Mike Huben's "Critiques of Libertarianism"

Solid_Choke:

wombatron:

Jon Irenicus:

Sure, don't bring Ayn Rand to a knifefight and all that

You never know...

-Jon

 

 I think that Rand would have pwned in a knife fight.... but that's just me

Yeah, but that's just because she would have brought a gun.

 

 Exactly

Libertas est Veritas:

DW89:

What do you folks think of this from David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom"?

I only read about 1/3. Nothing especially noteworthy. The criticism is mainly academic and Friedman uses extreme examples. Are most people going to sue those who emit photons from flashlights onto their property? Of course not. There are a lot of variables that need to be met before this kind of scenarios arise, though I'm sure they will on a long enough timeline. If your neighbor has a light on his yard that shines onto your yard, I don't see it as extraordinary to demand the light to be removed or ensured that the light doesn't shine on your yard.

The part about having to prove the libertarian moral view as correct isn't really my field. I don't care about morality, so I've never looked into the it's intricacies. How does one even prove morality as correct?

I'm not sure you understood Friedman's argument; you have not contradicted anything he wrote.  His point is that some libertarians believe that some simple statements, like the non aggression axiom, are the proper bases for their libertarian beliefs.  He follows those statements to absurd, but consistent, conclusions (like claiming that one has no right to exhale if any CO2 molecules trespass).  If you are unwilling to accept those conclusions, you should be unwilling to accept the initial statement as a complete explanation of your beliefs.

This is unrelated to whether the situation in question would be likely or not.  He even leaves open the possibility that the correct statement, which may just be a more complex and subtle version, just hasn't been thought of.  You may not be among the libertarians he is criticizing, but they do exist.

 I'll deal with some of the stuff he posted.

The foremost defenders of our freedoms and rights, which libertarians prefer you overlook, are our governments. National defense, police, courts, registries of deeds, public defenders, the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights, etc. all are government efforts that work towards defending freedoms and rights.

Many libertarians are in favor of national defense, police, courts, etc. However, today's government radically oversteps those boundaries by waging undeclared wars (Iraq, Vietnam, Kroea, etc.), setting up police states and supporting existing police states (i.e. Nicaragua, Pre-Castro Cuba, Shah's Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Vietnam before it was annexed, South Africa for a long time, etc.), violating our basic rights (i.e. Gitlow v. New York),

Libertarians frequently try to present themselves as the group to join to defend your freedom and rights. Lots of other organizations (many of which you would not want to be associated with, such as Scientologists) also fight for freedom and rights. I prefer the ACLU. (Indeed, if you wish to act effectively, the ACLU is the way to go: they advertise that they take on 6,000 cases a year free of charge, and claim involvement in 80% of landmark Supreme Court cases since 1920.)

It would be foolish to oppose libertarians on such a mom-and-apple-pie issue as freedom and rights: better to point out that there are EFFECTIVE alternatives with a historical track record, something libertarianism lacks.

The ACLU is an organization that many libertarians support... after all, they are a "civil libertarian" organization.

Libertarians aren't claiming that we are the people you want to join if you want to fight for your rights, we are claiming that we are the only group of people who want to maximize your civil AND your economic freedom.

Nor might we need or want to accept the versions of "freedom" and "rights" that libertarians propose. To paraphrase Anatole France: "How noble libertarianism, in its majestic equality, that both rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the privately owned streets (without paying), sleeping under the privately owned bridges (without paying), and coercing bread from its rightful owners!"

Appeals to emotion are always more effective than appeals to logic and reason.

Taxation is theft.

Two simple rebuttals to this take widely different approaches.

The first is that property is theft. The notion behind property is that A declares something to be property, and threatens anybody who still wants to use it. Where does A get the right to forcibly stop others from using it? Arguments about "mixing of labor" with the resource as a basis for ownership boil down to "first-come-first-served". This criticism is even accepted by some libertarians, and is favorably viewed by David Friedman. This justifies property taxes or extraction taxes on land or extractable resources if you presume that the government is a holder in trust for natural resources. (However, most people who question the creation of property would agree that after the creation of property, a person is entitled to his earnings. Thus the second argument)

Taking over unused, unclaimed land and proclaiming it as your own is not theft. Does it include violence and coercion against those who wish that land? Yes, but it isn't theft.

