Question for Libertarians (big L)

[samtechlan]

It is incorrect to think that big bussiness actually would support true free market capitalism. As has been stated big bussiness prospers from a statist form of capitalism where they can use their vast resources to lobby for laws, regulations, tax policies that will benefit them. It is small/medium bussinesses not to mention individual citizens that would benefit from a true free market form of capitalism where the state does not pick/benefit favorites.

It is interesting that in a recent message Ron Paul calls Ludwig Von Mises his mentor. http://ronpaul2008.typepad.com/ron_paul_2008/2007/07/message-from-ro.html

"As my great mentor Ludwig von Mises showed, government meddling in the economy creates conflict, as special-interest groups seek to rip us off through big government. The voluntarism of the free market, on the other hand, brings social cooperation and peace. That's why this campaign is a showcase for the real unity-in-diversity that is freedom."

Von Mises just happens to be one of the greatest advocates of true free market capitalism of the 20th century. All of us, big L libertarians, small L libertarians, small govt. conservatives can greatly benefit from Von Mises' message. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Von_Mises

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www.ronpaul2008.com

 

[KLDimond]

Why rename it? What we have, because of the "partnership between business and government," is mercantilism. "Economic royalism!" Why bother with the new name? It wasn't any different when it was called fascism, either, or when Marx coined the term capitalism and described mercantilism.

Anything you call it, the way it works is that the rich are super-citizens, the elite.

And the one thing super-citizens don't want is to be equal to YOU.

The libertarian ethic would do exactly that. And that would make too many ripples for the flock, the school of fish, that follows in lock-step on one another's heels as they figure new ways to jack money from you to them, using whatever artifice and coercion they consider "economical."

 

[Mr.V.]

You know, every time I hear about this Libertarian fantasy world where everyone is happy, there's no regulation, and everything smells like peaches and roses, it reminds me of the same kind of naive optimism that a crowd in a speakeasy had on October 23, 1929.

The trouble with this dream is that we actually had that world. It was the late 19th / early 20th century. There was no SEC, no FDA, no regulation, and it pretty much sucked if your name wasn't Vanderbilt. Food was so disgusting and contaminated, Teddy Roosevelt (everyone's hero 'round these parts) was the one who thought federal regulation of food and drugs was a good thing (see Food and Drug Act, 1906).

And this fanciful world where employers would always create Google-like environments for people to work in, didn't happen either. If you broke your leg on the job, too f'in' bad, you were replaced in seconds by someone else making 11¢/day.

While I agree some employers require incredibly skilled workers and would have to cater to their employees, the vast majority wouldn't bother providing living wages, health-care coverage, compensation for injuries etc.

Now if you're arguing that unions have gone overboard and these laws are now more exploited than they are beneficial, and labor laws have pushed companies to China and India (countries without any labor laws) then you'd have my ear to cry into. But if you're trying to sell a world where those things should be done away with altogether and everything will be better, I'll remind you what happened to the speakeasy crowd on the 24th.

 

[budney]

Mr. V, nobody says liberty will be utopia. It might even be pretty bad. However, it will can't be any worse than what we have now, and will usually be at least a little better.

--Len.

 

[Ratzinger_p38]

V, not many Libertarians (big L or small l) advocate anarchy.

 

[ConfuseUs]

Short answer: there are not enough Libertarians for it to matter now, and there never will be.

Long answer: What they said ^^^^^^^

On another note, anyone else notice that Libertarian candidates are almost always in software or electrical engineering?

 

[HiroProX]

Because libertarianism is rather anti-corporate.

Corporations are chartered by states, and are given special, unnatural status in the legal system. This is its self an artificial distortion of the market.

 

[GTSteve03]

Post 911 we have lost so many members its unreal. We basically have zero support from Neil Bortz, who used to be one of our greatest champions.

I wonder about Boortz myself, especially with him being a local guy.

I have a feeling he's just a Republican fed up with the way the party is going and masquerading as a Libertarian in order to push his "Fair Tax" idea which is really nothing more than cutting taxes for rich people.

 

[geekWithA.45]

Check the history of the Alaska state legislature eliminating the state income tax.

Alaska is pretty much the ONLY state in which that would work: Huge landmass, low population mostly in isolated pockets, almost zero public expenses, plus a constant stream of income from oil, so much so that each Alaskan gets a check. If the LP were configured for success, they'd own the legislature of Alaska, the last bastion of rugged individualism, and yet, oddly, they do not; yet more evidence that they are configured for grandstanding rather than attaining substantive results.

