On libertarians and the welfare state.
I think that increasingly, especially if the Trump becomes a thing but likely trending that way without him, libertarian wonks are going to become a subset of the Democratic coalition since that is already the coalition of highly educated people sensitive to the harm principle of morality.
Their role in the democratic coalition will be to provide the propaganda for:
1) UBI [universal basic income], which various libertarian heroes have already proposed in the past
2) “Nudge” policies based on statistical studies. These will be sold as the “less intrusive” alternative to some new bureaucracy (“a tax on Soda’s is preferable to a new Soda Safety Department”).
3) Loosening of regulations on a the democratic client base the way they’ve done so for the republican client base.
4) Anything anti-cop.
On #1 I doubt they will succeed in dismantling current welfare/service bureaucrats, but they may manage to add a layer of direct UBI on top of that.
I disagree with (2). I think that even those libertarians who I think of as fitting the commenter’s model are quite skeptical of governmental nudging.
Otherwise, however, I think that it is quite difficult for libertarians to dissociate themselves from the highly-educated class. Libertarians will tend to emphasize issues on which they and the educated left can agree, rather than focus on changing the minds of the educated left on issues on which they disagree.
Libertarians may not formally join the Democratic coalition, but in recent years all of the libertarian victories (marijuana legalization, gay marriage) have come from liberal issues, none on free-market issues. We could not even persuade people on the left (or the Republican establishment) to oppose the Ex-Im bank.
Libertarians at large will never join the Democrat coalition. Liberals just don’t care enough about social issues to interfere with their primary emphasis on redistribution (and to a slightly lesser extent technocracy). Democrats use social issues to leverage elections in order to advance their redistribution and authoritarianism. This is why they emphasize group-identity-voting-bloc politics over individual liberalism. Hmmm, “individual liberalism” has a nice ring to it…
More likely, when demographics make redistribution and voting clearly along demographic (group-identity-voting-bloc politics) lines, the union workers will join the Republican party. So, the forecast is calling for being disappointed in Republicans for eternity. Thus, I consider the main benefit of these so-called liberaltarian offerings is to show democrats for what they are and prove my point.
“libertarian wonks are going to become a subset of the Democratic coalition since that is already the coalition of highly educated people sensitive to the harm principle of morality.”
That is complete nonsense. The rise of libertarian and conservative (non-military) think tanks is all the evidence one needs.
Of course, libertarians should never join a Democrat coalition. The idea that they should comes exclusively from the “bleeding heart” sect of libertarianism that thinks pandering to leftist politicians will help libertarians “win.” It ain’t gonna happen, folks.
“but in recent years all of the libertarian victories (marijuana legalization, gay marriage) have come from liberal issues, none on free-market issues”
It may seem that way from the northeast, but the flyover states have been repealing restrictions on firearms ownership and carry at an extremely fast pace. Campus carry, permitless carry, reductions in training requirements, liberalizing open carry, etc are all happening.
Transforming the illegal marijuana trade into a legal racket was hardly a libertarian victory.
Look how long it took for the obvious move on marijuana, and we still aren’t there yet.
I don’t like the way gay marriage was done either.
I wish we were numerically significant enough that liberals would blame these things on us, but we aren’t.
I think commenter Andrew has it right.
Progressives’ real passion is in being anti-market, which means that the liberaltarian experiment won’t work.
For a while Libertarians were able to meander uncomfortably in the GOP not because conservatives are pro-market, but rather they are not passionately anti-market. Conservatives’ passions lie elsewhere.
Never underestimate people’s ability to rationalize their beliefs even in the face of dissonance.
I think the right has had a lot more success influencing libertarians than vise versa. It isn’t clear why libertarians should always favor case-by-case prosecutorial discretion over rule-based prosecutorial discretion, for example, but conservatives have convinced most libertarians that the latter is a rule-of-law violation. It isn’t clear why original meaning should be the dominant strain of libertarian constitutional interpretation (didn’t libertarians used to like original intent?), but it is. An advantage of Trump forcing libertarians to ally with the left is that I think we are less susceptible to their bs, at least for now.
This reminds me of an analysis of the French spring in May 1968. After all the shouting, there were new personal freedoms, but no changes to either the government or the economic system. Basically, the young people won the right to fornicate as they pleased while the establishment kept all its stuff.
Perhaps I err:
Those classed as “libertarian” are generally opposed to the **imposition* of obligations (moral, social, economic or political).
