Over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, Jason Brennan, interspersing new text and paragraphs from his book (available on Amazon), discusses what makes Libertarianism distinct:
Libertarians are distinct in that they believe each person has an extensive sphere of personal liberty. They have strong rights against being interfered with, coerced, or subjugated. These rights act as side constraints. They forbid intrusions onto others’ lives, even when such intrusions would serve those other people’s good.
…for example, imagine I am a supremely expert life coach. Imagine that I can determine what the happiest and best life for each person would be. Suppose I know with certainty that talented David would do much more good as a doctor than as a beach bum. Suppose I also know with certainty that David would be much happier and better off as a doctor than as a beach bum. However, suppose David wants to be a beach bum. Libertarians say that I cannot force David to become a doctor, despite how good it would be if he did. He has the right to choose his own way of life, even though (we are supposing) that I know with certainty he should make a different choice.
Similarly, even if you have a moral obligation to help the homeless, it doesn’t follow that I may force you to discharge this obligation. Does this mean libertarians are selfish, callous, or indifferent to others’ suffering?
… even if I believe it is wrong to force you to help the homeless, this does not imply I don’t care about the homeless. In the same vein, if I am unwilling to force to you marry your “soul mate”, that does not mean I am indifferent to your happiness. Rather, it means that there are limits on what I may force you to do, for your good or for the good of others.
Yes, but: Who doesn’t believe there are limits on what people can be forced to do for the good of others?
There is nothing distinctly libertarian about opposing forced marriage, or forced medical school. Liberals are against that. Conservatives are against that. Progressives are against that. In our culture, very nearly everyone is against that. You might as well say that libertarians are distinct because they breath oxygen.
The only thing on Brennan’s list that is distinctly libertarian is that libertarians are against forcing people to help the homeless. And even that isn’t really a fine enough distinction. I’m pretty far left, but even I don’t think I have a right to walk up to some random homeowner, club him over the head, steal his housekey, and drop it in the next beggar’s cup I see. The real issue is how people feel about helping the homeless through a marginal increase in taxation.
Libertarians are distinctive, in part, because they and they alone seem to have difficulty perceiving the enormous moral difference between a marginally higher tax rate and forced marriage or doctorhood.1
- “They and they alone” is an exaggeration, since some conservatives would agree, but I’d argue that’s an example of how libertarians have influenced conservative thought. [↩]
It also seems to assume that “good for me” and “good for others” are sets that never overlap, and that public goods do not exist.
What sets libertarians apart is that they see taxation as coercion, period, and they oppose coercion.What I have a hard time understanding is how so few north American libertarians fail to see the inherent coercion of a capitalist economic system.
Think of some axes of libertarian thought:
1) Liberty can be evaluated on a short term or long term basis.
2) Liberty can be evaluated on an individual or group basis.
3) Liberty can be evaluated on a direct or consequential basis (this is the distinction between “the law says you can’t do XXX” and “the law says you can’t do A; therefore you practically can’t do B; therefore you practically can’t do XXX.”)
Libertarians are focused on a short term, individual, direct view of liberty.
1) They are generally unwilling to accept short term costs even when they are predicted to be outweighed by long term benefits. This is because they don’t trust the predictions, and/or because they heavily weight the short term violations due to their immediacy.
2) They are unwilling to assign group costs to individuals. They believe that individuals are not generically responsible for others, and/or that it is inappropriate to selectively target the high-output individuals for assistance (most group assignments move assets from high to low.)
3) They don’t give any real value to consequential claims of liberty issues. I think that this is mostly because they don’t trust folks’ logical “then this will happen…” progression and therefore devalue the claimed result. April’s “inherent coercion” is a great example of that.
He almost undermines his point with crap examples. But let’s not forget, while it is certainly not mainstream now, you don’t have to go back too far to get to a point when medical conscription was a reality and supported by liberals, progressives and conservatives, but not libertarians.
Is “medical conscription” a completo for “military conscription”?
I mean conscription of people for medical work, which includes military and civil conscription.
