Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

[Keith Wilson]

AKA Ayn Rand: there's an interesting essay about her in TNR.

In the heyday of her celebrity, it often seemed that the only appropriate public response to Ayn Rand was dismissal. In 1961, Newsweek magazine sent a reporter to investigate the growing circle of devotees clustered around the right wing novelist. Visiting the New York City headquarters of Rand’s Objectivist movement, the reporter declared the Russian-born Rand an “apparition” with a “glare that would wilt a cactus.” After a similar pilgrimage, a writer for Life magazine forthrightly concluded that Rand was the leader of a cult. A review of Rand’s essay collection Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal in The New Republic simply referred to Rand as “Top Bee in the communal bonnet, buzzing the loudest and zaniest throughout this all but incredible book.”

And yet, some fifty years later, Rand is the avowed intellectual inspiration of presumptive GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Ryan offers no apologies for interest in Rand’s philosophy and makes little effort to hide his allegiances. Just how did Rand travel from the fringes of a 1960s subculture to the heart of American politics?

Read all about it here.

[hanleyclifford]

I think her writing is more useful for exposing the failings and hypocrisy of the left than providing any realistic basis for government. No harm in reading it and appreciating it's validating the frustrations of conservatives, but her ideas are not a good framework for government or economics in 2012.

[johnw]

Nice piece. This part:

Libertarians who borrowed her political ideas but didn’t buy her epistemology were “a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people,” “plagiarizers,” and “scum.” Conservatives were far, far worse. “Futile, impotent and culturally dead,” conservatives could only “accelerate this country’s uncontested collapse into despair and dictatorship.”

reminded me of the way Communists regard liberals, only this is harsher.

To my way of thinking, Rand's philosophy indulged the "just world" fallacy, which is its real similarity to Social Darwinism. It justifies the distribution of power and wealth, pronouncing the outcomes that exist to be moral, and efforts to remedy the inequity of life therefore to be immoral.

It also indulges the "superman" idea, which Dostoyevsky demolished in Crime and Punishment before Nietzsche had got around to popularizing it.

I read Rand at an age when I should have been susceptible to the charms of her philosophy, but I found her shallow, and Dostoyevsky more insightful.

[Gerarddm]

In one memorable summer when I was young I read Thus Spake Zarathustra, then Atlas Shrugged, but then was saved by Richard Farina's cult classic Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. John Galt couldn't compete with Gnossos Pappadoupoulus.

[Keith Wilson]

John, that's a very interesting essay; I don't have the time right now to give it the attention it deserves. One point - the late 1800s was not a period of slow growth, rather turbulence; fast growth punctuated by crashes about every 20 years. The overall trend rate was quite high. "Just world fallacy" is a meme that deserves to be spread around; a very succinct way of naming the mistake.

Not a very good chart but the best I could find on short notice.

[Gerarddm]

That's an interesting chart. Note that the declines grew pretty consistently except for a flat period in the mid 1800s, while the growth line stayed basically flat from the mid 1800s through to WWI.

[ron ll]

Ayn Rand on Johnny Carson.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/...ew_video_.html

[johnw]

John, that's a very interesting essay; I don't have the time right now to give it the attention it deserves. One point - the late 1800s was not a period of slow growth, rather turbulence; fast growth punctuated by crashes about every 20 years. The overall trend rate was quite high. "Just world fallacy" is a meme that deserves to be spread around; a very succinct way of naming the mistake.

Not a very good chart but the best I could find on short notice.

In the U.S. it was a period of rapid growth. In Europe it was the Long Depression.

From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_DepressionWhile the United States resumed growth for a time in the 1880s, the Paris Bourse crash of 1882 sent France careening into depression, one which "lasted longer and probably cost France more than any other in the 19th century".^[19] The Union Générale, a French bank, failed in 1882, prompting the French to withdraw three million pounds from the Bank of England and triggering a collapse in French stock prices.^[20]

The financial crisis was compounded by diseases impacting the wine and silk industries^[19] French capital accumulation and foreign investment plummeted to the lowest levels experienced by France in the latter half of the 19th century.^[19] After a boom in new investment banks after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the destruction of the French banking industry wrought by the crash cast a pall over the financial sector that lasted until the dawn of the 20th century.^[19] French finances were further sunk by failing investments abroad, principally in railroads.^[17] The French net national product declined over the ten years from 1882 to 1892.^[21]

