half formed perceptions, where nothing is really as it seems, and something can become anything anyone wants it to be, and then change to something else upon demand.
It is the land in which anything is possible.
You are a realist lost in a Dali exhibit, expecting to find landscapes and portraits but instead surrounded by melting watches and drooping pork chops perched in trees.
Well, you know what the dormouse said…
That’s all very well veryretired but as the blessed Maragaret said, “you cannot buck the market” and I think the chickens are going to come home to roost.
History does not repeat itself exactly but the omens do not look good. Middle east strife, high oil price, government over spending, public services deteriorating despite (because of?) inflationary expenditure. I am beginnig to see some paralells with my 1970s schooldays. Of course we were lucky to have Maggie et al to save us in the nick of time, not like the current wasters.
They are. One of the major reasons why nobody takes libertarianism seriously is that libertarians seem completely unable to accept this inconvenient fact and work with it rather than unimaginatively demanding free market solutions for everything.
EG
They are. One of the major reasons why nobody takes libertarianism seriously is that libertarians seem completely unable to accept this inconvenient fact and work with it rather than unimaginatively demanding free market solutions for everything.
Or maybe one reason no-one takes “pragmatic realism” seriously – your own form of statism – is because such people are incapable of standing back and looking at underlying causes and imagine that all that is necessary is to ape whatever the other guy is doing, or demur only on small points.
You are trying to shout folk down by claiming that “no-one” listens to a certain point of view. Try and argue your ground logically rather than bother about how many people agree with you.
On the contrary. I have many times here tried to look at underlying causes and real explanations of why things happen the way they do. Sadly, the conclusions don’t often match libertarian/liberal expectations.
Logic has a limited place in politics. The real political, social and economic worlds aren’t particularly logical places, so a reliance on logic is questionable. The best you can do is look at what really happens, try to understand it without ideological preconceptions, and test your assumptions against real-world data – be pragmatic, in other words.
No-one does. It’s not a claim, it’s a statement of political fact.
Almost all western liberal democracies run more or less along the kind of lines I advocate. None of them run along the lines you or other libertarians advocate. Why should this be, do you think, and which set of ideas is taken seriously & which not?
Libertarianism is interesting from one or two philosophical points of view, but the brutal reality is that, politically, it is irrelevant.
EG
Logic has a limited place in politics
Wow, thanks for stating the obvious. Go and read Paul Marks’ piece again: what he is arguing is that there is no real debate at all about whether the slow grind up in the size and power of the state is a good thing or something to be resisted and questioned. You offer no arguments, just sneers at libertarians who apparently, can be ignored. Fine, ignore us. (But you won’t of course).
I’ve said before that Euan is simply a troll. I suppose I should thank him for spelling it out clearly, at least as clearly as he says anything.
Thank-you, Euan.
Can’t answer the question, though, can you? Why *is* libertarianism such a fringe interest? Why *do* most governments simply not work your way but do work mine?
EG
Of course there is no debate, and this is not surprising: on one side you have what appears to be more or less the majority opinion of the people and the general line of all the credible political parties. One the other side you have an anarchic collection of dogmatic individualists united only by their attachment to a narrow neo-Victorian ideology that has long since ceased to be of relevance.
I have for quite some time now offered numerous detailed arguments as to why some degree of regulation is in practice necessary, why real life is not an extract from a textbook but is an endless series of pragmatic compromises, why there is in fact such a thing as society, why the unregulated free market is an oxymoron, why government is in principle necessary, and so on and on.
In this particular thread, I suggest the inconvenient truths that most people do actually want the things libertarians say are bad, that most parties offer various compromises to get those things and that the reason there is no debate about it is because the opposition to this consensus view is made up largely of eccentric individuals who are unwilling to compromise in their unwavering insistence on their dogma.
Let’s just look at the high standards of libertarian “debate,” shall we? Opponents are routinely said to be demonstrably wrong, “statists” (an in-crowd word that doesn’t resonate outside libertarian circles), deluded, mentally ill, corrupt, evil or Gramscian conspirators and traitors to the fine traditions of the noble people (who are only noble when they agree with libertarians – at other times they are variously deluded, mentally ill, corrput, statists, etc). I have been the subject of petty abuse and scatalogical name calling, not least by a certain principal contributor. Don’t you think that might turn people off what is already an unpopular view? Don’t you think that getting on a high horse about other people not offering debate when what you offer is insult, dogmatism, abuse, foul language, and unthinking parroting of an extremely simplistic world-view is somewhat unfair? And don’t you think it’s a pretty poor and transparent attempt to avoid addressing some inconvenient facts?
Now, how about getting off that quite unjustified high horse and dealing with the issues that prompt Paul’s argument that there is no debate:
most people seem to want what Paul doesn’t;
most parties offer what Paul doesn’t want;
libertarianism is a principled objection to these things;
libertarianism is very much a fringe interest;
it’s not taken seriously by the political parties;
it attracts little or no electoral support, even in America;
libertarian “debate” is often highly abusive and there is no attempt to understand or compromise with the opposing views;
therefore, there is no debate because the only people offering an alternative are so often rude, abusive, dogmatic and narrow minded, and on top of that hold to an ideology that passed its sell-by date about 90 years ago.
EG
One the other side you have an anarchic collection of dogmatic individualists united only by their attachment to a narrow neo-Victorian ideology that has long since ceased to be of relevance.
Bollocks. Are you really saying that ever-increasing regulation, nanny statism (of which you are appallingly fond), intrusive bureaucracy, etc, etc, is some sort of cast-iron piece of wisdom? What is “dogmatic” about pointing out the manifold weaknesses and inefficiencies of bloated government, pray?
In fact, EG, in your adherence to the political settlement of the late 1940s welfare state, big central government and the rest, you are the one who is being narrow minded. Did the period after 1970 just pass you by?
I have for quite some time now offered numerous detailed arguments as to why some degree of regulation is in practice necessary, why real life is not an extract from a textbook but is an endless series of pragmatic compromises, why there is in fact such a thing as society, why the unregulated free market is an oxymoron, why government is in principle necessary, and so on and on.
“Why there is such a thing as society”. If by society one means the collection of persons who compose it, I challenge you to find anyone who would contest that. But of course that is not what you mean. What you mean is that “society” is somehow greater than the sum of its parts and has some sort of power over the persons that compose it.
why the unregulated free market is an oxymoron,
I am not against regulations, I am against state regulations. If a market like the London Stock Exchange wants to regulate the conduct of its members, great; and such markets frequently do so; however, it is not necessary for the state to set such regulations, only that the laws against fraud, theft and abuse of contract be upheld. That is all. It would also completely dishonest to claim that classical liberals are against laws: in fact, many scholars of liberalism point out that the development of law and the market are part of the same process.
And so on. But then we are reminded of Euan’s abiding sin: misrepresentation of our position.
Right: you’re the one who advocates stealing what we earn just because it’s a habit widely endorsed by people coached not to think (“Logic has a limited place in politics”) by people like you, in order to finance this destruction of freedom and other things that we would never stand for if not for the force of your state, and we’re the ones who’re “rude”.
You’ve got a lot of nerve, you rotten little shitbag.
The only way you could possibly be more wrong would be if you got up on your hind-legs and actually undertook this pillage by your own hand. And if — in such an instance — you attempted it with me, in person, I would simply kill you dead in my driveway for the thief you really are.
I agree with the bloggers above who say that rationality has got precious little to do with modern politics. I also agree with the rationalists who say that it will in the long run. Effectively ‘don’t care was made to care’.
I disagree with everybody on the reasons why. It’s not that people forget or that they don’t care. Or that they’re more stupid/pampered/happy with dictatorship than they used to be. On the last point for example there has always been a large number of people in England who opposed democracy and liberty. (According TV’s Prof. Sharky that’s what our civil war was about – and the libertarians only just won.)
No the real reason for the collapse of political debate has been the corruption of the media. More than at any time since the invention of printing information and, hence, opionions are controlled by the Government, both in the UK and in Europe.
This could be overturned with an updated law on corruption and media with the following clauses:
1. The bribing of journalists by public officials (including crown ministers) should be illegal, punishable by up to two years in prison. The definition of bribes should include the following:
1.1 Money (as already covered by other Acts)
1.2 Free flights, meals, drinks, accomodation or other benefits in kind (tea, coffee and biscuits are permitted). The corrupt practices including: ministers giving free flights to journalists accompanying them on official visits; entertaining journalists to dinner or other events; and giving journalists ‘gifts’ to take away are included in this clause.
1.3. Information useful to a journalist’s career, reputation, pay or other advancement. To avoid prosecution under this clause officials should ensure that any information whatsoever of public interest should first be published to in the House of Commons Library and/or website and be available to the public so that no one newspaper or journalist is unfairly benefited by the information.
2. Press reform. The current voluntary press code of practice delineating news from opinion should be replaced with a three tier system of: news, opinion and gossip.