The LP has really lost its way, if it indeed ever had it.

Their recent overtures to the Left will backfire on them bigtime. The Left has 100 years of experience of infiltrate/subjugate/exploit, and the politically naive LP won't know what hit them.

Listen to what they've had to say over the last year or so, what messages are stressed, and what sort of rhetoric is being used...it tells you a lot about who's pulling strings and pandering influence behind the scenes.

 

[Titan6]

Sorry I am late to this party but I really do know the answer. Maybe because I am a small l .

Anyone ever have a conversation with a coporation? No, you can't because they are made up of people and run by people. In the majority of cases these people who run the corporations are politically active. The majority are conservative and many are religious. They have no interest in supporting an amoral political movement. They are more interested in voting for a conservative/ religious values type politician. When you have plenty of money making more is not always first on the to do list.

Their are also plenty (although fewer) professed liberals. They also have an agenda that is more along a socialist line and are not really interested in expanding freedom either.

Both of these groups already have plenty of money and while they certainly want more are both fiscally conservative enough to know that the status quo is where they have the best shot. So why rock the boat?


If you don't buy the political argument consider this:
Corporations, especially large ones like lots of regulation. Sounds shocking I know but they are always lobbying for more regulation in their own industry. Often time they claim some false moral imperative but it is normally about the bottom line.

The current system allows for plenty of corporate welfare and tax breaks with the proper amount of lobbying and bribes. A libertarian system could place the company in danger by allowing all companies a level playing field and reducing government support. What company really wants fair competition? That may lower prices for the consumer but a heavily regulated industry will insure income forever.

Look at AT&T. When you consider that in 1980 a ten minute long distance telephone call cost about $5 compared to practically free these days (say $0.25 in 1980 dollars) is there any wonder why? There was no impetus to spur growth and development as the money would come in forever. There was no competition and AT&T spent untold millions in legal fees, lobbying efforts and bribes to keep it that way. By having a heavily regulated monopoly competition was impossible.

When an industry is heavily regulated and/or has large economies of scale built it is darn near impossible for a small business to break in and pose a threat as they could never raise enough capital to comply with all the regulations. Consider the saga of Ford for example.

So you may find a secular small business owner with time on his hands to support the libertarian cause but you sure won't find many.

 

[ArmedBear]

Furthermore, most libertarian-leaning fiscal conservatives think of Ted Stevens and the Bridge to Nowhere, not libertarianism, when we think of Alaska.

$250,000,000 of MY tax dollars isn't exactly libertarian. It's rent-seeking by a state, which pays money back to its citizens while taking mine.

WRT overtures to the left, make no mistake: the left-leaning pundits who like Ron Paul are responding positively because they love to hear a Republican who sounds a lot like Howard Zinn, not because they like ANY of his libertarian domestic policies. This is not a good thing.

If Libertarians are basically just fanatical Bush-haters who go on about "corporate personhood", deny the existence of independent Jihadist terror, blame America for every war or terrorist act in the world, and want to legalize pot, I have news for the LP as an ex-member: if I want that, I can go to the local organic food coop and shoot the bull with the idiot hippies. Guess what: they're all voting Democrat, except the REALLY stoned ones who vote Green. Recipe for failure as a political party. We already HAVE a left-wing party, and it actually wins elections.

Where's the Mises? Where's the Hayek? I'm not hearing it, and I'm not hearing it here.

While rent-seeking is a bad thing and should be exposed and targeted, generalized paranoia about "corporations" is not the hallmark of serious libertarians. And a good number of serious libertarians have left the LP, or saw things clearly and never were part.

 

[Glock Glockler]

Mr. V,

Things are a lot better today than 100yrs ago, no one is denying that, but do you think this is the case because of govt or in spite of it?

Certain things women and blacks having equal rights under the law are steps forward due to govt, but how much have they also done to hold us back? 99.9% of the laws passed since then could be done away with and greatly enhance our standard of living.

 

[Titan6]

Name some of those 99.9% of those laws Glock. Don't name any gun laws, drug laws or traffic laws just corporate regulations that doing away with will greatly enhance our quality of life. I just want to see what your thought processes are.

 

[samtechlan]

WRT overtures to the left, make no mistake: the left-leaning pundits who like Ron Paul are responding positively because they love to hear a Republican who sounds a lot like Howard Zinn, not because they like ANY of his libertarian domestic policies.