And in the U.S., the economy began to grow again, but increasing inequity meant that much of the newly-created wealth was captured by a small percentage of the population.

in the United States, nominal wages declined by one-quarter during the 1870s,^[10] and as much as one-half in some places, such as Pennsylvania.^[27] Although real wages had enjoyed robust growth in the aftermath of the American Civil War, increasing by nearly a quarter between 1865 and 1873, they stagnated until the 1880s, posting no real growth, before resuming their robust rate of expansion in the later 1880s.^[28]

And we had another recession in the 1880s.

The fact that people saw their wages decrease while some people became more wealthy was part of what gave William Bryan his moment. And the election he lost was the most expensive, in terms of percent of GDP spent on an election, in our history as the financial sector backed McKinley, who wanted to keep the gold standard.

Perhaps I should have emphasized the role of increasing inequity in that essay more than I did. In any case, the combination of the Long Depression and the increasing inequity of the Gilded Age created an environment in which inequity needed to be justified. The similarity to the present moment is why we're seeing the revival of the just world fallacy.

[Keith Wilson]

In the U.S. it was a period of rapid growth. In Europe it was the Long Depression.

Excellent point. I was thinking about the US, and that's what the chart shows. It was also the age of the European empires, and and of mass emigration from Europe.

If things keep going the way they are, I expect a genuine revival of some form of socialism - the real thing, not the imaginary boogeyman the right is so fond of trotting out and propping up whenever they have a particularly weak argument. Not old-style communism, that obviously was a disaster, but a real communitarian counterpoint to social neodarwinism.

[Nicholas Carey]

Ayn Rand is intellectually dishonest. Start reading on of her books c. age 18 or so, on the recommendations of friends that she was the best thing since sliced bread. Think it was one of the books on objectivist epistomology.

Got through about chapter 3 or so, IIRC, and put it down when I read the long, indented block quote, tagged with a footnote. Turned to the back of the book and looked up the footnote. She was quoting herself as the expert.

Put the book down, and tagged her as the poseur she most certainly was.

Never could understand why she appeals to 19-year olds. Can't understand why she appeals to anyone else with half a brain.

[Kaa]

If things keep going the way they are, I expect a genuine revival of some form of socialism - the real thing, not the imaginary boogeyman the right is so fond of trotting out and propping up whenever they have a particularly weak argument. Not old-style communism, that obviously was a disaster, but a real communitarian counterpoint to social neodarwinism.

Interesting. Can you describe this "real thing" in a bit more detail..? How would this "real communitarian counterpoint" work?

I take it M.Hollande is insufficiently socialist for the "real thing", right? Which parties or movements qualify?

Kaa

[johnw]

Excellent point. I was thinking about the US, and that's what the chart shows. It was also the age of the European empires, and and of mass emigration from Europe.

If things keep going the way they are, I expect a genuine revival of some form of socialism - the real thing, not the imaginary boogeyman the right is so fond of trotting out and propping up whenever they have a particularly weak argument. Not old-style communism, that obviously was a disaster, but a real communitarian counterpoint to social neodarwinism.

Something like a quarter of the population of Norway emigrated. Sometimes I think most of them went to Ballard, where I may be moving my store: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/slide...lard-14956.php

As for a revival of socialism, I sort of doubt it. One of the reasons Communists hate liberals is that they keep trying to fix up capitalism so that it will last. Communists want the contradictions in capitalism to bring it down, and Republicans want to deny that there are any contradictions.

Thing is, the contradictions in Communism brought it down first. And Fabian Socialism doesn't have such a good economic record either. Capitalism with a social safety net and enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand seems to work best of the systems tried in the 20th century.

[johnw]

counterpoint to social neodarwinism.

The counterpoint to Social Darwinism was Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, A Factor in Evolution. The modern counterpoint is this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/bo...pagewanted=all

Says pretty much the same thing Kropotkin did. He was an expert in spiders, Wilson is an expert in ants. Both concluded that nature abhors an a$$hole.

[PeterSibley]

In the U.S. it was a period of rapid growth. In Europe it was the Long Depression.