It's like saying that self-ownership of your body is theft from people who want to rape and murder you.

The second is that taxation is part of a social contract. Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from government. This kind of argument is suitable for defending almost any tax as part of a contract. Many libertarians accept social contract (for example, essentially all minarchists must to insist on a monopoly of government.) Of course they differ as to what should be IN the contract.

That doesn't change the fact that taxes are theft. The government is coercing money out of you for services you don't want. Even many minarchists (i.e. Randroids) don't support taxation.

If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will show up at your house, initiate force and put you in jail.

This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big deal of "men with guns" enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact that "men with guns" are the basis of enforcement of any complete social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to "don't commit fraud or initiate force", they would still enforce with guns.

The point is that you are coerced into giving money for services you don't want - which is theft.

Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract.

That argument and some of the following libertarian arguments are commonly quoted from Lysander Spooner.

The constitution and the laws are our written contracts with the government.

There are several explicit means by which people make the social contract with government. The commonest is when your parents choose your residency and/or citizenship after your birth. In that case, your parents or guardians are contracting for you, exercising their power of custody. No further explicit action is required on your part to continue the agreement, and you may end it at any time by departing and renouncing your citizenship.

Immigrants, residents, and visitors contract through the oath of citizenship (swearing to uphold the laws and constitution), residency permits, and visas. Citizens reaffirm it in whole or part when they take political office, join the armed forces, etc. This contract has a fairly common form: once entered into, it is implicitly continued until explicitly revoked. Many other contracts have this form: some leases, most utility services (such as phone and electricity), etc.

Some libertarians make a big deal about needing to actually sign a contract. Take them to a restaurant and see if they think it ethical to walk out without paying because they didn't sign anything. Even if it is a restaurant with a minimum charge and they haven't ordered anything. The restaurant gets to set the price and the method of contract so that even your presence creates a debt. What is a libertarian going to do about that? Create a regulation?

A lot of times, you and your parents cannot choose where you are born. What if you're too poor to move from, say, Kansas to Mexico? That'd be a lot of money that you would have to spend to move all of your valuables just so you can escape the USA's "social contract" into Mexico's "social contract." You can, however, choose to go to or to abstain from a restaurant.

A social contract is comparable to being forced to go to the same restaurant to eat day in and day out without any choice because you were born within 5 miles of it.

We can't emigrate because there is no libertarian nation.

Yes, you can emigrate, just as you could buy a different car even though your favorite company doesn't produce cars which let you travel at the speed of sound and get 2000 mpg. Even if nobody produces EXACTLY what you want, you can choose any car the market produces or you create yourself.

There are roughly 200 nations to which you could emigrate. They are the product of an anarcho-capitalist free market: there is no over-government dictating to those sovereign nations. Indeed, the only difference between the anarchy of nations and libertopia is that anarcho-capitalists are wishing for a smaller granularity. These nations have found that it is most cost-efficient to defend themselves territorially.

If any other market provided 200 choices, libertarians would declare that the sacred workings of the market blessed whatever choices were offered. The point is that choices do exist: it's up to libertarians to show that there is something wrong with the market of nations in a way they would accept being applied to markets within nations.

Libertaria is a combination of values that just doesn't exist: the government equivalent of a really posh residence for very little money. You can find nations which have much lower taxes, etc.: just don't expect them to be first class.

And the reason these combinations don't exist is probably simple: the free market of government services essentially guarantees that there is no such thing as the free lunch libertarians want. It's not competitive.

Leaving from America is not as easy as leaving company A for company B or moving from apartment A to apartment B.

Why should I be told what to do with my property? That infringes on my rights of ownership.

This question comes up rather often, since absolute ownership of property is fundamental to most flavors of libertarianism. Such propertarianism fuels daydreams of being able to force the rest of the world to swirl around the immovable rock of your property. For example, there were trespass lawsuits filed against airlines for flying over property.