So many of the objectives of members of the various coalitions that have made up the “Democrats” require the **imposition** (through one means or another) of obligations.
Whether there are sufficient commonalities in objectives that can be attained by cooperation in voluntary acceptances of obligations, considering the burdens and constraints of the extant imposed obligations (necessary to current objectives of Democrats) seems doubtful.
This is probably too much info, but here’s why Trump strikes me as so important to a subset of young libertarians (ie, my subset):
1. We grew up in a world where libertarian affiliation with the conservative movement doesn’t make as much sense as it did in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Specifically, Bush and Obama just didn’t seem that different on economic issues. Bush did Medicare expansion, launched wars, approved bailouts. Obama did obamacare, launched wars, approved stimulus. Clinton actually seemed more libertarian than either (kept per capita spending as percent of gdp level, did welfare reform, big free trade advocate). At least on the federal level, the parties seemed like a wash on economics. But on social issues democrats seemed clearly more libertarian. So at first impression a millennial libertarian is either going to say “a pox on both these houses” or else say “dems are the lesser of two evils.”
2. We were given three main reasons to prefer conservatives by older libertarians:
a. Starve the beast is ultimately going to work. Conservatives may grow government just as much as liberals, but they cut taxes and that is going to constrain government growth long term.
b. Social issues just aren’t as important as economic issues. In fact, sexual freedom may be smutty and bad.
c. Don’t be fooled by this DLC new-democrat crap. The soul of the democrat party is still socialist. Likewise, don’t be fooled by this compassionate conservative crap. There are still “real” conservatives in the republican party, and our ideas can be heard and will triumph there.
3. So now events seem to be challenging all three of those reasons:
a. Europe has shown us what the logical outcome of “starve the beast” actually is. Fiscal crises look awful, and Greece shows that the political economy of political crises can actually favor communists!
b. Unexpected successes in the war on drugs and in gay rights have shown us that social issues do still matter and wins there can have a huge impact on the people around us.
c. This election seems to be a direct test of the idea that at heart the democrats are socialists and the republicans are opposed to authoritarianism and big government. If it ends up with republicans nominating the authoritarian who loves big government and democrats nominating the third-way democrat, that kind of seals the deal.
These are not the only things that makes me a more liberal-aligned, bleeding heart type libertarian, but they are big reasons. If Trump and Hillary win we get confirmation that we are looking at a third way left wing party and an authoritarian, anti-immigrant conservative party. Libertarians should either reject both or ally with the liberals.
There’s going to be a Libertine Liberal faction, people who want the state to stay out *their* business, when it come to ‘fun’ things like sex & prostitution, drugs and their personal economic interests, but who embrace state coercion when applied to *other* things and other people and their economic interests. The silicon valley tech oligarchs are drifting there now …
Indeed.
Libertarians who primarily value the ‘fun’ aspects of personal liberty, and the approval of elites, will drift to the Libertarian Liberal corner. The rest won’t.
“We could not even persuade people on the left (or the Republican establishment) to oppose the Ex-Im bank.”
That’s because too many people on the left saw it as a trojan horse for libertarian ideology at large. One thing Haidt has pointed out is that the more educated we become, the more tuned in we are to ideology. Progressives who might have been on board with a war against “crony capitalism” say in the 1990s have no excuse not to be fully aware of everything their would-be libertarian collaborators believe in 2016.
Thanks, Arnold.
I view the roll of wonks as meeting a market demand. Those salaries get paid by someone, and the people paying them are expecting to get something for their money. The role of wonks is to rhetorically package a set of beliefs/outcomes that benefit the people paying them. The phrase I found best was, “toady class.”
It’s probably unfair to say that wonks are total sell outs willing to shill for anything. You probably see yourself as embodying a consistent set of principles you wouldn’t sell out, as do most wonks. This self perception isn’t all deception, lets assume some of its earned.
At the same time, one does notice over the career of wonks, even serious ones trying to be consistent, that they “nudge” in the direction of what is easiest. Whether that be intellectually, socially, careerist, etc. They are, after all, human beings like the rest of us.
So lets take this as our model. Wonks have some philosophy they genuinely adhere to and are trying to educated the world about. Some of that philosophy is off because as human beings we don’t have all the answers even when we genuinely are trying. Some of it is off because as human beings we unconsciously are influenced by the factors in our environment, we alter our views for non-truth reasons even if we aren’t totally aware of it. Some of it, probably a minority honestly, is the wonk honestly deceiving when he knows he’s decieving. Ironically, those not overly skilled at self introspection would actually be better at being wonks in a “wonk market”. You’ve got to grant your brain a degree of plausible deniablity to get to the outcome that best advances yourself.