From Wikipedia:



And in the U.S., the economy began to grow again, but increasing inequity meant that much of the newly-created wealth was captured by a small percentage of the population.



And we had another recession in the 1880s.

The fact that people saw their wages decrease while some people became more wealthy was part of what gave William Bryan his moment. And the election he lost was the most expensive, in terms of percent of GDP spent on an election, in our history as the financial sector backed McKinley, who wanted to keep the gold standard.

Perhaps I should have emphasized the role of increasing inequity in that essay more than I did. In any case, the combination of the Long Depression and the increasing inequity of the Gilded Age created an environment in which inequity needed to be justified. The similarity to the present moment is why we're seeing the revival of the just world fallacy.

I can remember somewhere seeing an excellent graph of European military expenditure versus US military expenditure for the same period, it seems a reasonable explanation (amongst others) for the different fortunes .

[PeterSibley]

Something like a quarter of the population of Norway emigrated. Sometimes I think most of them went to Ballard, where I may be moving my store: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/slide...lard-14956.php

As for a revival of socialism, I sort of doubt it. One of the reasons Communists hate liberals is that they keep trying to fix up capitalism so that it will last. Communists want the contradictions in capitalism to bring it down, and Republicans want to deny that there are any contradictions.

Thing is, the contradictions in Communism brought it down first. And Fabian Socialism doesn't have such a good economic record either. Capitalism with a social safety net and enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand seems to work best of the systems tried in the 20th century.

I differ on this , the USSR fought a hot and cold war against the forces of either fascism or capitalism from 1918 until it crashed, it just bleed white against vastly superior odds .I imagine that without 60 years of either hot or cold war the outcomes could have been vastly different.

[Keith Wilson]

Can you describe this "real thing" in a bit more detail..?

No, because it doesn't exist yet. It was a prediction, not a description. Note I didn't say it would be a positive development. Extremism on the right and extremism on the left do not balance each other and produce moderate sensible policies. As John said, "Capitalism with a social safety net and enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand seems to work best of the systems tried in the 20th century." but when you reduce the safety net and the rules too far, it gets unpleasant for most folks that some look for alternatives.

[elf]

Never could understand why she appeals to 19-year olds. Can't understand why she appeals to anyone else with half a brain.

She appeals for the same reason the churches succeed in collecting so many around the same age. Religion with a coating of "welcome to the adult world - you're a grown-up now, congrats".

[Willin']

If Scientology is the name of the religion that sprung from L. Ron Hubbard's novel, what will the conservatives name the one from Rand's? They're almost there already.

[Kaa]

No, because it doesn't exist yet. It was a prediction, not a description.

Not much of a prediction -- "something that I cannot describe may or may not happen in the unspecified future" :-) But come on, Keith, you must have had something in mind when you wrote about "the real thing". Socialism is a much-abused word and I'm not a mind-reader, I have no idea what you meant. So what is that you're warning us about? I'm not asking for a New Socialist Manifesto, but at least in which directions will this "real thing" go?

Kaa

[Kaa]

Capitalism with a social safety net and enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand seems to work best of the systems tried in the 20th century.

That's a complicated issue.

First, what's "works best"? How do we measure and compare? Will you be content with GDP growth, or would you like to use a different yardstick?

Second, about a "social safety net", when do you think the US acquired one? Roosevelt's New Deal? Johnson's Great Society?

Third, "enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand" is a tautological description akin to "it's better when things don't go bad". How do we know what's "enough", what's too little, and what's too much?

Kaa

[johnw]

That's a complicated issue.

First, what's "works best"? How do we measure and compare? Will you be content with GDP growth, or would you like to use a different yardstick?

Second, about a "social safety net", when do you think the US acquired one? Roosevelt's New Deal? Johnson's Great Society?

Third, "enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand" is a tautological description akin to "it's better when things don't go bad". How do we know what's "enough", what's too little, and what's too much?

Kaa

1) The Soviet Union fell because it could neither produce enough food to feed its people nor earn the hard currency to buy it. That's a pretty damning measure of their incompetence. On the other end of the scale, there were company towns in the 19th century that kept people in debt peonage ("I owe my soul to the company store.") That was not socially acceptable. Neither produced a society that could continue.