2.1 News is made up entirely of facts. Facts are defined as information (including opinions and letters) from sources that are named individuals or organisations, which can be independently verified. All sources must be individually identified by footnotes and/or hyperlinks for each fact.
2.1.1 Inventing facts or sources is a criminal offence punishable by up to 1 year in prision.
2.1.2 For facts which have a possible impact equivalent to that defined for Secret or Top Secret (as defined by the Official Secrets Act [i.e. where individual or multiple loss of life or severe economic harm is at risk]) the journalist is under a duty to check the facts from at least two independent sources and to satisfy himself of their veracity before publication. Willful or negligent failure to do this is a criminal offence punishable by up to life imprisionment.
2.2 Opinion is defined as conclusions based on published and publicly available facts. Each fact must be individually referenced by footnotes and/or hyperlinks.
2.2.1 Provided it is clearly marked as opinion, opinion in printed form (from the legacy media) will be regulated by the Press Complaints Commission or other form or self regulation.
2.2.2 Provided it is clearly marked as opinion, opinion on the internet will also be unregulated. However, membership of an active professional body or self regulating industry organisation will be seen as mitigation in the event of prosecutions for the misrepresentation of facts.
2.3 Gossip is defined as information that does not fit either of the two above categories. It includes information from unnamed or unverifiable sources.
2.3.1. Gossip must be clearly marked as such. The presentation of gossip as opinion and/or fact is a criminal offence publishable by the rules applying to opinion or fact respectively.
If this law was enacted, I believe that two things would happen: (1) legacy newspaper readership would soar as people started to trust them again and (2) more people would be interested in politics as the monopoly of the current elites was broken.
I picked up on just your point about social justice with Michael Gove a couple of weeks ago, Paul, as it was in the Tories’ “Built to Last” document. I explained what I saw it as meaning to Labour and asked what it meant to Cameron’s Tory Party. He basically said “one nation Conservatism”. My follow-up would have been to get more help determining where and how one nationism should end and where socialism begins.
Go on Billy, say what you REALLY think! Seriously, Euan is a patronising fool at times but let’s keep the temperature down around here. Ta.
Well first I must thank most of the people above for the nice things they have said (especially the nice things some people have said about me).
As for Euan.
Well Euan seems to want us to explain why governments grow.
The Public Choice school of political economists have their view (or rather general approach) on that subject.
And for people (such as myself) who would not go the whole way with them, there is the matter of the ideas people hold (although, I admit, veryretired is correct – I I expect a level of logic in people’s thoughts and words which often just is not there).
One can examine the way that ideas and interests work (as Mises did in the “Anticapitalist Mentality”) or one can trace the trouble right back to how human beings evolved (as Hayek did) – leading to the rather large claim that there is a tendancy to try and impose the ways of the hunter-gatherer pack on a great society of many millions of people (that both reason and tradition try and suppress a basic instinct for statism – that evolved when humans developed in small groups).
This would seem to hold that statism is a bit like original sin – that a civilization may last a thousand years, but then statism may bubble up within it (via the minds of human beings) and destroy everything.
F.A. Hayek and Edmund Burke would seem to have a lot to talk about upstairs.
But leaving aside such deep matters.
Euan says that we should “work with” the fact that many people believe certain things.
The trouble is that these things are not true (yes, veryretired, I am judging beliefs on the basis of their truth – I know this is not the ways things are done these days).
If a man drinks poison it does not matter if he thinks it is not poison.
Surely it is a moral duty to tell this person that he is drinking poison – even if that does make us very unpopular.
“Ah, but you will not get elected that way”.
Why should people vote for a Conservative party that is led by people who are saying (honestly or dishonestly) that they believe in all this collectivism – when they can vote for political parties that have long represented it?
Why vote for pretend Labour when one can vote for the Labour party?
When did the Conservative party even win elections like this?
I agree that the Conservative party has never been Libertarian (although there have always been libertarians within it – see W.H. Greenleaf “The British Political Tradition”), but it did stand for “Set the People Free” in the post war world – not “Atlee has not gone far enough – more rationing, more controls, more nationalization, this is what we need”.
Even Edward Heath won the 1970 election on a free market platform – and when he ratted on it (and things fell apart in consequence) he lost both elections of 1974.
Did Mrs Thatcher win in 1979, 1983, and 1987 by copying the Labour party?
Even John Major in 1992 stood against increasing taxes and against “devolution” (i.e. adding expensive extra layers of government in Scotland and Wales – and bringing back the insane G.L.C. in London)
Lastly Euan – let us say you are CORRECT. Let us say that the way to win the next general election is to come out with a lot of crap about “social justice” and the “public services” (i.e. to say things that are simply not true – because they are supposedly popular).
What do we do AFTER we have won the election?
Try and reduced the size and scope of government (which is what will need to be done).
How can we fight an election saying one thing – and then do the opposite?
I accept that people are not wildly logical (at least in their political opinions), but I think they might notice that we have said one thing and then done the opposite. I also think that the voters would be very angry indeed.
I am not asking for a libertarian platform. But I do expect an honest argument that government has grown too big and will have to be reduced in size and scope. Not as much as I would like – but as much as has to be done.
It is possible to convince the voters of this (it has been done before – in Britain and other nations).
But the present leadership of the Conservative party seems unwilling even to try.
Either they actually believe the things they say (in which case they are daft) or they do not (in which case they are dishonest).
Either way they are doing the job they should be doing – i.e. the long slow job of convincing enough voters that the state is too big and should be reduced in size and scope.
Unless this is done, winning a general election is pointless – unless one’s objective is just to be called “Prime Minister” and to have lots of Civil Servants jumping to the sound of one’s voice.
And, in spite of the Labour government’s great unpopularity, I am not sure that such a dishonest campaign will win the next general election.
If the idea is “statism is good, it is just the Labour party that is bad” – why should the voters not just vote Liberal Democrat?
Why should they vote Conservative?
Johnathan: fuck that bullshit, right out loud. I hit the bottom-line on that rat bastard, and you bloody know it. There is no good reason to pussyfoot around this, and every good reason to point explicitly at what it is.
“This ain’t no disco.” We’re talking about life-destroying ideas and their proponents. If that’s not sufficient cause for telling the truth, then there is no such thing. And if that necessary brutality makes this place antsy, then somebody had better just ban me right instantly now.
Quod erat demonstrandum, William. You make my point for me quite perfectly.
I notice you can’t answer the questions either, of course.
EG
“either way they are not doing the job they should be doing” (a missing “not”) and all my other errors.
One thing I would say (as I am back here) is that Euan (as well as his normal tactics) does seem to be playing the date game in claiming that libertarianism is out of date.
Of course I could play this game to and say that Euan’s opinions were out of date even when Louis XIV or the Emperor Diocletian held them.
However, surely it is better to say that a view is mistaken (and explain why), rather than to say “this view is out of date”.
Principles (although not tactics) are not a matter of time or place.
I would even question Hayek’s position that collectivism was correct in a small hunter gatherer pack and only became incorrect when society became larger and more complicated (although I understand the reasons Hayek argued that – something Euan never understands is that as society gets larger and more complicated so statism becomes more, rather than less, damaging).
And not just for the reason that Hayek himself understood – i.e. that if all hunter gatherer packs were collectivist and stayed that way, then larger and more complicated socieities would not have come into existance.
If some people in the pack are aggressing aginst other people in the little hunter gatherer pack this is still wrong – even if one might not be able to make complex economic arguments against what they are doing.
In the end Hayek’s ethics collapses morality into economics (although an economics broadly understood) and this utilitariaism (although it is the rule unilty of David Hume not the act utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham) is a category mistake.
“You make my point for me quite perfectly.”
You made it first, punk, and then you went on to dodge my explication of it. You have absolutely no standing whatever to complain about “rude[ness]” while you’re advocating unilateral destruction of my life by your bureaubots. I wouldn’t do that to you, and I never have: ever, in my whole life. Here is something that you don’t know about me: I can be the sweetest person you ever saw. But not with the likes of you.
Your complaint of rudeness means nothing to me, and it has nothing at all to do with the principles at issue here. It’s not important whether you like me. What’s important is that you keep your grubby paws off my affairs, as I would do with you.
This problem begins with you. You’re the one who can solve it.
Goerge, nice idea. But in your point 1.3 you just outlawed whistle blowing, which is one of the most useful things a politician can do.
A better way would be instead of regulating the press, freeing it. More media outlets so that they cannot all end up knobbled as sycophants to power. The internet has helped in this. Getting rid of the BBC’s state created advantages would help too. But it would mean the need for anti-trust type regulation to prevent any other media provider dominating in the say that the BBC does now.
