Photo Credit: SenRandPaul YouTube channel
September 11, 2013
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Libertarians have a problem. Their political philosophy all but died
out in the mid- to late-20th century, but was revived by billionaires
and corporations that found them politically useful. And yet
libertarianism retains the qualities that led to its disappearance from
the public stage, before its reanimation by people like the Koch
brothers: It doesn’t make any sense.
They call themselves
“realists” but rely on fanciful theories that have never predicted
real-world behavior. They claim that selfishness makes things better for
everybody, when history shows exactly the opposite is true. They claim
that a mythical “free market” is better at everything than the
government is, yet when they really need government protection, they’re
the first to clamor for it.
That’s no reason not to work with them
on areas where they’re in agreement with people like me. In fact, the
unconventionality of their thought has led libertarians to be among this
nation’s most forthright and outspoken advocates for civil liberties
and against military interventions.
Merriam-Webster defines
“hypocrisy” as “feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one
does not.” We aren’t suggesting every libertarian is a hypocrite. But
there’s an easy way to find out.
The Other Libertarianism
First,
some background. There is a kind of libertarianism that’s nothing more
or less than a strain in the American psyche, an emotional tendency
toward individualism and personal liberty. That’s fine and even
admirable.
We’re talking about the other libertarianism, the
political philosophy whose avatar is the late writer Ayn Rand. It was
once thought that this extreme brand of libertarianism, one that
celebrates greed and even brutality, had died in the early 1980s with
Rand herself. Many Rand acolytes had already gone underground,
repressing or disavowing the more extreme statements of their youth and
attempting to blend in with more mainstream schools of thought in
respectable occupations.
There was a good reason for that. Randian
libertarianism is an illogical, impractical, inhumane, unpopular set of
Utopian ravings which lacks internal coherence and has never predicted
real-world behavior anywhere. That’s why, reasonably enough, the
libertarian movement evaporated in the late 20th century, its followers
scattered like the wind.
Pay to Play
But
the libertarian movement has seen a strong resurgence in recent years,
and there’s a simple reason for that: money, and the personal interests
of some people who have a lot of it. Once relegated to drug-fueled
college-dorm bull sessions, political libertarianism suddenly had
pretensions of legitimacy. This revival is Koch-fueled, not coke-fueled,
and exists only because in political debate, as in so many other walks
of life, cash is king.
The Koch brothers are principal funders of the Reason Foundation and
Reason magazine.
Exxon Mobil and other corporate and billionaire interests are behind
the Cato Institute, the other public face of libertarianism. Financiers
have also seeded a number of economics schools, think tanks, and other
institutions with proponents of their brand of libertarianism. It’s easy
to explain why some of these corporate interests do it. It serves the
self-interest of the environmental polluters, for example, to promote a
political philosophy which argues that regulation is bad and the market
will correct itself. And every wealthy individual benefits from tax cuts
for the rich. What better way to justify that than with a philosophy
that says they’re rich because they’re
better—and that those tax cuts help everybody
?
The
rise of the Silicon Valley economy has also contributed to the
libertarian resurgence. A lot of Internet billionaires are nerds who
suddenly find themselves rich and powerful, and they’re emotionally and
intellectually inclined toward libertarianism’s geeky and unrealistic
vision of a free market. In their minds its ideas are "heuristic,"
"autologous" and "cybernetic"—all of which has inherent attraction in
their culture.
The only problem is: It’s only a dream. At no time
or place in human history has there been a working libertarian society
which provided its people with the kinds of outcomes libertarians claim
it will provide. But libertarianism’s self-created mythos claims that
it’s more
realistic than other ideologies, which is the
opposite of the truth. The slope from that contradiction to the deep
well of hypocrisy is slippery, steep—and easy to identify.
The Libertarian Hypocrisy Test
That’s
where the Libertarian Hypocrisy Test comes in. Let’s say we have a
libertarian friend, and we want to know whether or not he’s hypocritical
about his beliefs. How would we go about conducting such a test? The
best way is to use the tenets of his philosophy to draw up a series of
questions to explore his belief system.
The Cato Institute’s overview of
key libertarian concepts mixes
universally acceptable bromides like the "rule of law” and “individual
rights” with principles that are more characteristically libertarian—and
therefore more fantastical. Since virtually all people support the rule
of law and individual rights, it is the other concepts which are
uniquely libertarian and form the basis of our first few questions.
The
Institute cites “spontaneous order,” for example, as “the great
insight of libertarian social analysis.” Cato defines that principle
thusly:
“… (O)rder in society arises spontaneously,
out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who
coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their
purposes.”
To which the discerning reader might be tempted to ask: Like
where,
exactly? Libertarians define “spontaneous order” in a very narrow
way—one that excludes demonstrations like the Arab Spring, elections
which install progressive governments, or union movements, to name three
examples. And yet each of these things are undertaken by individuals
who "coordinated their actions with those of others" to achieve our
purposes.
So our first hypocrisy test question is,
Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order”—and if not, why not?
Cato also trumpets what it calls “The Virtue of Production” without ever defining what production
is. Economics
defines the term, but libertarianism is looser with its terminology.
That was easier to get away with in the Industrial Age, when
“production” meant a car, or a shovel, or a widget.
Today nearly
50 percent of corporate profits come from the financial sector—that is,
from the manipulation of money. It’s more difficult to define
“production,” and even harder to find its “virtue,” when the creation of
wealth no longer necessarily leads to the creation of jobs, or economic
growth, or anything except the enrichment of a few.