2) The social safety net evolved, and is still evolving. We're a democracy, and the process is messy. Get used to it.

3) You might want to look up "tautology." It is possible to have more than enough rules, so that things don't get out of hand, but the rules themselves become a problem, therefore "enough rules" is not equivalent to things not getting out of hand. At present, the question of whether we have more than enough rules is more often heard than whether we have enough.

"Enough rules" is a subjective measure. "Keep things from getting out of hand" is a subjective measure. Both markets and democracy are attempts to measure subjective values -- prices are not set by God or the king, they reflect the customer's desire for the object and the owner's willingness to part with it.

And what problems we should address with our government are not set by God or the king, either. When railroad monopolies set prices at "all the market will bear" -- that is, at the point just before farmers who relied on the railroads could no longer farm -- the grange movement started to oppose monopolies. The regulation of markets is mainly about making sure that neither fraud nor power undermine the market's ability to measure the values of those participating in them. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, which is why he was interested in values, and he noted that merchants were constantly trying to corrupt the way values are measured.

The actual quote is,

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

"Enough rules" prevent this sort of conspiracy. More than enough rules, such as Nixon's price controls, simply substitute a distortion of the market's ability to measure value through the power of the state.

[Kaa]

1) The Soviet Union fell because it could neither produce enough food to feed its people nor earn the hard currency to buy it.

That's just not true. Under Brezhnev and later the Soviet Union did not have any famines and starvation was not an issue. In a more literal reading, there were no hunger riots and it wasn't the lack of food which led to the Soviet Union's downfall.

In any case, I still don't understand what do you mean by "best". Let's take a recent example -- the first dozen years of the XXI century. Which country (or region) do you think did "best" during this time and by what criteria?

2) The social safety net evolved, and is still evolving.

So in your original statement, that capitalism with a safety net works best, what degree of evolution did you have in mind? At which point do you get what you'd be willing to call a safety net for capitalism?

"Enough rules" is a subjective measure. "Keep things from getting out of hand" is a subjective measure. Both markets and democracy are attempts to measure subjective values -- prices are not set by God or the king, they reflect the customer's desire for the object and the owner's willingness to part with it.

Neither markets nor democracy "measure" anything. The markets show you market-clearing prices which are not subjective (in the usual sense of the word). In a basic sense, markets redistribute things and services from those who value them less to those who value them more subject to ability to pay -- but that has nothing to do with measuring subjective values. In the same way, democracy reveals (in a very imperfect way, but it's a different discussion) the political preferences of the population and again, the election results are not subjective at all.

My desire for a well-defined yardstick is simple: let's say I want to compare on this basis USA, Japan, Greece, China, and Ghana. How do I figure out whether any of these countries has "enough rules" rights now, or too little or too much? Which numbers or indicators do I look at?

The regulation of markets is mainly about making sure that neither fraud nor power undermine the market's ability to measure the values of those participating in them.

That's very libertarian of you :-) Are you sure your inner liberal does not want to regulate markets to produce more just outcomes, for you favorite value of "just"? :-)

That's also theoretical. In practice the government regulates markets to provide advantages for players with more political influence, typically the incumbents. But that also is a separate discussion.

Kaa

[johnw]

That's just not true. Under Brezhnev and later the Soviet Union did not have any famines and starvation was not an issue. In a more literal reading, there were no hunger riots and it wasn't the lack of food which led to the Soviet Union's downfall.

That's just not true. Food riots are not needed for leaders to know when they are in trouble. In any case, you might want to read this before you make up your mind: http://www.aei.org/files/2007/04/19/20070419_Gaidar.pdf

In any case, I still don't understand what do you mean by "best". Let's take a recent example -- the first dozen years of the XXI century. Which country (or region) do you think did "best" during this time and by what criteria?



So in your original statement, that capitalism with a safety net works best, what degree of evolution did you have in mind? At which point do you get what you'd be willing to call a safety net for capitalism?



Neither markets nor democracy "measure" anything. The markets show you market-clearing prices which are not subjective (in the usual sense of the word). In a basic sense, markets redistribute things and services from those who value them less to those who value them more subject to ability to pay -- but that has nothing to do with measuring subjective values. In the same way, democracy reveals (in a very imperfect way, but it's a different discussion) the political preferences of the population and again, the election results are not subjective at all.