Eaun? When you publically confess to the crime of conspiracy to commit theft, you should be thankful that your victims have the common decent to inform you that they consider you to be a “rotten shitbag” (with the attending slight chance that you might redeem your unethical behavior) … rather than simply remaining silent, hunting you down and ventilating you.
Well, Billy Beck is frightfully rude. But I confess I rather warm to him.
I have myself for some time been bleating to anyone who will listen about this bizarre fact that people refer to Britain as being in some sense free market.
Where, I have repeatedly asked, anywhere in this country, can one observe a free market in action?
Yet the charabanc rolls on. As someone else commented above: words no longer mean anything other than what their user intends. It’s perfect subjectivism, the nec plus ultra of the Left’s fetishisation of irrationality (that which cannot be disproven).
For my own part, I accept that this is no perfect world and that real-life pols have to make compromises with which idealists disagree.
But we are entitled to disagree, and the likelihood that we genuine conservatives remain in a perpetual minority is not, in my view, a good reason for throwing in our hand with the looters and abandoning any hope that our few votes might perform a minor feet of right-wing gravitational pull.
Euan Gray, for all your realism and scorn for ideological purity, you seem to be arguing no more than this: agree with a majority, because it’s a majority and because to do otherwise is a waste of a vote.
This is just historical inevitablism (sic?) dressed up as cynical world-weariness. The Left has done remarkably well by keeping its eye on the very long-term, pure ideological goals and pursuing them ruthlessly. Why should the rest of us not learn a lesson or two from that?
Chris? You and George are flat-out insane if you think a government is remotely capable of producing more ethical mass-medias via the force of legislation.
…Getting rid of the BBC’s state created advantages would help too. But it would mean the need for anti-trust type regulation to prevent any other media provider dominating in the say that the BBC does now….
If, in the absence of “state-created advantages”, a media providor “dominated” the news markets — who has a legitimate “need” to prevent it?
Edward: I have myself for some time been bleating to anyone who will listen about this bizarre fact that people refer to Britain as being in some sense free market. … Yet the charabanc rolls on. As someone else commented above: words no longer mean anything other than what their user intends. It’s perfect subjectivism
It’s perfect lying by, invariably, far-leftists running for election against near-leftists.
“Free market” is just code-speak for “there’s still more loot left to steal — so vote for ME and get your share!“
Edward Lud – I must confess that I agree. I’m also warming to Billy Beck. The only individuals who have a natural right to pussyfoot around are cats. Humans should be able to stand up for what they perceive as the truth without apology. As it happens, my perception is an accord with Billy Becks. But even if it weren’t he has a right to express his opinion with strength.
A couple of jots on something you said, Verity:
“But even if it weren’t he has a right to express his opinion with strength.”
To the extent that any of that is true: it’s only a privilege — not a “right” — extended by the people who own this place. It can without moral opprobrium be revoked at any time for any reason or no reason at all. None of that is true about “rights”.
And: the “strength” of any “opinion” depends completely on its veracity. We have to stop all this bloody insipid respect for “opinions”, per se. That’s because idiots have opinions, too. They’re not what counts.
How strange that you allow some serious profanity on one comment thread, (between BB and EG), but delete my most mild comment on this thread….
Billy Beck – You are correct. One can express views on private property only with the permission of the owners.
Euan Gray asks:
You’d probably get better results asking that in a more libertarian forum, but I’ll take a stab at it.
Because most people don’t want liberty. H.L. Mencken said it better than I can:
In fact, things are actually even worse than Mencken paints them. There are plenty of people who mostly value liberty, but they have one thing that is more important to them. On this site, that one thing is killing Muslims–elsewhere, it might be “protecting the environment.”
The number of people who both understand and desire liberty, and who value it more than their pet cause, is, as you observe, insignificant.
Here’s a thought, Euan: because the lines you advocate appeal to the basest desires of people who have been coddled into dependency on the state, and people who long for the proverbial “free lunch.” People of your mentality have enshrined envy (one of the seven deadly sins, for those of us who aren’t atheists) into “pragmatic” public policy. Of course, as all us *pragmatists* know, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or perhaps you’re aware of some obscure law of economics none of us know about?
Also, the pandering and promising to give people goodies out of someone else’s pocket has proven a wonderfully effective way for politicians to stay in office. It’s a win/win…. except for those of us who have to foot the bill.
Hwy Verity, where are you pretending to live this week– Texas, Mexico or just outside No 10 Downing Street, you absurd 24/7 crawlbot, you?
Billy Beck– keep it up, laddy, you’re making Euan’s case every time you open that foul mouth.
Billy Beck – As Union Jock observes, you are basically a one man vindication of my argument. By responding with profanity, you illustrate my point about the rudeness of much libertarian “debate.” By opining that my view is worthless because it is incorrect – and thus by implication that yours is incredibly valuable because it is correct – you illustrate my point about the disregard for the opinions of others because you *know* you are right. Case closed. Thank you for your assistance.
Now. for some of the more meaningful responses:
No, what I’m saying – which should have been clear enough – is that a majority do happen to want welfare and do seem to accept a degree of intrusion and regulation as the price. I am not saying this is infallible wisdom, although I do think *some* degree of welfare and hence regulation is desirable, I merely note that libertarians seem unable to accept that a great many people may have this point of view and may hold it for perfectly sensible and justified reasons. The upshot is that a (large) majority of people do not agree with the libertarian position, and no amount of denial and saying how bad it is will change that.
Of course it is. It’s somewhat bizarre to contend otherwise – perhaps another example of libertarians just not being on the same plane of reality as everyone else?
A society – whether considered as civil society, a corporation, a fishing club or even a political party – is something greater than the mere sum of its parts. Partake of civil society and you get, for example, law enforcement and the administration of justice much more efficiently and easily than if you were to do it alone, because of that annoying greater than the sum of its parts thing. Similarly, a company will achieve more in organised collective endeavour than it employees would in total working in isolation, a fishing club can negotiate better terms for its members than individual anglers could, and so on. This is a no-brainer, frankly. Equally a no-brainer is the fact that in order to gain the benefits of the collective endeavour, one must cede autonomy to that society – you pay tax for civil society, you restrict your free time for the company, you pay membership dues to the fishing club, etc. How difficult a concept is that? It’s the whole bloody basis of human civilisation, for God’s sake, it’s not like it’s some new Marxist invention.
It would be nice to think so. In practice, however, this is not true, although part of that depends on one’s definition of fraud and theft. It is unfortunately necessary to have some degree of external coercive regulation on the free market, at least if one wants it to remain reasonably free. Market abuse, contract abuse, fraud and theft are rather more prevalent and often much more sophisticated than some libertarians seem to think. In the face of massive evidence to the contrary, some assert that cartel doesn’t happen, or only happens with state assistance. Read some case law and you’ll see this is also not true.
Says you. Another example of the libertarian’s absolute knowledge admitting of no doubt that his position is the correct one. Unimpressive.
I agree with this, it has got too big. However, asserting that the choice is between ever greater “statism” and a minimalist government is a false dilemma, turns people off and ensures you will *not* get the debate you want. Accept that most people have a contrary point of view, consider that they don’t hold this view because they are mentally ill, corrupt or stupid, and try to find some common ground to at least hold a debate on. Dropping in-words like “statist” would be a good start.
It’s out of date because it will not work in a complex technological society. I quite accept that libertarianism, or something close to it, could have worked, and quite possibly did work, in a much simpler pre-industrial society. This does *not* mean it will work in *any* society. Society is much more complex, more densely populated and more interdependent than previously, and it is this added complexity that militates against libertarian remedies. Furthermore, our understanding of society, of humanity and of both collective and individual needs is also much more complex now than previously, and it can be seen easily enough that (a) libertarianism really is too simplistic and answer and (b) alternatives are now understood that were not conceived of before. Economics is another good example of this – we now understand fairly well that fiat money can, properly managed, give all the advantages of commodity currency but without the disadvantages.
What dates libertarianism is its refusal to see that a vastly more complex society and a greater understanding of that society renders its prescriptions at best redundant and at worst highly regressive. Hayek figured that one out, though. Then again, some libertarians seem to think he was a socialist.
Taxation is not theft. It is the price of living in society, and if you don’t like the price you are quite free to choose another society with a different price. There is, after all, an unregulated free market in nations, a choice of some 200 all with different fees. This is what you want, is it not? So what’s the complaint?
Ah, yes. You want the free lunch. You want all the benefits of western liberal democracy but you don’t want to pay the fee. Well, that’s just not on offer, never has been and almost certainly never will be. You don’t like it, you’re free to go live somewhere else.
EG
I kinda thought this might be an interesting thread to post on. But, seeing as EG has just posted an essay which I really desist. Is he chained to a keyboard or something?
Euan Gray: Taxation is not theft. It is the price of living in society, and if you don’t like the price you are quite free to choose another society with a different price.
There is only solution to the problem of grown men who not only write this vomitrocious tripe, but believe it, and that is that they inevitably must die violently.