What is medical conscription and do you have any references to this history that you refer to? My googlesearches aren’t coming with anything at all other than some minor mentions of the U.S.S.R. and some strange blog posts about assisted suicide meaning medical conscription.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068098/
The MASH doctors weren’t forced to be doctors. They already were doctors. They were forced to be in the army, just like a pretty significant portion of the people in the army during the Korean War. And I don’t think that the draft was as clear-cut a political issue as you say, with libertarians being the only ones opposed to it, but I don’t know enough of the history of the draft to say for certain on that one.
When were doctors civilly conscripted?
My understanding is that opposition to military conscription, historically, has been primarily on the left.
I don’t know what James means about “civil medical conscription.” Do you have an example, James?
—Myca
That’s ridiculous, james. Here I thought that there was something I didn’t know in the, apparently, recent historical record that was interesting and it turns out that there isn’t. You’ve just made some bizarre and nonsensical connection between MASH the TV series and conscription of doctors specifically. I was looking for something real. I am unspeakably disappointed.
Ruchama,
Sure, there were tons of non-libertarians opposed to the draft. The CCCO, the War Resisters League, and the Yippies come immediately to mind. I don’t think any of those groups would describe themselves as Libertarians.
Thanks, Jake. I knew about a lot of that, but couldn’t remember the specific details of which groups supported exactly which positions, and I’ve just had a ridiculously long day and interpreting Google results is beyond me at the moment.
(1) I’m not saying libertarians are the only people who oppose the draft. What I think’s remarkable it that it is so very hard (impossible?) to find libertarians who support it. Other political groups you get people on both sides in various times and places, libertarians in my experience are universally ideologically hostile.
(2) Amp said “Liberals are against that. Conservatives are against that. Progressives are against that.”, but they’re not, it was a high profile public issue and a majority of each were vocally in favor. The US still has a “Health Care Personnel Delivery System”, so someone’s certainly supporting it (& that’s not a legacy like the standard draft, if things had gone badly wrong in Iraq it would have been used).
What exactly are you looking for? There was the Doctors Draft law, which specifically targeted medical personnel, and ran from 1950-1973 – drafting people with medical training for use as medical personnel. Now we have the “Health Care Personnel Delivery System”.
Sure. There’s a conscription spectrum. (1) conscription into an enlisted position. (2) conscription into civilian medical position within the military. (3) conscription into an enlisted position, but performing a civilian function in a reserve. (4) conscription into civilian service outside but supporting the military, i.e. auxilary corps. (5) conscription into alternative civilian service. I mean 2-5.
I mean, from scanning Wikipedia, going back to WW1, we’ve also got the American Socialist Party and the IWW, and “Conscription was unpopular from left-wing sectors at the start, with many Socialists jailed for “obstructing the recruitment or enlistment service.”
As far as Libertarians go, Ayn Rand opposed and Ludwig von Mises supported, so it’s not like there’s uniform opposition there.
—Myca
Well, and more to the point, The Libertarian Party is a third party only rarely burdened with the actuality of governance. You know who else is uniformly opposed to conscription? The Green party. The Peace and Freedom party. Etc.
And, as noted before, Ludwig von Mises favored conscription, so.
—Myca
james, I think what he was looking for is for you, just once, to make a post that didn’t just make shit up.
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Yes. In exactly the same way that we have a draft. You are venturing perilously close to Johnny Sperm&Eggs territory here, james.
Please stop making shit up and posting it here. It’s a waste of everybody’s time.
Wow – could you pick a worse collection of examples? Surely the author also cites examples such as the draft, prohibitions on unproven/hazardous drugs, etc? Ok, not at the web post; perhaps in the book? Based on this web post, I’m certainly not inspired to buy the book.
Me. Or, at least, I’m not persuaded that I can foresee all contingencies such that I would preclude the possibility. In short, I believe that circumstances matter for purposes of making such judgments; I sense libertarians don’t share that view.
Basically, I understand libertarianism to hold some measure of autonomy to be the highest good – so high that all other goods should be sacrificed for it. If the baby is ambling toward the button that triggers the doomsday device, I imagine the libertarian might argue that there are limits to the amount of coercion we should use to stop the baby’s motion.
I’m not persuaded that there are. I’m more willing to sacrifice individuals for the benefit of society. At least, as I sit in my comfy armchair, that’s what occurs to me.