Claiming something "shows" or "reveals" rather than "measures" is in this context a distinction without a difference. The market-clearing price is a point at which the buyer thinks it's a good deal and the seller does as well. What the buyer is willing to spend reflects the buyer's desire and resources, which form effective demand. The buyer's resources may be objective, but desire is, in the usual sense of the word, subjective. In what sense could my customer's greater desire for a copy of "the hunger games" than for a copy of "John Carter of Mars", or vice versa, be considered objective?

My desire for a well-defined yardstick is simple: let's say I want to compare on this basis USA, Japan, Greece, China, and Ghana. How do I figure out whether any of these countries has "enough rules" rights now, or too little or too much? Which numbers or indicators do I look at?

That's the real problem, isn't it? We have no objective measure of when rules are too restrictive, so the issue is settled through the subjective (in the usual sense of the word) process of democracy. Of course, democracy does produce numbers at the end of the process, but they fact that election results are numbers should not conceal from you that they are a measure of subjective value.

That's very libertarian of you :-) Are you sure your inner liberal does not want to regulate markets to produce more just outcomes, for you favorite value of "just"? :-)

That's also theoretical. In practice the government regulates markets to provide advantages for players with more political influence, typically the incumbents. But that also is a separate discussion.

Kaa

No, that's liberalism. Libertarians typically don't acknowledge that markets require regulation (other than enforcing property rights) to function properly.

In essence, they argue that a just outcome is an outcome produced by markets. As a liberal (a label, by the way, that Frederick Hayek applied to himself, with some justice) I believe that markets can be manipulated so that they do not reflect the (subjective) values of their participants, but only reflect the power of the participants. I consider libertarians naive on this, just as you, as a cynic, appear to consider me naive in thinking democracy can act as a counterweight to markets, allowing all to participate in the making of the rules under which markets function.

Of course, it's possible for those with the greatest power to corrupt government as well as markets, and exclude the many from government so that it benefits the few. Why Nations Fail is full of examples of this. The usual result is a poorer society in which the benefits of the economy go to the few who control it, a situation that is hard to rectify, because fixing it threatens their position, and they are after all, in power. But societies don't have to function the way you think they do.

Rand was in the business of justifying the inequity that benefited those on top of society, so I don't quite see how this is a separate discussion. The logical consequence of her philosophy in the Gilded Age would have been to let the railroad barons have their monopolies and screw the farmers. No doubt she would have accused the grange movement of "envy."

[Kaa]

That's the real problem, isn't it? We have no objective measure of when rules are too restrictive, so the issue is settled through the subjective (in the usual sense of the word) process of democracy.

I don't like this approach. It's not hard to figure out whether the rules are too restrictive or not if only you bother to create a metric, a measuring stick. What that yardstick might be is debatable as it goes to the original question of what does "best" mean. But once you've formulated the issue clearly, once you defined what do you want to measure, the rest can be as objective as you wish.

For example, let's say we define "best" conventionally (in economics) as GDP growth. As soon as we've done that, we can estimate how burdensome the rules are (e.g. by comparing different countries) and then attempt to establish a statistical relationship between the "amount" of rules and GDP growth.

Democratic decision-making may set the rules, but that doesn't make them optimal or even desirable.

No, that's liberalism. Libertarians typically don't acknowledge that markets require regulation (other than enforcing property rights) to function properly.

You've been looking at too many caricatures of libertarians. Most every (non-retarded) libertarian will agree that markets require regulation of three types: enforcing property rights, enforcing contracts, and breaking up monopolies. Further than that opinions start to differ, but in a monopoly situation there is no market and for a libertarian that's no good.

In essence, they argue that a just outcome is an outcome produced by markets.

You're missing an imporant qualification -- by free markets. Monopolies as well as heavily manipulated markets do not qualify.

As a liberal (a label, by the way, that Frederick Hayek applied to himself, with some justice) I believe that markets can be manipulated so that they do not reflect the (subjective) values of their participants, but only reflect the power of the participants.

I hesitate to stick labels onto myself, but I quite agree with that assertion and I don't think you'd consider me a liberal :-) Again, I think you are confusing caricatures with actual libertarians.

But societies don't have to function the way you think they do.

