Category Archives: Libertarian Thought

Is internationalism liberal or imperalist?

Posted on by

Tyler Cowen writes,

In other words, it could be that the fractious and increasingly nationalistic politics of today are how things naturally are — and the anomaly is this decades-long period of cooperation and harmony.

He calls the internationalist approach “liberalism,” and he laments its inability to persist.

Contrast with Yoram Hazony.

For centuries, the politics of Western nations have been characterized by a struggle between two antithetical visions of world order: an order of free and independent nations, each pursuing the political good in accordance with its own traditions and understanding; and an order of peoples united under a single regime of law, promulgated and maintained by a single supra-national authority. . .

the imperial rulers of the ancient world saw it as their task, in the words of the Babylonian king Hamurabi, to “bring the four quarters of the world to obedience.” That obedience, after all, was what ensured salvation from war, disease, and starvation.

And yet, despite the obvious economic advantages of an Egyptian or Babylonian peace that would unify humanity, the Bible was born out of a deep-seated opposition to that very aim. To Israel’s prophets, Egypt was “the house of bondage,” and they spared no words in deploring the bloodshed and cruelty involved in imperial conquest and the imperial manner of governing

Hazony sees the quest for international order as intrinsically imperialist. He has a forthcoming book that extends these arguments.

I believe that this is an issue that is particularly challenging for libertarians. We believe that national borders restrict freedom, including the freedom to live where you want. But what if every project to get rid of national borders is one in which power is concentrated in a central authority?

Closing your mind

Posted on by

Nat Eliason writes (better link?),

Every time you laugh with your friends about “how stupid Trump voters are,” you do a few things:

You further cement the idea in your head that Trump voter = stupid.

You create greater social consequences for those around you voicing anything pro-Trump, thus encouraging greater homogenization of your social group.

You reduce your ability to reasonably engage with ideas that don’t fit your group’s narrative.

I wrote The Three Languages of Politics in part because I realized that most political statements are made for the purpose not of opening anyone’s mind but instead for the purpose of closing the minds of people on your side. Even though President Trump does not fit into my original three axes, the reaction to him is an example of this mind-closing phenomenon.

I keep thinking that I ought to write something on the topic of socialism. But I don’t want to just write something that would closes the minds of those of you who already oppose socialism. I would want to write something that would engage with and open the minds of those who support socialism.

Mike Munger on non-ownership

Posted on by

You can watch the podcast at Cato (I watched it live yesterday, so the link may be different). The book is Tomorrow 3.0: Transaction costs and the sharing economy. It can be summarized by a remark from one of my commenters.

The commenter writes,

Ownership is a form of market failure:

– Your car being parked 23hrs a day just to ensure that it’s there when you need it.
– Transaction costs of selling/buying your house tying you down and decreasing efficiency of your human capital.

This reminds me of my line to my high school students that “Do It Yourself is market failure.” I had an economist friend who built a deck for his house to “save money.” I pointed out that if he could get paid his economist’s wage rate while working more hours and then paid someone to build the deck, then that would have saved a lot more money. His inability to get paid for marginally more hours worked as an economist was the market failure.

Transaction costs and agency costs related to land are fundamentally important. In theory, the best way for me to own land is to include a well-diversified mutual fund that invests in real estate as part of my portfolio. In practice, transaction costs make me want to stay in a particular dwelling much longer than might otherwise be optimal, and agency costs make it more likely that a property will be well cared for by an owner than by a renter. Overcome those sources of market failure and you make it feasible to own a diversified real estate portfolio instead of being stuck with one home.

The non-ownership society?

Posted on by

Tyler Cowen writes,

The great American teenage dream used to be to own your own car. That is dwindling in favor of urban living, greater reliance on mass transit, cycling, walking and, of course, ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft.

He gives many other examples where we have given up ownership. He does not even mention the issue of social media and who owns your data.

In all of these cases, we may be giving up control in order to have convenience. The cumulative effect may be to give away our independence.

I see this from a Specialization and Trade perspective. The more we specialize and trade, the more interdependent we become. We don’t grow our own food, make our own clothes, build our own homes, and so on. The more we consume the goods and services provided by others, the more we have to trust the institutions through which we obtain those goods and services.

I think that Tyler has a legitimate worry that liberty may be more fragile in this more specialized economy. Because we are more interdependent, there are more ways for us to be let down. That in turn could make us seek more protection from government. Libertarians must make a convincing case that market competition offers better consumer protection than government agencies.

The case for business

Posted on by

Bryan Caplan makes it.

Yes, businesspeople are flawed human beings. But they are the least-flawed major segment of society. If any such segment deserves our admiration, gratitude, and sympathy, it is businesspeople.

Our education system is filled with teachers who seek to elevate the status of non-profits and government. They seek to lower the status of for-profit business. My guess is that this would change if we had a voucher system. If educators worked in a profit-seeking mode, then they would not be going all-out to denigrate profit-seeking.