So we get a bunch of libertarian wonks that try sticking to libertarian principles, but move some based on their incentives even if they don’t notice it, and of course libertarianism itself has some idealogical flaws even if you keep it “pure” (as all ideologies are flawed creations of upright apes).
Here’s the critical thing. Within this pool of wonks there is a bunch of different viewpoints and temperaments. Their all “libertarian”, but nobody would say anarcho-capitalists and bleeding-heart libertarians are exactly the same. Within the libertarian wonk pool I would expect the following:
1) Libertarians who can “deliver the goods” to the people providing the money will be selected over those that can’t deliver the goods. This doesn’t require that anyone within the libertarian bucket change their believes at all, only that within the natural variation those that fit what donors already want will get promoted.
2) At the individual level everyone will naturally nudge in the direction of the incentives, this will happen even if individual wonks are genuinely and honestly sticking to their principals.
3) Between the bell curve moving a bit and the people being selected from the bell curve for promotion coming more from one tail then the other, there will be a shift in who speaks for the libertarian community.
4) This shift will be controversial, and all sorts of people will be skeptical about it, especially those who find themselves unable to make the shift, but it will happen nonetheless.
5) As the generations go on this will become more self fulfilling, as people tend to select people like themselves to succeed them and as the academic institutions people are having their early opinions formed in shift themselves. The effect will be additive over time.
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The key issue for me is what I think of as “the core values on which no compromise can be given.” With libertarians, I’m just not sure its markets.
I’m not sure its markets with anyone. Below thread someone says that leftists only care about redistribution, but that’s not right. Identity politics is way more important to leftists then redistribution, in fact this was cemented in the entire old left -> new left shift starting in the late 60s and best exemplified by the Summer of PC (2015).
It’s true that, as part of their identity politics, they want to redistribute. However, this is more about fighting what they believe is a market distortion of discrimination. You an I may know this argument to be bullshit, but the foot soldiers on that side truly believe it. In their mind its reparations, not socialism.
For libertarians I’ve seen lots of them complain about taxes, but its not really a core value in my opinion. I’ve seen them get much more worked up over sexual autonomy or legalized pot. Liberty alone is the animating principle for libertarians, and having to hand over some of your discretionary income when you already have more then you need just isn’t going to truly motivate anyone. This stuff gets tax withheld right out of your paycheck, people don’t even notice it.
In another comment a person noticed that in the summer of ’68 people won the right to get high and fornicate, but the rest of the power structure remained in place. I think libertarians can be bought off with drugs and sex. Not literally in the sense of wonky nerds going all libertine, but in the sense that if libertarians had to choose between winning on economic issues and winning on social issues, I think they would take social issues. Nobody is going to go nuclear about the tax rate going up a bit, but they will go crazy over social issues.
Also, I won’t belabor the point so well treaded, but in the choice between sound economics and open borders, libertarians sided very strongly with open borders. Open borders will dramatically increase the burden on the state, lead to higher taxes, and vote in more leftist governments. But libertarians choose the social value, open borders, over the likelihood of achieving their economic objectives.
For my part, I think we are headed towards anarcho-tyranny. In a libertarian/progressive alliance libertarians will support the anarcho- part and the progressive will support the -tyranny part.
There was an unprecedented slowdown in the nominal growth of federal government spending during the Obama years, and I think the Tea Party contributed significantly to that; something I would not have predicted in 2009 or 2010 due to all the incredibly stupid decisions the Tea Party seemed to be making. But that is not a permanent change; most of that slowdown came from discretionary and not mandatory spending. Gay rights and marijuana rights seem to be sticking around on the other hand, so I suppose I sort of agree. I think libertarians have the most in common with business Republicans even as they have the least in common with the evangelical and traditionalist Republicans. The educated left is easiest to get along with because they come across as the most open to alternatives; other than other libertarians of course.
Let’s try a thought experiment.
You’ve been elected President as a libertarian. Like many presidents you have limited political capital, so you’ve got to focus on the key parts of your agenda you want passed.
After some study, you believe you have the following two options you could achieve with your given level of political capital.