A good answer is: what makes you so sure it is yours?

Translation: "I believe that no such thing as property exists. Other people have the right to your property and to your body and you cannot do anything about it. Also, I don't have an argument against property rights so I will appeal to your emotions instead of to your logic."

Think how much wealthier we'd be if we didn't pay taxes.

This is a classic example of libertarians not looking at the complete equation for at least two reasons. (1) If taxes are eliminated, you'll need to purchase services that were formerly provided by government. (2) If taxes are eliminated, the economics of wages have changed, and wages will change as well.

Here's a really ludicrous (but real) example of (1): "With taxation gone, not only will we have twice as much money to spend, but it will go twice as far, since those who produce goods and services won't have to pay taxes, either. In one stroke we'll be effectively four times as rich. Let's figure that deregulation will cut prices, once again, by half. Now our actual purchasing power, already quadrupled by deTAXification, is doubled again. We now have eight times our former wealth!" (L. Neil Smith)

And here's an example of (2): "I'm self-employed. My pay would absolutely, positively go up 15+% tomorrow if I wasn't paying FICA/Medicare." But only briefly. Standard microeconomic theory applies just as well to someone selling labor as to someone selling widgits. If FICA disappeared, your competitors in the market to sell labor would be attracted to the higher wages and would sell more labor. This increase in supply of labor would drive down your wage from the 15% increase. You'd earn more (per hour). But less than 15% more.

Wage falls would only be temporary. You might as well argue for 10%, 15%, or 20% unemployment so the rest of us can have higher wages.

The problem with taxes aren't that they take away your money so much as that they take your money and use it for something else that is not efficient (i.e. paying off debts with interest for wars that didn't benefit our economy at all). If our money was taken away and destroyed, that would at least lead to deflation causing our dollar to appreciate. However, our money is taken away and given to foreign governments via foreign aid, wars, debts, etc. so we end up with less money that isn't even circulating in our own economy.

On top of that, government regulation of certain sectors like energy and health care raises the prices even more, meaning we get less "bang for our buck."

I want self-government, not other-government.

"Self government" is libertarian newspeak for "everybody ought to be able to live as if they are the only human in the universe, if only they believe in the power of libertarianism." It's a utopian ideal like those of some Marxists and born-agains that would essentially require some sort of human perfection to work.

More explicitly, "self government" is the peculiar notion that other people ought not to be able to regulate your behavior. Much as we would like to be free of such regulation, most people also want to be able to regulate the behavior of others for practical reasons. Some libertarians claim that they want the first so much, that they will be willing to forgo the second. Most other people feel that both are necessary (and that it would be hypocritical or stupid to want just one.)

Another appeal to emotion, not reason.

Libertarians know that the private sector can function much more efficiently than the government, and they want that to take over the normal roles of government, which would also allow us to choose between what kind of services we want (instead of moving thousands of miles to another government we don't like).

Why shouldn't we adopt libertarian government now?

Because there are no working examples of libertarian cities, states, or nations.

Innumerable other ideologies have put their money where their mouths are, if not their lives. Examples include most nations that have had Marxist revolutions, Israel, many of the American colonies, a huge number of religious and utopian communities, etc.

Yet libertarians want us to risk what many of them consider the best nation in the world with their untested beliefs. It's not even sensible to convert here first for the claimed economic benefits of libertarianism: there would be less marginal benefit to converting the USA to a libertarian system than most other nations. Let libertarians bear the risk and cost of their own experiment.

Let libertarians point to successful libertarian programs to seek our endorsement. For example, narcotic decriminalization in the Netherlands has been a success. So has legalized prostitution in Nevada and Germany (and probably other places.) Privatization of some municipal services has been successful in some communities. But these are extremely small scale compared to the total libertarian agenda, and do not rule out emergent problems and instabilities of a full scale libertarian system.

Ireland, Iceland, Pennsylvania, to name just a few.

Murray Rothbard plz, kthanxbai.