Contrary to what we are educated to believe, there is nothing inherently noble about working for non-profits or for government. Businesses are forced to make the interests of customers a priority. That is not true for non-profits or for government. The non-profit just has to satisfy its donors. Some government officials have to worry about satisfying enough people to stay in power, and the connection between how well they serve people in general and their electoral prospects is pretty loose. But most government workers do not even face the threat of being thrown out of office. Maybe they have a boss who cares about how well they serve people, and maybe the boss is willing and able to fire them if they fail.

I am not saying that individuals who work for non-profits or for government are uncaring or lazy. I am saying that they work in an environment in which being uncaring or lazy is not punished as reliably as it is in business.

I think that it ought to be more socially desirable to work in business than to work in the non-profit sector or in government. It’s too bad that it seems to be the other way around.

TLP watch

Posted on by

A kind review from Tristan Flock.

In The Three Languages of Politics, Kling argues that to understand our political opponents, we need to update the way we frame disagreements. Liberals, conservatives, and libertarians each have their own tribal language, which often baffles and infuriates outsiders. Until we grasp the nuances and assumptions of each language, mutual understanding is impossible. Fortunately, Kling provides a simple framework for making sense of these semantic differences.

My review of Lilliana Mason’s book

Posted on by

The book is Uncivil Agreement. I conclude,

Consider the persuasive case she builds that citizens’ political behavior is driven primarily by group emotions and tribal loyalty. This would seem to me to support a libertarian view that a better society is one in which most decisions are kept out of the realm of politics altogether. Making good choices is hard enough even for the most rational of centralized decision-makers. If the underlying political behavior is not even rational to begin with, then the prospects for beneficial government intervention must be even more remote.

I thought that the political psychology in her book was very consistent with what I wrote in TLP.

Here is an interview of Mason by Ezra Klein, which struck me as very worth a listen. Neither of them seems to have found that the research moves them in a libertarian direction.

So far, the book still ranks at the top of my list of non-fiction books of the year.

Can the academy be saved? part one

Posted on by

Can it be restored as a home of free speech and free inquiry? The Open Mind conference, put on by Heterodox Academy, says yes. At the very least, I would recommend watching the video of the wrap-up session with Jonathan Haidt and Deb Mashek.

I think that the very name “heterodox” is a give-away that their prospects or success may be slim.

I have liked Wendy Kaminer for many years, ever since I read I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional. She recently had an op-ed on the ideological turn of the ACLU. In her panel remarks at the conference, she indicates that she is worried that she is part of a generation of liberals who is aging out of the system, to be replaced by a generation that has grown up to expect and embrace speech codes. I fear that on campus, demographics is destiny. The diversity uber alles crowd is going to drive out the truth-seeking uber alles crowd. The HxA’ers may not realize it, but they could just turn out to be a tenured version of the IDW.

Thoughts on tribalism

Posted on by

from Jonah Goldberg.

one reason I think a global sense of ethical or tribal solidarity is very difficult to achieve is that one of the key ingredients of tribal solidarity is opposition to an “other.” Global religions still define themselves — in practical terms — as opposed to some other religious view or group. Johnson’s point about cosmopolitanism is a good one, but it overlooks the fact that many of the cosmopolitans, or “globalists,” very much act like a tribe pitted against what they consider to be the populist rubes beneath them. As Ross Douthat notes, the cosmopolitans are a tribe, too.

He is not the first person to make these points. Nor will he be the last. The essay and the several of the links are worth your time.

What is post-modernism?

Posted on by

Daniel Klein writes,

I find Peterson, Saad, Dennis Prager, and other PoMo-bashers stimulating, charismatic, often inspiring. I share a classical liberal political outlook. But in making sense of challenges facing liberalism, the PoMo bashing is misleading. It dumbs down understanding of the challenges. By positing a demon that believes an absurdity (“no interpretation better than another”), PoMo-bashing gives easy hope of correcting the belief and undoing the demon.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Klein cites Deirdre McCloskey, who is a long-time opponent of logical positivism and hence sympathetic to post-modernism.

Let me try to take a position between two extremes. The extremes are:

1. Truth is truth. It can be judged impersonally, using logic and empirical methods. Decoupling, if you will.

2. Truth is relative. It can be judged from the perspective of the individual’s location in social space. “As an African-American woman, my reality is that. . .”

One problem with (1) is that it denies the reality that emotions and social circumstances do affect people’s beliefs. Another problem with (1) is that it does not include a category (other than dogma) for beliefs that cannot be evaluated scientifically. It risks biasing you toward a faith that “social science” can be used to rationally construct human affairs. I think that these concerns, particularly the last one, incline McCloskey and Klein to have some sympathy with post-modernism.

One problem with (2) is that it is overly nihilistic. There are plenty of objective truths. Another problem is that it is too power-conscious. People abuse it to try to exercise power in conversations where truth-seeking, not power-seeking, ought to be the nature of the discussion.

In general, when a label is deployed as a boo-word, it has lost its usefulness. “Neoliberalism” falls into that category. It seems that “post-modernism” does, also.