You want the free lunch. You want all the benefits of western liberal democracy
Euan Gray wants my property, and he would take it by force sans any contract containing my signature.
He is a tyrant, and he must die.
Euan, Euan, Euan.
Euan.
Look here.
“Partake of civil society and you get, for example, law enforcement and the administration of justice much more efficiently and easily than if you were to do it alone.”
Tell that to Tony Martin.
As for the rest of your points in that paragraph, collective action by individuals is not the same thing as collectivism.
“It is unfortunately necessary to have some degree of external coercive regulation on the free market, at least if one wants it to remain reasonably free. Market abuse, contract abuse, fraud and theft are rather more prevalent and often much more sophisticated than some libertarians seem to think.”
I cannot see how a regulated market is free. It is one or the other. ‘Market abuse’ is god knows what. But punishable by customers voting with their feet. Our point is that adult are and should be capable of so doing without being nannied.
And as for ‘[libertarianism being] out of date because it will not work in a complex technological society…”
Are you seriously suggesting that 60 million people, or however many, making instantaneous and long-term decisions that suit them is inferior to allowing a man like, say, John Prescott with his universally-ridiculed record in public office, to make generalised decisions for them?
Surely a complex society demands the complexity of 60 million different decision-makers, not some untermensch with a chip on his shoulder.
And finally, if you agree that government has got too big, at what point do we coalesce around a ‘correct’ size? The libertarian argument is that this is simply not possible other than by an exercise in the tyranny of the majority. You may think a government spending 40% of GDP is suitable. I may think it should only be 10%. Others may think more or less. By what guiding light does one decide, if the tyranny of the m. is to be avoided?
(Libertarianism) is out of date because it will not work in a complex technological society.
Libertarianism does not “work” because its premise is that ethics can be promoted at ballot-boxes — which is a manifestly stupid idea given that elections are processes wherein pirate crews gather to appoint their captains and squabbled over their fair shares of the spoils.
No, ethics is promoted when evil people who don’t listen are pumped full of holes.
Kill the tax collector, hmm? I assume you have apprised your government of your intent? If not, why not?
Oh, come on, you can do better than that old one, surely?
Life is involuntary. You did not ask to be born, you had no say over the matter and you had no say over the country in which your parents lived. You cannot sign anything for this. However, I assume you know that a contract does not need to be written down and signed in order to be valid? There is such a thing as implied consent.
Up to the age of majority, you don’t have the right to decide where you live and you must necessarily accept your parents’ choice. However, once you reach majority the choice *is* yours. By electing to remain where you are, you assent to the contract whereby you pay over a share of your income in tax. Nobody is going to prevent you leaving and making a *free choice* of where you wish to live, but wherever you choose to live you need to pay the relevant fee.
You don’t *need* to sign, nor does the state need your signature on a contract in order to levy tax. Staying where you are is implied consent to this arrangement, but as stated you are free to leave when you wish.
Please tell me that’s a threat. My lawyer is doubtless looking for work.
Tony Martin is by all accounts educationally sub-normal, to put it politely. I think he lost what little credibility he had when he started supporting the BNP. He is not a good role model for the libertarian cause, as I have said several times before.
Too simplistic. You need regulation against, at a minimum, fraud and deception. This can cover a great many things, probably rather more than many libertarians think. Weights and measures are one, currency regulation another. Once you start looking into it, it’s quite surprising just how ingenious people can be at defrauding and cheating others, and it’s also rather surprising just how common this is. In order to keep the market free from such things, you need regulation. You also need regulation against cartel, because it *will* otherwise happen.
Ignoring the specific issue of Prescott but accepting the general principle, there are a couple of points. Firstly, people quite often *don’t* make long term decisions that suit them – refer to the recent thread on the Spectator and the articles within it. Secondly, in some cases this lack of sensible choice can be detrimental and in such circumstances it is not unreasonable to guide or sometimes require certain choices. In the majority of cases, however, the consequences of poor choice are not that severe and thus compulsion is unnecessary and even guidance may not be productive.
In many cases, but not always. Just as central direction in all cases will not work too well, so a total lack of central direction in all cases will not work too well. It isn’t a binary, all-or-nothing choice. I realise that’s a little more complex than the comforting simplicity of dogma, but that’s life.
It’s a compromise. You’ll never get it exactly right, or optimal, since you cannot please all of the people all of the time. Frankly, it’s somewhat stupid to try, since you’d just be wasting your time. Some people will have to accept that state share of GDP is too high, others that it is too low, for their tastes. Having a functioning democracy with wide participation and sensible informed debate is probably the least bad way of reaching this compromise.
It’s not unreasonable to suggest that limiting your desire for no taxation and no welfare is a fair tradeoff for limiting someone else’s desire that you pay 70% income tax to fund a lavish welfare system.
EG
Euan:
Your post fairly drips with condescension. How nauseating.
EG,
Don’t you think that might turn people off what is already an unpopular view?
It does me; and I’m pretty far down the libertarian axis and pretty unpopular myself.
This is just historical inevitablism (sic?) dressed up as cynical world-weariness. The Left has done remarkably well by keeping its eye on the very long-term, pure ideological goals and pursuing them ruthlessly. Why should the rest of us not learn a lesson or two from that?,.
Edward, your point is absolutely spot on. Well said. This is the point that the naysayers about libertarianism miss: we are in this for the long haul, whereas Euan Gray and those who take his stance are thinking in terms of the near-term, which is okay, but not what we are about.
GH: your post got deleted because it said nothing about anything to do with the topic at hand, was boorish, and I deleted it. Let’s all keep things civil, please.
At first Euan was arguing that because lots of governments are very big (in size and scope) it is a good thing that they are big (which, of course, is not an argument at all).
Now we get all the same old nonsense we have had from him in the past.
Libertarianism not possible in a “technological society”, taxes a “price for living in society” and so on and so on.
All of it nonsense, and some it the opposite of the truth (for example the claim that more government intervention is needed the more complicated society is – whereas, in fact, the more complicated society is the more harm statism does).
Government may indeed be needed (if only to defend against other governments) or it may not – it is a complicated argument. But Euan knows nothing about either side of this argument.
Taxation may be needed to finance defence – or it may not. Again it is complicated argument – and again Euan knows nothing about either side of the argument.
As for economics. Euan not only knows nothing about this – he does not want to learn anything (I experimented with treating him as if he did – and he does not).
I have often learned from talking with people with whom I do not agree. I have both gained information that I did not have before, and I have found mistakes in my own thought and done my best to correct them – yet have never learned anything from Euan (and neither has anyone else here). Why is this – if Euan is just a person with a different point of view who has come here to exchange opinions with us?
There is no effort to present information that other people have not got and there is no effort at dialogue either.
All the above raises the question of why Euan is here at all.
“To get my questions replied to” – not true.
Euan is not seeking information (he is not interested in the matters that are disscussed here), he is simply a troll – “let me bait the libertarians till they lose their tempers” and (of course) if you bait people long enough they will lose their tempers.
I suppose Euan has nothing better to do with his time (I can understand that – my family are dead and it can be lonely). And it is certainly safer than going in to a pub and picking a fight with people (after all even Billy can not reach through the computer and actually hit Euan – no matter how much he might want to).
So Euan gets the cheap thrill of picking fights with people (by being a troll) – whilst knowing that he is quite safe.
I would have banned him ages ago – but this site does not belong to me.
The trouble with just ignoring Euan (and I have tried that) is that he is still there messing people about.
But again, this is not my site. It is like being a house guest and watching another guest going out of his way to be as vile as he can to all the other guests – and rejecting all efforts to reason with him. It is clearly very unpleasant to live in the same space as this man, and a blog can be like a small bit of physical space.
If it were my house I would ask him to leave – and toss him out if he would not go. But it is not my house.
A society – whether considered as civil society, a corporation, a fishing club or even a political party – is something greater than the mere sum of its parts. Partake of civil society and you get, for example, law enforcement and the administration of justice much more efficiently and easily than if you were to do it alone, because of that annoying greater than the sum of its parts thing.
Maybe I should have put it differently: by “greater than the sum of its parts” I meant that “society” (the short-hand term for the aggregate of people and the institutions they make) does not have “rights” of its own. We see this notion when people talk about “getting a raw deal from society”, as if “society” was a thinking, acting agent rather than a noun. A lot of collectivist sentiment seems to survive because of the sloppy use of language.
When Mrs Thatcher made her oft-quoted, or misquoted remark about “no such thing as society”, she meant that societies are composed of individual people with minds of their own and rights over their own persons and property. And ?as we are now all wearily familiar, you don’t have a lot of time for such a view, do you Euan? The Enlightenment might as well have never happened.
Market abuse, contract abuse, fraud and theft are rather more prevalent and often much more sophisticated than some libertarians seem to think.