NO Ron Paul sounds like Robert Taft, John T. Flynn, Garet Garrett and many, many other figures of the Old Right. The Old Right position was strictly anti-interventionist. If you want modern examples, Paul sounds like Paleo-conservatives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservatives

Where's the Mises? Where's the Hayek? I'm not hearing it, and I'm not hearing it here.

HUH? I just mentioned Von Mises (and linked to an article about him) in post no. 26 above and cited a recent article by Paul mentioning that he referred to Mises as "his mentor".

 

[Glock Glockler]

Titan6,

Do you mean things like affirmative action, the minimum wage, the income tax, the alternative minimum tax, federal financing of China's state owned steel and airline industry as well as garanteeing the investments of Western companies that want to open up shop there, the HMO act of 1973, the cobweb of regulations and subsidies for the farming industry, criminalizing the production of industrial hemp, and probably a book worth of other stuff if I wanted to take the time to research it.

My current favorite is in my industry (mortgages) where we require borrowers to sign a form stating that they're not a terrorist to be in compliance with the Patriot Act

 

[Titan6]

I must say I am with you on most of those. I guess that is why I am a small l.

 

[ArmedBear]

samtechlan-

Like I said, left-leaning pundits like the ring of Chomsky and Zinn, not the fact that Paul sounds like some paleoconservatives. And they're NOT interested in libertarian domestic economic policy IN THE LEAST.

You mentioned Mises in the context of rent-seeking. That is important, but the main thrust of Mises is the vital importance of spontaneous organization and economic freedom. Most corporations are part of this, since, like I said, most corporations are not in the S&P 500. They're just businesses, providing services, selling innovative products, etc.

Throughout this thread, "corporation" has been used as a synonym for "Enron-style corporation." This is just plain ignorant, and another echo of the Left.

Quoting Mises on rent-seeking is only touching on a peripheral part of the Austrian school's ideas.

 

[Ratzinger_p38]

I have a feeling he's just a Republican fed up with the way the party is going and masquerading as a Libertarian in order to push his "Fair Tax" idea which is really nothing more than cutting taxes for rich people

If he is, it was 911 that changed him. He didnt used to be so gung ho.

Sorry but I still like the fair tax. 'Cutting taxes for rich people' is just an emotional term played out by leftists. I guess 'rich people' also means the 'middle class'.

Throughout this thread, "corporation" has been used as a synonym for "Enron-style corporation." This is just plain ignorant, and another echo of the Left.

Yes it is, and I dont think most Libertarians are 'anti coporate' as one poster claimed. Corporations who are successful are to be looked up to, esp those like Google that started from the bottom. There has been an influx of leftists that have joined the party lately (ArmedBear - you remember seeing some of the LP BOD were marching with moveon.org?) , and there is a notable disconnect between them and the ones like myself that have been here awhile.

 

[samtechlan]

Quoting Mises on rent-seeking is only touching on a peripheral part of the Austrian school's ideas.

ArmedBear,

Agree with you on both counts. It is irrational to lump all corporate entities together and it is a sympton of leftist thinking.

It is a crime that more conservatives do not know about Von Mises. His intellectual legacy is the most powerful weapon in the fight against socialism.

Here is a good place to start: http://www.mises.org/

BTW Ron Paul wrote his own brief essay on the impact of Mises on Freedom.
http://www.mises.org/store/Mises-and-Austrian-Economics-A-Personal-View-P154C0.aspx?AFID=1



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www.ronpaul2008.com

 

[illspirit]

Check the history of the Alaska state legislature eliminating the state income tax.

Alaska is pretty much the ONLY state in which that would work

I guess Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming didn't get that memo. Maybe someone should call and let them know their lack of income tax only works in Alaska?

 

[Titan6]

No income tax works in Texas because the state does not provide cradle to grave service to every man woman and abortion in the Lone Star State. That is starting to change with Perry and his misguided stance on a couple of issues; like mandatory STD immunizations for 14 year old school girls...

 

[ServiceSoon]

After all, there major platform is laissez-faire capitalism, which would benefit the vast majority of businesses and make for a much more business friendly environment.

Maybe because they like government sponsored monopolies?

Successful business people tend to think primarily about their business, not politics.

I fight this battle with people all the time, often I cite...