I am not sure what do you mean. In which way I think societies function?

Rand was in the business of justifying the inequity that benefited those on top of society.

I disagree -- Ayn Rand was in the business of pushing back against the socialist/communist ideas which at the time were growing in popularity in the West. I see her not as being pro-something, but very much anti -- anti the idea of everyone being a happy cog in a huge state machine.

Kaa

[Keith Wilson]

Ayn Rand was in the business of pushing back against the socialist/communist ideas . . .

Ms. Rand was in the business of feeding her own demons, a result of the very real unpleasantness she experienced as a child and young woman before leaving Russia.

[Norman Bernstein]

......As John said, "Capitalism with a social safety net and enough rules to keep things from getting out of hand seems to work best of the systems tried in the 20th century." but when you reduce the safety net and the rules too far, it gets unpleasant for most folks that some look for alternatives.

I have absolutely no fear or concern that this country might, if the 'imbalance' gets too severe, turn to socialism/communism/etc.... the concepts of free enterprise and capitalism are too deeply ingrained in our collective psyche.

Instead, what I fear more is the emergence of yet another 'Robber Baron' era.... the drift towards genuine plutocracy, roughly analogous to what happened in that era, where unbridled 'capitalism' resulted in a severe imbalance the was the origin of a cascade of economic disasters, concluding with the Great Depression. We've been on that path for the past three decades now... what happens if the trend continues? Right now, a relatively tiny fraction of the population 'owns' the vast majority of the country, and the plight of the middle class is getting worse... does it accrue to our benefit if the trend continues?

The good news is that, in this country, the pendulum still swings. The bad news is that the counter-reaction, should things get out of hand, could be really awful. We could face a decade or more of some very hard times before we manage to get back to a reasonably equitable society.

[johnw]

I am not sure what do you mean. In which way I think societies function?

The way you said they function.

Originally Posted by Kaa

That's very libertarian of you :-) Are you sure your inner liberal does not want to regulate markets to produce more just outcomes, for you favorite value of "just"? :-)

That's also theoretical. In practice the government regulates markets to provide advantages for players with more political influence, typically the incumbents. But that also is a separate discussion.

Kaa

You've been looking at too many caricatures of libertarians. Most every (non-retarded) libertarian will agree that markets require regulation of three types: enforcing property rights, enforcing contracts, and breaking up monopolies. Further than that opinions start to differ, but in a monopoly situation there is no market and for a libertarian that's no good.

Once they decide to do something about externalized costs, they'll be nothing but liberals. Add to that the sort of social insurance that conservatives like Bismark and Churchill favored to keep social unrest in check, and you get the modern industrial liberal democracy. That's the problem; when you start looking at what it takes for society to work, it all gets messy and the simple, clear philosophy gets muddied by experience.

I disagree -- Ayn Rand was in the business of pushing back against the socialist/communist ideas which at the time were growing in popularity in the West. I see her not as being pro-something, but very much anti -- anti the idea of everyone being a happy cog in a huge state machine.

Consider her stand on the inheritance tax. You might think such an admirer of the individual would want everyone to start even, but she insisted that the only motive for such a tax could be redistribution desired because of envy. The revenue from an inheritance tax could have supported the state activities she approved of, such as police and courts to enforce property rights, but she went with the justification of the present distribution of wealth, rather than saying real supermen could make their own fortunes.

I understand that she may have been attractive to people who didn't like '50s conformity, but I find her understanding of human nature shallow, and her philosophy pretty useless for any purpose other than justifying inequity.

[Kaa]

[re the way societies function]

Well, there's no absolute no-exceptions rule that the societies have to function the way I said they function. But I see very powerful forces pushing them in that direction. And looking at history, the empirical evidence seems to support my thesis. That's just the way things turn out to be -- in practice. In theory, of course, you can have all sorts of beautiful constructs.

Once they decide to do something about externalized costs, they'll be nothing but liberals.

Not at all. Partially depends on what do you mean by liberals -- I would agree that libertarians are close to old-school classic individual-rights liberals, but these are very different people from those who are called liberals nowadays in the US. Even with respect to markets contemporary US liberals will not be at all satisfied with just keeping monopolies in check and forcing companies to internalize external costs. And beyond market regulation the differences between libertarians and (contemporary US) liberals are enormous.