Then if that is true, the law needs to be enforced, although I would add, Euan, that it does not help when regulators invent new supposed financial “crimes”, including in the grey areas to do with certain forms of trading.
Like I said earlier, the state would do us a lot of good by focussing on punishing the crimes I do think are crimes: fraud, theft, robbery, violence against persons, etc, rather than inventing so-called victimless crimes that vastly inflate the potential for real crime and ensure that genuine crimes go unpunished.
Many people fear true liberty and are comfortable with welfare and other income redistribution schemes (aka, legalized theft). It’s hard to argue with that, since all you need to do is look outside. But libertarianism even allows for this, with the added benefit of applying only to those who agree. You can form private agencies and sign contracts that “force” you to give them X% of your labor value, in order to fund whatever causes you find socially important. Make the contract very tough, so that goons with guns come to your door and lock you up if you decide you don’t want to pay anymore. These agencies could even have their own flags, and songs, and holidays.
If that option doesn’t seem reasonable to you, why is that? If most people like the status quo, then it will arise naturally under a free market anarchism. Or is it that people only like the status quo because they think everyone else is forced to abide by it too? This is a psychological problem, and doesn’t seem to be a valid basis for a political philosophy.
Many people fear true liberty and are comfortable with welfare and other income redistribution schemes (aka, legalized theft). It’s hard to argue with that, since all you need to do is look outside. But libertarianism even allows for this, with the added benefit of applying only to those who agree. You can form private agencies and sign contracts that “force” you to give them X% of your labor value, in order to fund whatever causes you find socially important. Make the contract very tough, so that goons with guns come to your door and lock you up if you decide you don’t want to pay anymore. These agencies could even have their own flags, and songs, and holidays.
If that option doesn’t seem reasonable to you, why is that? If most people like the status quo, then it will arise naturally under a free market anarchism. Or is it that people only like the status quo because they think everyone else is forced to abide by it too? This is a psychological problem, and doesn’t seem to be a valid basis for a political philosophy.
It’s going to be an extremely long haul then, given the rate at which you’re winning the popular argument.
No, I wasn’t. I was saying that governments are big because a majority of people seem to want it that way, or at any rate are sufficiently unperturbed by it not to actively oppose it. My point is that libertarianism, if it is to ever get outside the fringe, needs to understand that many people seem to want this and they are not sick, deluded, corrupt or evil Gramscian conspirators just because they do want it.
Incorrect. Take road traffic regulation. In a simple society where few have cars you really don’t need much if any traffic law, and such was the case. However, as the number of road users increases, so the ability of the users to sort themselves out amicably without coercive regulation decreases. Thus, a more densely populated and more compelx society in this respect requires more, not less, intervention. There are multiple areas which show the same basic pattern – drug law, house construction regulations, public order regulation, need for policing, and so on.
I know more about it than you seem to think. I have in fact read many of the books you talked about in our correspondence, but gave up trying to talk to you about it because you seem to assume that anyone who does not instantly see the light upon exposure to Mises or Hayek is a wilful fool or possibly evil. The ideology is *not* as persuasive as you seem to think it is, a fact amply demonstrated by the tiny number of libertarians in our society and the lack of popular support for the ideas.
It seems in general that your “argument” is that Euan is wrong and quite possibly evil and should therefore be banned, but you fail to address a single point raised – possibly because the questions he raises are too difficult to answer? It’s not enough just to say “you’re wrong.” Even I explain at length why I think what I do and why I think you are wrong – you don’t. It’s not possible to have dialogue when one side gives detailed explanations of his point of view and criticism of the opposing view, but the opposing view cannot or will not respond any more than to say in effect “I disagree, therefore you are wrong but I’m not going to say why.” Again, this is illustrative of the self-imposed crippling of libertarianism by its wooden refusal to engage unless its view is accepted as the only valid one.
EG
Of course the ideology is not persuasive, Euan. After all, no one likes being told they’re selfish and lazy for living off the labor of others, i.e., the welfare state. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. The mere fact that “the people want it” doesn’t make it sensible, moral, or even pragmatic. It just means the mob won.
No, Euan, the reason why Paul Marks pretty much has given up on you as a rational and fair debater — and I am frankly of the same opinion, old boy — is your constant misrepresentation of the arguments in view. And spare us the constant refrain of yours about how libertarian ideas are “mid-Victorian” or out of date. As I have noted before, try actually bothering to deal with the logic of an argument, not whether it is out of fashion like 1970s platform shoes. That sort of approach is shallow, to say the least.
As you know I have replied to your points many times Euan.
For example, that civil society is the web of interconections between human beings (it is not an entity) and that cultural institutions (such as language) are not entities either.
Or that how a road is run is up to the owner of the road (if people do not like his rules there is the railway). Of course there are the standard bundle of rights that make up property (such as right of access – no false imprisonment simply by buying land in a circle around a person). There is a vast literature on the complex nature of property rights (of which demonstrating the absurdity of zoning is only a small part).
But you are not interested in any discussion. I have never learned anything from you on any subject (and neither has anyone else here). Whereas I have learned much from people who have statist opinions (but wish to have a real conversation)
I do not know for sure that you actually have statist opinions at all. My belief is that you just carefully think out how you can obey the rules of formal politeness (that is part of your game) whilst winding people up as much as possible.
With respect to J.P. above, is is not a matter of you thinking short term and we thinking long term (or anything like that). You are not here to provide information or to explain your thoughts about a topic – you are here to annoy and have no other objective.
Of course I would ask you to leave if this were my house (I have already said that), but it is not my house.
Society is composed of individuals. Those individuals act sometimes as individuals, sometimes banding together variously as family, village, city, county or nation. What I argue for is not the collectivisation of people, but rather the recognition that a simple set of rules based on a focus only on one of these aspects is flawed.
I think libertarianism goes wrong when it emphasises the individual far more often than necessary and neglects the fact that people are not *only* individuals. There are rules which apply to individuals, different rules which apply to families, rules different again which apply to local communities of individuals and families, and yet more different rules which apply to nations made up of all of these. This is not rocket science, it’s how humanity works and it is fundamentally misunderstood by both libertarians and Marxists, both of whom seek a simple prescription for all. Both of these views are deeply flawed and bound to fail because they basically do not understand human nature.
I think you’d need to be a bit more specific before I could agree or not. As a general principle, though, I do agree that there are altogether too many notional crimes which seem often enough to be excuses to raise fines. This doesn’t mean that all financial crimes in grey areas are invalid regulations, though. As I said above, people are frightfully ingenious when it comes to fraud and deception, and I suspect probably more so than you might think – such frauds and deceptions do often need to be discouraged.
Fair enough, but as I said earlier the definitions of theft and fraud are more complex than many libertarians seem to think. This inevitably means more regulations than they expect.
You know, in some ways I’d like to see a libertarian government, provided it wasn’t in any country I lived in. I’d give them about six months before they realised that Gray was right and things really are a lot more complicated in reality than they are in principle, and libertarianism like anything else would surprise them with the good old unintended consequences.
Yes, this is an issue. Again, though, it’s largely a question of definition – what is victimless? Also, what are the consequences of making the offence no longer an offence? Again, I suspect more complexity than the libertarian thinks.
EG
Who the hell said it did? My point, clearly stated several times now, is not that this is necessarily sensible, moral or pragmatic but that it exists and that libertarianism needs to understand that the reason it exists is because people – for perfectly good and justified reasons – want it.
Basically, understand that there is a contrary opinion and it is not held because the holders are stupid. They have their reasons, just as you do yours. Libertarians have no monopoly on truth or wisdom, whatever some may think.
EG
Euan:
try to get this through your head: the holders of these contrary opinions, i.e., collectivists like yourself, HAVE NO RIGHT to impose their selfishness and desire for a free lunch on me. Or you, for that matter. Just as I can’t break into your house, rob you and then give the money to the homeless guy sleeping behind a dumpster one block down, their needs, wants, etc. do NOT give them a claim on my life. And no amount of rationalizing and collectivist apologetics will change that.
Nor, for that matter, do you have any right to tell a majority that they may not have it just because you don’t want it. That’s rather the point of democracy, is it not? You remember, that thing being imposed at gunpoint in a foreign country?
Anyway, you clearly prefer an amen chorus. Have it, enjoy it, and much good may it do you all.
Vale.
EG
Am I the only one that can see the lunacy of Euan’s argument?
On the one hand, I (and my libertarian friends here) have NO WISH WHATSOEVER to impose my views, wants, desires, or even needs on ANYONE else. I don’t want to confiscate their hard-earned money, force them to follow the dictates of my religion, force-feed their children government propaganda through so-called “public education,” etc. In short, I only wish to LEAVE OTHERS ALONE and be left alone in turn, as long as I’m not interfering in anyone else’s ability to live as they choose or exercise their rights.