Which seems
to be the point. Cato says, “Modern libertarians defend the right of
productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of
politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer
them to nonproducers.”
Which gets us to our next test question:
Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?
Retail
stores like Walmart and fast-food corporations like McDonalds cannot
produce wealth without employees. Don’t those employees have the right
to “coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve
their purposes”—for example, in unions? You would think that free-market
philosophers would encourage workers, as part of a free-market economy,
to discover the market value for their services through negotiation.
Is
our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for
their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market
forces?
The bankers who collude to deceive their customers,
as US bankers did with the MERS mortgage system, were permitted to do so
by the unwillingness of government to regulate them. The customers who
were the victims of deception were essential to the production of Wall
Street wealth. Why don’t libertarians recognize their role in the
process, and their right to administer their own affairs?
That
right includes the right to regulate the bankers who sell them
mortgages. Libertarians say that the “free market” will help consumers.
“Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous
if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized,”
says Cato.
But victims of illegal foreclosure are neither “freer”
nor “more prosperous” after the government deregulation which led to
their exploitation. What’s more, deregulation has led to a series of
documented banker crimes that include stockholder fraud and investor
fraud. That leads us to our next test of libertarian hypocrisy:
Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?
Digital Libertarians
But
few libertarians are as hypocritical as the billionaires who earned
their fortunes in the tech world. Government created the Internet.
Government financed the basic research that led to computing itself. And
yet Internet libertarians are among the most politically extreme of
them all.
Perhaps none is more extreme than Peter Thiel, who made
his fortune with PayPal. In one infamous rant, Thiel complained about
allowing women and people he describes as "welfare beneficiaries” (which
might be reasonably interpreted as “minorities”) to vote. “Since 1920,”
Thiel fulminated, “the extension of the franchise to (these two groups)
have turned ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron."
With this
remark, Thiel let something slip that extreme libertarians prefer to
keep quiet: A lot of them don’t like democracy very much. In their
world, democracy is a poor substitute for the iron-fisted rule of
wealth, administered by those who hold the most of it. Our next test,
therefore, is:
Does our libertarian believe in democracy? If yes, explain what’s wrong with governments that regulate.
On
this score, at least, Thiel is no hypocrite. He’s willing to freely say
what others only think: Democracy should be replaced by the rule of
wealthy people like himself.
But how did Peter Thiel and other
Internet billionaires become wealthy? They hired government-educated
employees to develop products protected by government copyrights. Those
products used government-created computer technology and a
government-created communications web to communicate with
government-educated customers in order to generate wealth for
themselves, which was then stored in government-protected banks—after
which they began using that wealth to argue for the elimination of
government.
By that standard, Thiel and his fellow “digital
libertarians” are hypocrites of genuinely epic proportion. Which leads
us to our next question:
Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?
Many
libertarians will counter by saying that government has only two valid
functions: to protect the national security and enforce intellectual
property laws. By why only these two? If the mythical free market can
solve any problem, including protecting the environment, why can’t it
also protect us from foreign invaders and defend the copyrights that
make these libertarians wealthy?
For that matter, why should these
libertarians be allowed to hold patents at all? If the free market can
decide how best to use our national resources, why shouldn’t it also
decide how best to use Peter Thiel’s ideas, and whether or not to reward
him for them? After all, if Thiel were a true Randian libertarian he’d
use his ideas in a more superior fashion than anyone else—and he would
be more ruthless in enforcing his rights to them than anyone else.
Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property?
Size Matters
Our
democratic process is highly flawed today, but that’s largely the
result of corruption from corporate and billionaire money. And yet,
libertarians celebrate the corrupting influence of big money. No wonder,
since the same money is keeping their movement afloat and paying many
of their salaries. But, aside from the naked self-interest, their
position makes no sense. Why isn’t a democratically elected government
the ultimate demonstration of “spontaneous order”?
Does our libertarian recognize that democracy is a form of marketplace?
We’re
told that “big government” is bad for many reasons, not the least of
which is that it is too large to be responsive. But if big governments
are bad, why are big corporations so acceptable? What’s more, these
massive institutions have been conducting an assault on the individual
and collective freedoms of the American people
for decades.
Why isn’t it important to avoid the creation of monopolies, duopolies
and syndicates that interfere with the free market’s ability to
function?
Libertarians are right about one thing: Unchecked and
undemocratic force is totalitarian. A totalitarian corporation, or a
totalitarian government acting in concert with corporations, is at least
as effective at suppressing the “spontaneous order” as a non-corporate
totalitarian government.
Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?
Extra Credit Questions
Most
libertarians prefer not to take their philosophy to its logical
conclusions. While that may make them better human beings, it also
shadows them with the taint of hypocrisy.
Ayn Rand was an
adamant opponent of good works, writing that “The man who attempts to
live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes
parasites of those he serves.” That raises another test for our
libertarian:
Does he think that Rand was off the mark on this one,
or does he agree that historical figures like King and Gandhi were
“parasites”?
There’s no reason not to form alliances with
civil libertarians, or to shun them as human beings. Their erroneous
thinking often arises from good impulses. But it is worth asking them
one final question for our test.
Libertarianism would have died
out as a philosophy if it weren’t for the funding that’s been lavished
on the movement by billionaires like Thiel and the Kochs and
corporations like ExxonMobil. So our final question is:
If you
believe in the free market, why weren’t you willing to accept as final
the judgment against libertarianism rendered decades ago in the free and
unfettered marketplace of ideas?
RJ Eskow is a writer,
business person, and songwriter/musician. He has worked as a consultant
in public policy, technology, and finance, specializing in healthcare
issues.
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