Add to that the sort of social insurance that conservatives like Bismark and Churchill favored to keep social unrest in check, and you get the modern industrial liberal democracy.

Libertarians are NOT the middle ground between liberals and conservatives :-) You don't get there by combining some liberal pieces with some conservative pieces.

In any case, are you arguing that libertarians are (or should be) fine with "the modern industrial liberal democracy" as it exists in, say, US, Canada, Europe, etc.? I don't think they are, as a matter of fact, and the libertarians issues with it cannot be reduced to problems of monopolies or internalization of external costs.

I find her understanding of human nature shallow, and her philosophy pretty useless for any purpose other than justifying inequity.

<shrug> Your prerogative. She's certainly a product of her era and I think that you discount too much the context in which she lived and wrote.

And it seems to me her philosophy is pretty useful given sentiments such as this:

This whole notion of freedom and or the loss of it is a crock, like we're on some slippery slope to some sort of dystopian nightmarish existence, guess what it's already here and we've been under it for a very long time. Cameras just seem to make it more real, but it's always been there.

Big corporations have tracked your whereabouts every time you've used a credit card, banks have had you by the short hairs for years if you have a mortgage or a car loan. The yoke they have on you through the fear they instill by what might happen if you default on your mortgage, or miss a couple of car payments, you become homeless and lack for personal transportation.

Most people get up every day and spend a bulk of their waking hours in the pursuit of income in order to allow their families to survive and thrive and other than a very thin slice of the population that has so much money that they couldn't even outlive a fire fueled by their own money in the form of shovelfuls of hundred dollar bills into the fireplace, most people are already on board with this, for lack of a better term, indentured servitude.

:-)

Kaa

[johnw]

Libertarians are NOT the middle ground between liberals and conservatives :-) You don't get there by combining some liberal pieces with some conservative pieces.

This answers an argument that no one has made.

In any case, are you arguing that libertarians are (or should be) fine with "the modern industrial liberal democracy" as it exists in, say, US, Canada, Europe, etc.? I don't think they are, as a matter of fact, and the libertarians issues with it cannot be reduced to problems of monopolies or internalization of external costs.

Of course they are not comfortable with the modern industrial liberal democracy. They haven't tried to use their philosophy to run a country. If they did, they'd run into the same problems as classical liberals did, and have to find solutions for them.

She's certainly a product of her era and I think that you discount too much the context in which she lived and wrote.

So was Marx. Is that an excuse for bad ideas?

And it seems to me her philosophy is pretty useful given sentiments such as this:

I do not accept the notion that bad ideas can only be combated by bad ideas. I think part of the problem with our current discourse is that so few people make a serious study of the philosophical basis for our society, which is liberalism. That's why we have people thinking that liberalism minus social insurance is a completely different philosophy called libertarianism, and some claiming that liberalism is identical with socialism, a quite different philosophy.

By the way, I once worked for a newspaper chain started by this guy:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/feat...lic-schooling/

The paper was still officially libertarian when I was there, and in editorials only spoke of "tax supported" schools, never "public" schools. The idea seemed to be that only market interactions were legitimate, not democratic actions like voting to have public schools.

Freedom Communications was usually referred to as "the Freedom chain," which I think more fully captured the contradictions in Hoiles' thought. Liberalism brought the values of the marketplace into government at a time when the legitimacy of government was in question, but as it evolved, it found a different way of measuring peoples' values (voting rather than markets.)

I've devoted some time to thinking through liberalism, by the way. Some of my ideas, like the subjectivity of value, come from that project.

[Kaa]

I'll write more later, but in the meantime, would you say that your positions are somewhere in the neighborhood of Will Wilkinson?

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com...t-libertarian/

Kaa

[johnw]

I'll write more later, but in the meantime, would you say that your positions are somewhere in the neighborhood of Will Wilkinson?

http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com...t-libertarian/

Kaa

I'd say he's not far off the mark, and Matthew Yeglesias is often in the right ballpark (though he slipped badly on Chick-fil-a.) I've already linked to the series of essays that explain my views in depth. And as to the site his essay appeared on, free markets and social justice pretty much describe liberalism, so it's a little hard to see the need for the libertarian label.