But, according to Euan, somehow I * have no right * to expect to be left alone, since the majority outnumber me and after all, they WANT to be able to confiscate my money, force religious views (or, anti-religious views for that matter) on me, etc. This is, according to Euan, the “whole point of democracy.”
Umm… does it get any sicker than that?
You are not the only one, Richard. Euan is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Unfortunately, as he is so fond of reminding us, he’s not the only one, either.
Well said, Richard Easbey! You are by no means alone here. Like many other denizens of Samizdata, I gave up trying to respond to Euan Gray quite some time ago, because responses only provoke massive, turgid texts of explication.
Verity writes:
“Like many other denizens of Samizdata, I gave up trying to respond to Euan Gray quite some time ago, because responses only provoke massive, turgid texts of explication.”
Well, quite. As he always does, Paul Marks raised some very interesting issues in his post. They deserved a mature discussion between people who understood what he was talking about.
Am I the only Samizdata reader who inescapably thinks of Euan Gray’s comments and Gordon Brown’s speeches as (to mix my metaphors) sisters under the kilt?
Either way, the dead hand of Gray killed the thread for me, as soon as it clawed its way through the clay.
Which is a shame, as Mr. Marks really deserves better.
Richard Easbey is marginally more temperate in his language than Billy Beck, but no more reasonable. Euan Gray, however annoying you find his objections to your treasured principles, is obviously neither a lunatic nor a troll. He puts a case for a fairly firm and far-reaching system of government intervention in daily life which most people assent to by their compliance with it, even if they cannot express their approval as fluently as Mr Gray does. They vote with their bottoms and show little desire for the kind of freedom you advocate.
Refusing to recognise hardwired tendencies to collective collaboration and subordination among human beings– dismissing all rationales for these traits as mob hysteria and gullibility– is not only unrealistic but is not going to win you any converts.
Your treatment of Euan, your most persistent and eloquent critic, has becme a litmus test. Your discourtesy, spilling into obscenity, betrays your frustration at losing ground in the wider debate where too often you can only splutter incredulously at the turn the world has taken.
Once again the experience of being challenged leads your usual suspects to call for the discordant voice to be silenced. Libertarians, forsooth!
There is a whiff of MENSA about this site. You should drop the self-righteous solipsism and take a searching look at yourselves if you do not wish to remain a grumbling, disregarded coterie of superior souls whose wisdom nobody wants.
John McFadyen – another “sister under the kilt” as GCooper so aptly presumed re others?
I wouldn’t join a MENSA club that would accept me, so perhaps for MENSA members, John McFadyen should go sniffing elsewhere.
Euan Gray is a troll. So are you, John McFadyen, sweet thang.
GCooper – I agree that Paul Marks’s posts deserve more thoughtful responses. He always has interesting thoughts backed up by experience.
Ewan is correct in one thing, and one thing only: libertarians (especially the Randite variety) tend to underestimate how the free market can be abused. They proclaim there can be no monopolies in a truly free market through a manipulation of definitions. They are saved from the need to present evidence by the fact that there has never been a totally free market since the time of Noah.
But Ewan just does not seem to understand the basic premise of libertarianism–that, unless it is to prevent direct damage to some person or their property, no one has the right to co-erce another human being. All moral choices should be free choices, and every single choice we humans make is a choice in morality–to be moral or to be immoral. “The rest is commentary. Go and study it.” Ideally, no one should ever have power over another human being.
(and a good place to study it is
http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php)
So until Ewan “gets” this idea, it’s no real use arguing with him.
Ewan is correct in one thing, and one thing only: libertarians (especially the Randite variety) tend to underestimate how the free market can be abused. They proclaim there can be no monopolies in a truly free market through a manipulation of definitions. They are saved from the need to present evidence by the fact that there has never been a totally free market since the time of Noah.
But Ewan just does not seem to understand the basic premise of libertarianism–that, unless it is to prevent direct damage to some person or their property, no one has the right to co-erce another human being. All moral choices should be free choices, and every single choice we humans make is a choice in morality–to be moral or to be immoral. “The rest is commentary. Go and study it.” Ideally, no one should ever have power over another human being.
(and a good place to study it is
http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php)
So until Ewan “gets” this idea, it’s no real use arguing with him.
Sorry for the doublepost. Mozilla came up page not found.
jeffrey – I didn’t bother to read your post because you are apparently unable to spell a four letter name correctly. This leads me to believe you do not have much in the way of concentration. A four letter name and you can’t get it right? Euan, not Ewan.
“Ideally, no one should ever have power over another human being.” Gosh! That thought just blows me away! Tell that to the NHS! And all the thousands of government agencies allocating ‘public’ (taxpayer drain) housing to people who are too feckless to earn enough money to get a bedsit. These people have power over taxpayers, matey. Through votes, not capital, not effort, not vision. Corrupt labour party votes.
I want to see that end. One way or another.
Not my fault the man doesn’t know how to spell his own name 🙂
“Ideally, no one should ever have power over another human being.” Apparently, you did read my comment, but not carefully. Why are you dissing me for stating the central idea of libertarianism for eUan’s benefit, seeing that he obviously doesn’t understand it?
They proclaim there can be no monopolies in a truly free market through a manipulation of definitions.
What manipulation would that be? I’ve never heard a definition of monopoly that wasn’t either impossible to satisfy in a free market or so broad that it included many legitimate businesses.
This thread has run into the sand. It usually happens when Gray is around, making irrelevant or unwarranted claims, taunts that our ideas are “out of fashion”, etc. I am beginning to share Paul’s view that EG is a troll, and would be better advised to create his own blog and stop hogging Perry de Havilland’s bandwidth.
most people assent to by their compliance with it, , write McFadden. A specious argument, if I may say so. Most folk obey laws, even very silly ones, out of inertia, or because the consequences of disobeying such laws are so bad that they cannot face doing so. That said, one only has to look at the level of tax evasion, for instance, to see what happens to usually law-abiding folk when rules are seen to be divorced from any notions of objective justice. This happened in Britain during the late 1970s when tax reached insane levels, for example.
This is the point that the naysayers about libertarianism miss: we are in this for the long haul
It’s going to be an extremely long haul then, given the rate at which you’re winning the popular argument.
That’s all right. Liberals won the argument about absolute monarchy. We won the argument about slavery. We won it about fascism. Then communism. And we’re going to win it over totalitarian religion, although I strongly disagree with current tactical choices. Everything else leads to stacks and stacks of bodies.
But we’re going to win the other, longer arguments, too, because Eastern Europe, Iceland, China, India, Ireland, Hong Kong, etc. etc. etc. are right there screaming, “We only got moving when we freed people.” There’s not going to be a libertarian utopia any time soon, and we’re not going to sweep the polls in the next four years. But the argument is over. In the 21st century, any country that doesn’t have free people is going to be as obsolete as the horse-and-buggy. And that obsolete country could be Britain. Or America. We may lose the argument here and win it in Estonia and Taiwan.
But make no mistake. A sack of wasted carbon like Bush or Blair makes no difference to the long-run argument. That argument is over and done.
And we won.
– Josh
Josh, well said sir.
Those individuals act sometimes as individuals, sometimes banding together variously as family, village, city, county or nation. What I argue for is not the collectivisation of people, but rather the recognition that a simple set of rules based on a focus only on one of these aspects is flawed.
The point is that individuals who “band together” can choose to “un-band” if they wish. Power of decision-making ultimately resides with the individual. Only individuals can think and choose, which is why the notion of group rights always struck me as an oxymoron. Individuals can create institutions that have powers, like the power of a corporation, but that power is delegated by its creators, and can be revoked or changed.
The libertarian position does not deny the many benefits of folk acting in groups and enjoying the benefits of co-operation (the division of labour in the market being a classic example of said). What they do emphatically deny is that there is some process of alchemy by which individuals’ liberties are somehow subsumed into a larger whole. They are not.
New labour is pro free enterprise. The difference between new and old labour parallels hunter-gathering versus farming: old labour merely wanted to squeeze the rich; new labour wants to keep tame herds of rich who can be squeezed to order (but never too much). That’s what the whole prudence, free enterprise etc etc thing means, when it’s them saying it.
Libertarianism has nothing against collective collaboration and collaboration always involves someone being subordinated to someone else. To even suggest otherwise shows how completely you do not know what you are talking about. A company involves people collaborating and being subordinated to a hierarchy… so are you under the impression libertarians oppose companies?
No, the problem libertarians or any sort of classical liberal have is with imposed force backed collectivism without prior concent. A collectivist state is not about ‘collaboration’ but about coersion. It is revealing that you cannot tell the difference.
Johnathan Pearce wrote:
“one only has to look at the level of tax evasion, for instance, to see what happens to usually law-abiding folk when rules are seen to be divorced from any notions of objective justice. This happened in Britain during the late 1970s when tax reached insane levels, for example.”
That’s an argument against high taxes, nothing more. According to you, we now have a more oppressive state but lower taxes. Ergo, there is no necessary link between them.