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

-- Samuel Adams

 

[KLDimond]

MRV: Anyone who thinks the U.S. had a genuinely free market anytime after about 1870 hasn't been doing his homework. Interventionism became rampant in the late Nineteenth Century. Sure, it's worse now (a LOT worse), but don't mistake the last half of the 19th Cent. as a free market.

Oh, ArmedBeer, I'm a fan of von Mises myself. I get a chuckle, though, as you spout that Mises is good, Mises is great, then fault the rest of us for "not knowing Mises," but provide very little evidence that you have a basis for such an assertion. Or to credit you with knowledge of the man.

Ah, and you fault some of us for saying "corporations," instead of all the qualifiers that separate ordinary ones from the trans-national monstrosities that plague the Earth, a few that are huge but not trans-national, and others that donate heavily and influence elections and politicians anyway.

Oh, yah, that was the context, though, wasn't it? Try to keep up, Armedbeer; perhaps those clydesdales could feed you a clue. But then, you can lead a horse's a... you get the point.

And even if it weren't for the context, so we didn't parse our words that carefully; sue us. Ridiculous. I think you knew perfectly well who we were talking about and are just using that as subterfuge. Nice straw man, beer.

MRV, get real. I've never met any libertarian who had utopian pretensions. Maybe I'm just sheltered. But lots of statists love to trot that idea out there, to try to muddy the waters, and assuage your guilt, since you're unwilling to take a respectably consistent, cohesive stand. It must be real terrifying to be a statist and see the damage free-minded people can do to it.

Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that freedom had its problems, but said he'd rather deal with those problems than the ones of tyranny. Hard to come up with better elucidation than Jefferson's, most times. And that's where every libertarian I know---where his head's at. Freedom, with all its problems, is better than tyranny. What a concept. Still ahead of its time.

The obfuscation I see here by the friends of the monster state and other tyrants is pretty amazing.

 

[Fosbery]

Big business dosen't like the idea that the state can't be bought and used for the purposes of special interest groups. See this post by the Cato institute which gives a real world and recent example quite perfectly:

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/06/20/google-gets-sucked-into-the-parasite-economy/

There's also the small matter that most libertarians do not agree with corporation laws - corporations would not exist under libertarianism. The reason being that corporations are essentially a government protection racket to protect debters from their crediters beyond the scope of their contract. So, suppose I set up a corporation and borrow a million dollars from you and don't pay it back. Because I borrowed the money as a corporation instead of a private individual you can only claim back the stuff owned by the corporation, not my own private stuff. This interferes in private contracts and distorts the market by reducing the risk involved in certain economic activities (that might sound good, but risk in markets is a good thing).

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

There's also the small matter that most libertarians do not agree with corporation laws - corporations would not exist under libertarianism. The reason being that corporations are essentially a government protection racket to protect debters from their crediters beyond the scope of their contract.

That is an extremely odd interpretation of corporate law. Corporations predate the Constitution and were unquestionably an influence on the Founders. I don't know of any school of libertarian thought that seriously contemplates what you suggest.

First, there are dozens of entities (including individuals) protected by bankruptcy laws. It isn't merely corporations.

Second, your real beef isn't with the concept of bankruptcy but with the concept of limited liability for shareholders of a corporation. The whole point in limiting the liability of a shareholder in a corporation is that it becomes very hard to raise capital otherwise. Let's use an example... right now oil companies are doing well; but the oil business is an expensive business. It may take billions of dollars to prospect, drill a new well and then bring that oil to market. Oil companies did not start with that kind of capital, they had to find people willing to risk money to launch those kinds of projects. Let's say you want to invest $100 in a share of Exxon-Mobil. Are you going to invest that $100 if it makes you liable for your share of a $350 million oil spill? Or a failed $3 billion deep-sea well in the Sea of Okhotsk?

Currently, if you invest $100 in Exxon then all you risk losing is that $100 that you invested. You don't have to worry about being jointly and severally liable for any debt Exxon may incur in its operations. If the Russians seize Exxon's $3 billion oil rig and nationalize it, you don't have to worry about the bank coming by your house and saying "Exxon owes us $3 billion. We are taking your house to help settle that debt." Limited liability of shareholders is one of the factors that drives the economic engine of not just this country but the entire world. The rule you propose would eliminate mutual funds, 401ks, IRAs, any type of collective investment, it would be a veritable plague upon the economy.

I just really get the feeling you haven't considered the implications of your suggested change.