Chriscal12:

He follows those statements to absurd, but consistent, conclusions (like claiming that one has no right to exhale if any CO2 molecules trespass).  If you are unwilling to accept those conclusions, you should be unwilling to accept the initial statement as a complete explanation of your beliefs.

Granted, I'm not great at debating the moral justifications of libertarianism. But I still don't see how he really refutes anything. He uses extreme thought experiments, which don't really strike at the roots of what he is criticizing, but merely nibble at the ends of the branches.

For example, consider the CO2 thing: his criticism only works because he has detached the issue from reality. Who in real life would be in a position to claim property violations due to others breathing, when anyone alive - and thus everyone who has property rights - is breathing as well?

He just regurgitates the most pathetic, ill thought out nonsense offered by social democrats and the like. They're puny pseudo-intellectuals - and he hasn't demonstrated that he differs much. Sad really.

"How noble libertarianism, in its majestic equality, that both rich and poor are equally prohibited from peeing in the privately owned streets (without paying), sleeping under the privately owned bridges (without paying), and coercing bread from its rightful owners!"

Strawman, and bad reasoning at best. More rubbish from intellectually deficient pseudo-intellectuals. Huben is an intellectual fraud who will use any arguments to get his way - even if they undermine his own cherished ideology. He will embrace Marxism in one breath, and denigrate it in another. The most amusing bit from that sermon of his is the social contract - one of the most viciously circular arguments in all philosophy.

-Jon

Libertas est Veritas:

Chriscal12:

He follows those statements to absurd, but consistent, conclusions (like claiming that one has no right to exhale if any CO2 molecules trespass).  If you are unwilling to accept those conclusions, you should be unwilling to accept the initial statement as a complete explanation of your beliefs.

Granted, I'm not great at debating the moral justifications of libertarianism. But I still don't see how he really refutes anything. He uses extreme thought experiments, which don't really strike at the roots of what he is criticizing, but merely nibble at the ends of the branches.

For example, consider the CO2 thing: his criticism only works because he has detached the issue from reality. Who in real life would be in a position to claim property violations due to others breathing, when anyone alive - and thus everyone who has property rights - is breathing as well?

 

 The problem with this specific argument is this:  so CO2 'trespasses' on someone else's property, but did this 'trespass' cause any harm?  In reality, no one's going to be too concerned about things that are not harmful, or at least have some kind of risk attached to them.  Thus, the principle of non-trespass is either being misunderstood, or needs to be modified.   I have great respect for David Friedman and his work, and I'd like to think that his criticism of deontic libertarianism is constructive criticism.  Why shouldn't we use both principled and pragmatic arguments?

Taxation is theft.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the concept of theft presuppose the existence of property?

 

Property is Theft!

Living is Murder!

DW89:

Maybe I'm missing something here, but doesn't the concept of theft presuppose the existence of property?

 

Then perhaps Proudon should be understood in context?

macsnafu:

Libertas est Veritas:

Chriscal12:

He follows those statements to absurd, but consistent, conclusions (like claiming that one has no right to exhale if any CO2 molecules trespass).  If you are unwilling to accept those conclusions, you should be unwilling to accept the initial statement as a complete explanation of your beliefs.

Granted, I'm not great at debating the moral justifications of libertarianism. But I still don't see how he really refutes anything. He uses extreme thought experiments, which don't really strike at the roots of what he is criticizing, but merely nibble at the ends of the branches.

For example, consider the CO2 thing: his criticism only works because he has detached the issue from reality. Who in real life would be in a position to claim property violations due to others breathing, when anyone alive - and thus everyone who has property rights - is breathing as well?

 

 The problem with this specific argument is this:  so CO2 'trespasses' on someone else's property, but did this 'trespass' cause any harm?  In reality, no one's going to be too concerned about things that are not harmful, or at least have some kind of risk attached to them.  Thus, the principle of non-trespass is either being misunderstood, or needs to be modified.   I have great respect for David Friedman and his work, and I'd like to think that his criticism of deontic libertarianism is constructive criticism.  Why shouldn't we use both principled and pragmatic arguments?