Ibid.: “Most folk obey laws, even very silly ones, out of inertia, or because the consequences of disobeying such laws are so bad that they cannot face doing so.”
This is precisely the patronising tone that puts people off your philosophy and makes you look so irrelevant. How do you know why ‘most folk’ act the way they do?
Ibid.: “A company involves people collaborating and being subordinated to a hierarchy… so are you under the impression libertarians oppose companies?”
As it happens, a lot of classical liberals were vehemently against the extension of the joint-stock principle to companies in general in the law reforms of the 19C. They preferred sole trading or unlimited partnerships and mutuality for bigger enterprises: they smelt a rat in the idea that direction and ownership should be legally separate, with limited liability for shareholders who would not be able to supervise the company’s operations from day to day. They thought this was a thieves’ charter and would let promoters welsh on their debts after mismanaging businesses. Looking at subsequent scandals, the racketeering in the mutual funds industry and the almost total impotence of shareholders today, one can see why.
So you see, even in what you intend as a conclusive analogy t isn’t as clear-cut as you make out. The proposition that collaboration should stop short of vesting trust in elected governments is not as obvious to the mass of mankind as to you.
As for Perry de Havilland: I don’t care to be told that I don’t know what I am talking about by someone who cannot even spell. That is no way to make new friends. Can’t you see how off-putting this instant retreat into sneering is? It makes you look like a little sect which is terrified of being challenged. Then we have your most constant correspondent, ‘Verity’, misspelling my name in order to tell me I’m a troll the first time I post.
You won’t get anywhere by being so inhospitable.
Union Jock, let’s have a look at what you say:
According to you, we now have a more oppressive state but lower taxes. Ergo, there is no necessary link between them.. Heh?
This is precisely the patronising tone that puts people off your philosophy and makes you look so irrelevant. How do you know why ‘most folk’ act the way they do?
You do you know either?
As it happens, a lot of classical liberals were vehemently against the extension of the joint-stock principle to companies in general in the law reforms of the 19C.
Some, but not all, libertarians continue to debate the need for limited liability companies. Not sure how I stand on the issue myself.
They thought this was a thieves’ charter and would let promoters welsh on their debts after mismanaging businesses. Looking at subsequent scandals, the racketeering in the mutual funds industry and the almost total impotence of shareholders today, one can see why.
Indeed. I agree.
Then we have your most constant correspondent, ‘Verity’, misspelling my name in order to tell me I’m a troll the first time I post.
Yes, she is a bit tiresome. Don’t let the ferocious Lady of Mexico put you off, and come back for more comments, so long as you also remember to keep your cool. Manners are a two-way street.
rgds
Jonathan – I’m not “of Mexico”. I’m “of Britain”. I am in Mexico, probably temporarily, while I learn Spanish.
There are several commenters here who are “a bit tiresome” – windbag contrarian Euan Gray clunks heavily to mind – but being male, they are not categorised as “a bit tiresome”. “Tiresome” is something trivial, so it would only apply to women. Or, a woman. The only one commenting regularly. I wonder what it is about the dismissive, bullying tone of so many people around here that other women don’t bother to frequent this place very often?
Tony Martin is by all accounts educationally sub-normal, to put it politely. I think he lost what little credibility he had when he started supporting the BNP. He is not a good role model for the libertarian cause, as I have said several times before.
I cringed when Tony Martin was mentioned, because he’s meat and drink to EG. But calling him ESN is a new low. If you saw him on the recent TV programme he came across a perfectly decent rational man who was at the end of his tether when two thieves broke into his home at dead of night. Brendon Fearon was on the same programme, and came across as a nasty piece of work. No great surprise.
If, as you say, Tony Martin is supporting the BNP I’m not surprised. The political establishment shat all over him, and as I understand it the BNP will support the right of householders to protect their homes against invasion.
As to his being a role model for the libertarian cause, why should he be? He was, and is, a Norfolk farmer who lived alone, and defended his home against two men who had without doubt broken in to steal his property and destroy his peace of mind. I support him as a human being, but I doubt he has much interest in libertarianism, apart from his reasonable desire to be left alone by criminals.
John, don’t worry, Verity calls everybody, who disagrees with her worldview, a troll.
Next she’ll be on to spelling, punctuation and general other name calling.
There’s a reason why debate often doesn’t last long on this site.
Union Jock confuses spelling and political philosophy.
Basically his argument is “you can not tell me that I am wrong if you spell a word wrong”.
Deeply confused.
I will now spell the word colour with a K – Kolour.
However, I can still tell you that you do not know much about some of the things you write about and make lots of mistakes (one of which Perry noted) even though I misspelt the word colour wrongly (and, knowing my habits, I have, most likely, misspelled lots of other words as well – by the way my grammar is also terrible).
As for Euan Blair: He has been a troll on this site for YEARS (I know him from many other threads). It is always the same – the formal politeness covering up an intention to annoy as much as possible (this is what he enjoys doing – that is what a troll is).
I have learnt a lot from talking with people of statist opinions (and not just learnt information, I have been led to see weak areas in my own thought). But I have never learnt anything about any subject from Euan Blair – and neither have any of us.
Is that because we are wicked people? Or because we do not read Euan Blair’s comments carefully enough (I admit to not carefully reading his writings now – but I used to read them with great care).
Look at his last but one comment “who the hell said it did” when a person (quite correctly) accuses him of holding that if the majority want something it is the right policy. And just a few words later on we are told that majority want statism “for perfectly good and justified reasons”.
The point is that even if it is proved that the majority want (for example) “public services” that give the same standard of service as private services they CAN NOT have this (no matter how many “perfectly good and justified reasons” they may have) – they can not have a barking cat (as Milton Friedman would say).
Now you might say “you should find out what he means by perfectly good and justifed reasons and then see whether there is some truth in what he says”.
That ignores all the stuff above about lots of countries being statist therefore statism being good (see Euan Blair’s other comments) – but it also ignores our EXPERIENCE of Euan Blair .
We have all been down this road before. Not just me but Verity (by the way, thankyou Verity for the nice things you said about me – and thanks to the other people also) and many others – and we are tired of it.
We have arguments among ourselves (sometimes sharp ones) and sometimes non free market people come in and say “excuse me but such and such a fact is wrong here is the correct statistic” (or whatever)or “I think what you say here is mistaken because of such and such” or “is in contradiction to something else you said” (and sometimes these non free market people are right and people like me are wrong).
But none of this applies to Euan Blair.
Euan Blair is not really interested in discussion (however good his spelling is), he is here to annoy and has no other objective – he is a troll.
Logic has a limited place in politics.
So does morality, or rather it has no place. I find it funny that apologists for the amoral are shocked and indignant that those with principles call them on it. And by “funny” I mean tragically hypocritical since apologists for the amoral have no moral standing. Cue the predictable, “there you go again!”
On the point about taxes. Taxation is only one form of oppression (it is taking money by the threat of violence – extortion). One may be able to justify taxation on “lesser evil” gounds (if one can prove that the alternative means invasion and more violation of property in person and possessions) – but one should not pretend it is not a violation. But there are other forms of oppression – for example one can pass laws limiting freedom of speech.
There were some insane tax RATES in the 1970’s (83% income tax, for example – that really was “insane” because at that rate government actually gets LESS revenue than it would if taxes were lower). But I doubt tax as a percentage of the total economy was much higher than it is now.
The first person (as far as I know) to say that high taxes need not mean other forms of oppression was Hegel – he pointed at some Swiss Cantons that had low tax rates, but had some harsh laws – Hegel also claimed that, therefore, tax was nothing to do with oppression (Dr Johnson in “Taxation is no Tyranny” was making a different argument – but I will not go into that here).
The same mistake.
It is like me saying “punching a man for nothing is wrong” and then complaining about someone kicking someone for nothing.
Would you then say “look you are complaining about the person being kicked for nothing which proves that that punching someone for nothing has no connection with wrong”.
High tax states tend to do a lot of other bad things – but yes you are correct they do not ALWAYS do them.
Just as man who punches another person for nothing may not also kick people for nothing – but he is likely to be that sort.
On limited liabilty companies – you are right there is a big debate on that one.
I know of many libertarians (living and dead – one recently dead, God rest his soul), who have a deep hostility to the concept.
My own position is that as long as someone knows what he is trading with it is not a violation of the non aggression principle.
It is a bit like this:
Mr Smith sells some bread to Mr Jones on credit, and then (when it is time to pay) Mr Jones says “I am sorry I do not have the money to pay you – I honestly thought I would, but I do not”.
Later on Mr Smith sees Mr Jones driving a nice car “sell that car and pay me for my bread” says Mr Smith.
“No” says Mr Jones – “you sold the bread to Mr Jones Enterprises Limited, and this car belongs to me personally”.