1) Reduce everyones effective tax rate by X%. Let’s say this is budget neutral and paid for by eliminating government spending programs you already don’t like.
2) Achieving a victory on some libertarian social issue: gay marriage, legalized pot, etc.
It’s my contention that for a lot of libertarians X% is very high to make these option neutral. For some its probably infinite.
By contrast I’d say that I’ve always been more interested in X% then most social issues. I can imagine some social issues that would be more important then X% to me, but most of those issues are already decided in my favor. Not many new initiatives out there I care about.
“It’s my contention that for a lot of libertarians X% is very high to make these option neutral.”
I don’t agree. There are far more infringements on economic freedoms than on social issues. Our legal system is actually set up that way: it is much easier for infringements on economic liberty to pass constitutional muster than infringements on personal liberty.
It’s probably more defensible to say that the X one can achieve is very low given political capital. That’s because Democrats are much more intransingent in, say, defending entitlements than Republicans are in opposing social freedoms. For example, very few Republicans favor anti-gay violence as found in, say, Iran. As you say, we already have many social freedoms; the battlegrounds are actually quite marginal. That the freedoms that Democrats care about are quite marginal compared to the freedoms that Republicans care about is hardly a good reason for libertarians to support Democrats.
AKA the Niskanen Center?
1) My impression is that libertarians have actually been trending towards Republicans rather than Democrats in recent years. I think the main cause has been the Democrats’ movement away from Bill Clinton in the 1990s to Sanders/Warren now on economic issues. The anti-speech postures (campus speech, Citizens United) and the nannying/nagging (light bulbs, sugary sodas, etc.) are also contributors in the sense that they have diminished the classical dichotomy that Republicans support economic freedom but Democrats support personal freedoms. This trend may reverse if Trump’s influence grows, but I don’t see how one can claim such a trend in the absence of Trump.
2) A soda tax is *not* a nudge, at least as I understand the term. A nudge exploits a behavioral anamoly to cause someone to choose one option over another *when his true preferences are ambiguous anyways*. A classic example is making an option opt-out instead of opt-in. If the person declines to opt-out, it’s not 100% clear that he’s been coerced into accepting the option even if he would have declined to opt-in. A soda tax, in contrast, imposes an actual financial penalty to coerce. Featuring juices prominently on a menu over sodas might be an example of a nudge. A more extreme nudge, which some might argue is coercion, would be to exclude sodas from the menu completely but post some small notice somewhere that sodas are available upon request.
I think many libertarians would favor nudges over existing coercion. Unfortunately, however, most nudges seem to be proposed in scenarios where there is no existing coercion. For example, I think most libertarians would welcome a chance to opt-out of Social Security, even if they had to jump through hoops to do it. Alas, even Progressives that swear nudges work don’t seem to support nudging, rather than forcing, people into Social Security.
When there’s a chance to replace an existing restriction, like all pot being illegal, with a tax — more a Pigouvian tax than a “nudge”, but arguably also a nudge – then most Libertarians would support it. But most cases seem to be a situation of current freedom being challenged, perhaps like riding a bike w/o a helmet, and in the 3 choices of a) continued freedom (& safety risk! you want kids to DIE!!!), b) making it illegal (for the children!), and c) taxing it (often impractical), the tax nudge or other restriction nudge is just a step towards the Dem Control Freak making it illegal.
Given how many stupid regulations do, now, exist, there is a lot of hyped hope for moving towards a legal but taxed alternative. But most Libs would just want the laws against the particular freedom to be repealed.
Even gay marriage was NOT really a Lib victory — it was primarily a victory for the anti-Christians who are now empowered to put Christians in jail, or out of business, for trying to practice their Christian faith in a peaceful, non-interventionist way. Similarly, it was a victory for secret pedophiles, who want homosexual adoption & essentially ownership of other’s children, so as to indoctrinate them into a homosexual lifestyle, and in some cases sexually abuse them.
Studies will show that sexual abuse of under age children will be at least somewhat higher by same-sex adoptive parents compared to hetero adoptive parents. My guess is that for same income brackets, it will be over 100% more likely.
Along those lines, the Lib ideal of personal freedom as long as it doesn’t hurt “anybody else” comes up against the scientific fact that every fetus has different DNA than the mother. From conception, the fetus is different body — and abortion certainly hurts it. There’s a strong Lib argument that allowing abortion is a violation of the human fetal rights (of life, etc…). No Lib making such an argument will be allowed influence in the Dem party.