While Ayn Rand resisted the label “libertarian,” she articulated libertarian views in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:
Evidence, however, suggests the contrary: both the great apes and human hunter-gatherer societies indicate that humans evolved as collectivists, not individualists, because living as part of a collective was adaptive.
Put simply, individualism is unnatural. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But we should get over the need to justify individualism on the grounds of being natural or self-evident or inalienable or whatever.
Much as I love visual humor, I’ve got some serious problems with that picture.
1) That’s a real rifle (or possibly a .410 shotgun). You don’t point a firearm at someone unless you are intending to shoot them. I don’t care if it’s staged. I don’t care if it’s unloaded. Plenty of people have died in staged circumstances by other people using rifles or guns they think are unloaded.
2) It’s called “trigger discipline”, which means that your finger is never actually on the trigger unless you’re intending to fire. That clown has his finger on the trigger.
I’ve spent my share of time either being taught or teaching people firearm safety. This is a horrible example to people. While there are disparate opinions here about firearm ownership and use, I should hope we can all agree that firearms are not toys.
Assuming you’re right that it’s a real gun, RonF, I couldn’t agree more.
Ron is absolutely right, assuming that the gun has not been made mechanically and permanently non-firing in some way (ideally, lead poured into the chamber so that you simply cannot chamber a round, but there are other ways almost as good).
And even then, even if the person in sunglasses is actually safe as houses, the image sets a poor example of weapon handling.
Grace
Gun safety. Have I told you the story about the guy who brought his Uzi into work? Yeah. So high up guy brings his Uzi in to show off. He’s talked to me before about the importance of gun safety. He brings it into the office I share with one of the co-owners and asks if anybody wants to hold it. I say, “Yeah, I’d like to. I’ve never touched a gun in my life.” Uziboy hands me the gun. It’s a lot heavier than I thought it would be. I move it around a bit, at which point Uziman says, “Whooooah, don’t point that at me. Never point a gun at anybody.” You’d think he might’ve said something before handing the Uzi to the guy who just told him he’d never touched a gun before. Ever.
Then there’s my father-in-law. He’s got a dozen or so rifley looking guns. He takes them apart, cleans them up, trades them, buys them, sells them as a hobby. They’re all leaning against the wall in his cramped, crowded, cluttered office. His grandchildren visit all the time. The guns are always just leaning against the wall in that unlocked room. He’s a man who laughs at the idiots who shoot themselves because they don’t handle their guns safely.
Color me skeptical about the real life efficacy of gun safety training. In my experience, people don’t really practice it. Granted, my experience is extremely limited but, sheesh..
There was just an article in the NY Times a few days ago about how airport security seems to be finding more and more guns, sometimes loaded, in carry-on luggage, and the most frequent response from the passenger is, “I forgot that I had it.” The article included a whole bunch of quotes from gun safety experts who were horrified at the idea that someone could just forget that he or she was carrying a loaded weapon.
(I’ve never touched a gun, either. The extent of my gun-safety training comes from the elementary school programs where we were told, “If you see a gun, don’t touch it, and go get an adult.” So I don’t really know what’s safe and what isn’t beyond “don’t touch,” so I leave that to the experts.)
@Jake Squid – I would guess that most people who have guns don’t have gun safety training, or didn’t pay much attention if they did, kind of the way plenty of people with driver’s licenses are shitty drivers.
RonF – I’m sure if you wanted to come to Brides of March next year in San Francisco, which I’m 99% sure is where that picture is from, and explain it to that guy, you’d be welcome.
So, to return to the topic at hand. Libertarians: Hilarious, or dangerously stupid? Discuss.
I don’t like this either/or dichotomy.
To be fair, there are many libertarians whose focus is on limiting abusive government power, like police brutality and cronyism, rather than starting and ending at “paying taxes is just like slavery”.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that 90% of the people who claimed to have forgotten that they had a gun were lying because they thought they’d be in less trouble that way. And because most people have enough conflict-avoidance that they don’t really want to say, “Yeah, I knew I wasn’t supposed to bring a gun on a plane, but I didn’t really care.”