I would like to see a bit more stress on the fact that a company was limited liabilty. For example not “Capita” – but “Capita Limited” (ditto the other corps) – but I think most people know what they are dealing with.
They know they run the risk of not being paid what they are owed, but still seeing the high managers drive off in their nice cars to their big houses.
Shareholders are another factor. Although (due to taxes and regulations) most shares are owned by financial institutions these days (not individuals) so really it is one set of hired managers who “own” the shares of another set of hired managers (and, of course, they sit on each other’s “remuneration committees”) – no wonder people hate corps, but it is still not a direct violation.
One has to decide whether to take the risk.
Of course such things as inheritance tax and capital gains tax (which discriminate against individuals in favour of corporations) should be abolished.
Then there is the whole area of the most important corporations of them all – the banks (of various sorts).
That would lead us in to area I do have a problem with. The area of trying to finance borrowing other than by real savings (i.e. other people not consuming all of their income).
The vast complexity of the area does not alter the fact that (at the base) fractional reserve banking is about financing some borrowing by other means than real savings (hence the boom-bust cycle).
And yes this “classical liberal” (although I have long felt closer to the ideas of Edmund Burke) does have a problem with these clever book keeping tricks.
“It is not fraud because the statute says it is not fraud”. Not O.K.
I have no problem with the money lending idea (no matter how high the interest rates), but clever bankers always want to be more than money lenders – they want to lend money they do not have as well (and that is not O.K.).
“But we are backed by the Bank of England or [in the United States] by the Federal Reserve system – so everything is fine”.
Errrr no it is not – as will be seen with the next bust.
“But, according to Euan, somehow I * have no right * to expect to be left alone, since the majority outnumber me and after all, they WANT to be able to confiscate my money, force religious views (or, anti-religious views for that matter) on me, etc. This is, according to Euan, the “whole point of democracy.”
Umm… does it get any sicker than that?”
No, it is the whole logic of grinding 150 million human beings into hamburger and bone meal (in the last century alone), revealed for all to see.
No one has a right to “vote” on Anne Frank’s right to exist.
I was sorry to read that someone or other – forgive me, but I don’t have time to scroll back and see who – cringed at my mention of Tony Martin.
He is indeed a litmus test; I personally always suspected the hand of Alistair Campbell in the blackguarding of Martin’s name that accompanied his trial.
Whenever I have seen him on television, he seemed to me, too, to be an entirely reasonable man. The epitome of that section of England which, since Diana’s death, no longer recognises its own country.
I can see no relevance whatever in his being educationally subnormal. I will credit Euan Gray – and thousands wouldn’t – with not having meant to suggest that Martin being in any way educationally deficient (and I have no idea if he is) means he deserved his fate.
And of course my point in using him as an example was not to adduce him as a libertarian. I have no idea what his views are. Nor do I care. The point is that Martin, like many others like him, was the victim of the state’s determination to disarm the law-abiding while allowing the criminal classes to go about their business.
Whoever it was who cringed at the mention of his name experienced, I fear, no more than a disreputable cultural cringe. Get over it. His case stands on the facts of the injustice done to him; Campbellite smearing is immaterial.
As for the rest of this thread, it’s clearly a case of never the twain, etc.
The more interesting question is this: if so many of us agree with Billy Beck’s position that collectivism is theft and slavery, why do not more of us, believing as we do that these are among the most depraved of evils, react – and I mean react; not just talking about it – forcefully to defend our property and personal rights?
why do not more of us, believing as we do that these are among the most depraved of evils, react – and I mean react; not just talking about it – forcefully to defend our property and personal rights?
Because Campbell, Blair and the thugs and enforcers that surround them went to a lot of trouble to show the British people, via Tony Martin, what would happen if they did.
Perhaps we should start a separate post on Mr Martin as this is getting way off Paul’s original post.
Whoever it was who cringed at the mention of his name experienced, I fear, no more than a disreputable cultural cringe
I was the cringer, but only because I knew what EG’s response would be. He loves having a go at Tony Martin, and I would never give him the gratification of raising the Tony Martin case in his presence. But as I said, his description of TM as educationally sub-normal brought the sneering down to a new level. From TV interviews Tony Martin comes across as a fairly decent sort of man who objects to having his property invaded by thieves. He did actually seem to be sorry that Fred Barrass died, but he’s too honest to say that he is sorry for defending himself the way he did.
If his experience of the British political establishment has led him to support the BNP I couldn’t really hold it against him. Anyway, he’s entitled to his political beliefs is he not?
Well, Verity, I grant you that we have been cudgelled into submission by a combination base, misplaced moral blackmail and incremental criminalisation which strips the law-abiding (by which I mean those lacking classical criminal intent) of the self-certainty to act on their proper rights, but…
… I am not sure it is an adequate answer in respect of those of us who believe we see more clearly what has occurred.
Visitors to Britain often ask, apropos other shortcomings they witness, not necessarily those of the velvet tyranny, ‘why do you put up with it?’
Why indeed? I fear we put up with too much. And we have no honourable explanation for so doing.
Absolutely, he is entitled to his views. I hope I gave no indication that I thought to the contrary.
I liked your line about how he was probably sorry that Barras died, but too honest to say he was sorry for defending himself.
There are too many people in this country who know, somehow, that something has gone desperately wrong, but who lack the articulacy to explain the desperation of their circumstances as succinctly as you do here in re. T. Martin.
Ayn Rand’s Hank Rearden – albeit he is in many ways a superman – is a classic literary example of such a type.
Imperius Patrician Gray poo-poos a peasant’s insistance of owership of his own property as being primary over Gray’s hired governement’s envious clutches: Oh, come on, you can do better than that old one, surely?
You seem to be under the assumption that I am an earnestly attempting to rational convince you to keep your paws off my stuff.
Don’t be — because I am under no such illusions that anything short of removal of your limbs will restrain your kleptocratic impulses.
Ah but, Mike, would you?
I share the clarity of your perception, yet…
why do not more of us, believing as we do that these are among the most depraved of evils, react – and I mean react; not just talking about it – forcefully to defend our property and personal rights?
Because you all want to die in hospital beds with tubes up your noses.
Edward Lud – They were intentionally brutish and brutal over Tony Martin to show the electorate who is the boss, and to some extent it worked. People were cowed.
Except Fred Fearon, of course, who, I believe, finally did a stretch in prison on his 37th conviction. (This was for claiming disability from the state for the “injuries” done him by Tony Martin, those injuries making it impossible for him to work. Poor thing could barely walk. Then the man whose new mountain bike Fearon had stolen videoed him riding it up a hill. Ooops! Conviction no 37 and banged up. They couldn’t find a way of pinning it on Tony Martin.
Do you also remember the talk, before Martin was released, of spending £500,000 to relocate him to Australia because he had received death threats from the dead kid’s gypsy tribe? The police obviously traced who was doing the threatening, but posed as helpless in the face of these dumb, illiterate gypsies and unable to protect Mr Martin’s life if he stayed in Britain. Why? To frighten the citizenry.
This thread has run into the sand. It usually happens when Gray is around, making irrelevant or unwarranted claims, taunts that our ideas are “out of fashion”, etc.
He’s not a troll; he’s *laughing* at the idiotic notion many of you have that one’s rights are something that can legitimacy ajudicated by a mob.
Liberty has never been voted in, anyway, because politics is all about *force*.
Ah but, Mike, would you?
Read the “die in hospital beds” link in the post just under yours.
At some point, I’ll have nothing better to do than participate in what the Founders over here called “the animating contest of liberty”.
Verity – “Do you also remember the talk, before Martin was released, of spending £500,000 to relocate him to Australia because he had received death threats from the dead kid’s gypsy tribe?”
I do remember. We are the people of the servants.
Mike, I take it you’re a Septic Tank just waiting for a chance to do a Randy Weaver?
You must feel free to call me a Limey, incidentally.
I did have a butcher’s, Mike. Good for you. I mean it.
I did have a butcher’s, Mike. Good for you. I mean it.
Mike, I take it you’re … just waiting for a chance to do a Randy Weaver?
Weaver was a fool: He was reactive rather than proactive.
The world is full of assholes who “need killin'”, as they say in the westerns; the trick is to go after ones who wouldn’t have the slightest clue you’re coming. — Selling sawed-off pumps to the ATF, then holing up in your cabin out in the middle of bumfuck-nowhere? Ah, no….that’s so not the prudent way to engage one’s slavemasters.
Want tips? Watch the hordes currently marauding their way across France, and how utterly helpless a Leviathan socialist state is in dealing with mobile, anonymous tormentors which it can’t tac-air strike.
I would like to publically apologize for calling Euan Gray, Euan Blair.
I do think of Euan as “Euan Blair”, but (looking back at the thread) I find I was not just thinking of Euan as “Euan Blair” I was actually typing Euan Blair – and (of course) the man’s name is Euan Gray.