It's probably true that this argument is only interesting and important to a small subset of libertarians, but those include some important libertarians.  He's directing this line of argument against those who claim to have "derived" libertariansm out of something like natural rights.  That does have some serious implications about his politics, and where he gets those politics.  Also, he isn't claiming that "rights" as such do not exist, he's just doubtful about claims by some (who, I'm not exactly sure, maybe Rothbard, among others?) to have proved them.

I've seen him take a similar line of argument against objectivists.  There, as here, he is not generlly attackng the policy conclusions of objectivists, merely some of the premises and observations that they are alledgedly derived from.

 

Chriscal12:

It's probably true that this argument is only interesting and important to a small subset of libertarians, but those include some important libertarians.  He's directing this line of argument against those who claim to have "derived" libertariansm out of something like natural rights.  That does have some serious implications about his politics, and where he gets those politics.  Also, he isn't claiming that "rights" as such do not exist, he's just doubtful about claims by some (who, I'm not exactly sure, maybe Rothbard, among others?) to have proved them.

I've seen him take a similar line of argument against objectivists.  There, as here, he is not generlly attackng the policy conclusions of objectivists, merely some of the premises and observations that they are alledgedly derived from.

 

 I think I understand the arguments being presented, but I think they are problematic.  The response that has been presented here is not "well, no one cares about that."  Rather, it is to point out that he hasn't necessarily pointed out trespass that libertarians don't want to prohibit, but may be pointing to things instead that aren't trespass at all.  We have to logically distinguish trespass from other sorts of activities.  One starting point, on the Austrian view, could be time-based.  Another could be that if no one complains, it isn't trespass.  The second response leaves open the possibility that someone could complain later, and prove his case in court - at which point the libertarian would probably want the court to do something that isn't justified on the logical argument. 

My own view is that these problems are best handled by not throwing out Locke's provisio.

JAlanKatz:

Chriscal12:

It's probably true that this argument is only interesting and important to a small subset of libertarians, but those include some important libertarians.  He's directing this line of argument against those who claim to have "derived" libertariansm out of something like natural rights.  That does have some serious implications about his politics, and where he gets those politics.  Also, he isn't claiming that "rights" as such do not exist, he's just doubtful about claims by some (who, I'm not exactly sure, maybe Rothbard, among others?) to have proved them.

I've seen him take a similar line of argument against objectivists.  There, as here, he is not generlly attackng the policy conclusions of objectivists, merely some of the premises and observations that they are alledgedly derived from.

 

 I think I understand the arguments being presented, but I think they are problematic.  The response that has been presented here is not "well, no one cares about that."  Rather, it is to point out that he hasn't necessarily pointed out trespass that libertarians don't want to prohibit, but may be pointing to things instead that aren't trespass at all.  We have to logically distinguish trespass from other sorts of activities.  One starting point, on the Austrian view, could be time-based.  Another could be that if no one complains, it isn't trespass.  The second response leaves open the possibility that someone could complain later, and prove his case in court - at which point the libertarian would probably want the court to do something that isn't justified on the logical argument. 

My own view is that these problems are best handled by not throwing out Locke's provisio.

One of his points is that simple statements of libertarian philosophy (like the non aggression axiom) offer no way of drawing lines on many questions, some of which may be practical questions about what property rights people ought to have (on things like air pollution, noise, and the like).  My question to you is: can you demonstrate why exhaling, in the circumstances he talks about, is not a violation of property rights as derived from natural rights theorists, and if so, where along the continuum something along these lines stops being trespass (or littering, or vandalism)?  Throwing a beer bottle in your neighbors yard is pretty clearly a violation of property rights, so is an oil refinery emitting significant amounts of dangerous smoke into my property.  Exhaling, as far as I can tell, is the same thing on a massively smaller and less harmful scale; in fact, it's probably not harmful at all.  But if harm is the relevant distinction, as someone on this thread has suggested, how do you not end up at something like utilitarianism?  If you do end up there, that's fine I suppose (though a careful reading of Friedman shows that he is not a utilitarian as such), but many libertarians in the natural rights school are hostile to utilitarianism.