Confessions Of A Bleeding-Heart Libertarian
A guest post from a self-described left-libertarian…have fun! 
I’ve been going back and forth trying to think of an interesting “left-libertarian” post for Thoughts on Freedom. I describe my new blog, Civil Tongues Australia, as being in part dedicated to Left Libertarian political thought – but really, I’m no expert in this area.
Recently, on this blog, John Humphries wrote an interesting post about what might draw people to left-libertarian visions, and I thought in responding to that post, rather than taking a “foundational” approach and trying to define a left-libertarian theory I would instead write about what has drawn me, pragmatically, to “left” libertarian ideals.
Noam Chomsky, in a paper in the collection “Chomsky on Anarchism”, makes the distinction between ‘goals’ and ‘visions’.
Most people who identify with libertarianism share a fairly similar “vision”: that in order to flourish people must be free to pursue their life in a way that they see fit. No other person, or group of persons, has the right – or the ability – to tell them how to pursue their life or what their goals should be.
If we were omniscient beings who were planning communities, or revolutionaries who believed in wiping the slate clean, we may come up with fairly similar ways* of arranging society.
However, this is generally not our concern – instead, we seek to apply our libertarian principals within complex pre-existing societies. It is in these pragmatic goals that we tend to differ greatly.
In my case, although I would certainly fall on the “illegitimate authority ought to be eliminated if possible, whether it be corporate or government” side of the libertarian scale, I believe that libertarian ideals in the context of Australian/global society today also give a moral imperative to “left” rather than “right” libertarianism.
Can the libertarian in a modern society take as their highest goal the protection of property rights and the minimisation of government when so many of the resources and so much of our success in society is attached to historical (and in some cases continuing) repression of the rights and freedoms of others?
And when the success of a state is based on repression does not the state bear some obligation to redress the balance?
In my opinion, the libertarian cannot ignore the claims of those who have been repressed and continue to bear the burden of that repression. Furthermore, the libertarian cannot simply refuse to accept that the state should have a role in rectifying the problems that is has caused. To do so would undermine the very principles they seek to protect.
As I have said before on my blog, I’ve never really understood why libertarianism automatically leads to a desire for free-market capitalism above all else. For me, the desire should be for everyone to have free and fair opportunities to pursue their lives in the manner they see fit and have as much freedom from the domination of others as possible.
The left-libertarian, then, does not have an obligation to argue against all state intervention full stop, but to argue for a state that, when it does intervene, does so in a way that gives the power back to communities and individuals and allows multiple, flexible approaches that foster the creativity and problem-solving skills of the people they are affecting rather than simply imposing solutions from on high.
While our overall vision of the way society (or perhaps I should say ‘societies’) would certainly not include a big federal government down in Canberra running welfare programs, we cannot move forward without addressing the inequalities in liberty that are the legacy of our past. In order to be useful as well as just theoretically interesting libertarians must deal with the realities of the society they find themselves in.
*well, actually, when it comes to the various evils of power there would probably be quite a bit of disagreement about whether it is only state power that should be eliminated or whether power from corporations is an equal evil… but that’s another post.
An ex aussie farmer on property rights
Leon Ashby used to be a farmer. He has given up on that and is now building a new political party (just what Australia needs). He has a three part youtube video explaining the career change. The video below is part two. I thought it was a very practical account of how property rights are being eroded and the consequences of that.
World Government – coming in December?
I haven’t done a fact check on this but it doesn’t sound very nice.
He is also in an interview with Alan Jones.
http://2gb.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6205&Itemid=134
I think the document he is referring to is this one:-
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
He has obviously struck a cord, or maybe a nerve, because today Kevin Rudd responded. Some extracts:-
And we are just 31 days away from the Copenhagen Conference of Parties – an historic moment to forge a global deal to put a global price on carbon.
Today we are approaching the crossroads. Both these policies are reaching crunch time.
When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices – action or inaction.
Note that he clearly has a better speech writer than George Bush Junior had. None of this “you’re either with us or against us” nonsense. Later on he makes reference to the video.
Lord Christopher Monckton – a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher – was quoted this week in the Australian press by Janet Albrechtsen. Lord Monckton describes the potential Copenhagen agreement as a plan to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen. Enter the “world government” conspiracy theorists.
Lord Monckton also publicly warned Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever.”
Janet Albrechtsen, in her understated neo-conservative way, refers to the potential Copenhagen agreement as a UN “power grab”. This gaggle of world government conspiracy theorists are so far out there on the far right, that they rub up next to the global anarchists of the far left.
Are we about to witness the formation of a world government? I’d suggest that such a project is already well established and was well under way before climate change even appeared on the radar. However if you oppose world government I think it is fair to say that this agreement won’t help.
The Great Depression – as explained by Supply Side economics
Today I stumbled on a paper that I first encountered a few years ago. I first saw it just prior to publication when a copy was shared with me by the authors father. The book length document expands on prior work from the Supply Side school of economic thought on the causes of the Great Depression. Given recent economic events I thought it was well worth another look and I thought others might also appreciate it. In my view the Supply Side analysis that it expounds still represents the most coherent explanation for the Great Depression.
History Incognito:
The untold origins of the Roaring Twenties, the Crash, and the Great Depression
By Sean P. Breen
Monday, April 10, 2006This paper offers an answer to three important unanswered questions regarding the economic history of the 1920’s boom, the Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. This paper supports its answers by creating new historical databases and subjecting the historical data to rigorous modern statistical analysis.
The three questions are: what caused the boom of the 1920’s, what caused the Crash of 1929 and what caused the ensuing Great Depression of 1930’s? The answer, which is detailed in the following pages, is that the antecedent cause for all three questions was the transformation of the United States into the world’s creditor as a result of World War One. This War and the reversal of the Unite States from a debtor nation to become the world’s only remaining banker, created a fragile world economy that demanded continued U.S. lending to support a level of international commerce that could allow repayment of War debts. The Mellon Treasury was masterful in managing the economic dislocation of the War Years and returning the U.S. economy to growth through a progressive and scientific reform of the U.S. tax structure and U.S. debt markets. This was the ‘cause’ of the 1920’s boom. The restructuring of lower peacetime tax rates and the lowering of tariffs promoted expanding trade with Europe that was essential if the European nations were to recover from the War and perform on the War debts owed to the U.S. Enabled by the Mellon treasury, the U.S. loaned money to Europe to buy U.S. products so that they could earn enough from the commerce to continue to perform on War debt and reparations that were in turn owed to the U.S. These policies were successful until the late 1920’s when declining agricultural prices, driven down by technological productive innovation, raised political temperament for agricultural tariffs. The politics of the agricultural tariff movement blossomed into a general tariff movement as all sectors of the economy sought to share in the political largesse. Unfortunately, the resulting Smoot-Hawley tariff destroyed the precarious basis under which the fragile international financial structure functioned. This was the ‘cause’ that resulted in the Crash of 1929. As international tariffs reduced international commerce the international financial system collapsed and the U.S. stock marked crashed. In reaction to the economic collapse U.S. policy retreated from the paradigm of low taxes and open markets to high taxes and closed markets which prevented recovery and so, ‘caused’ the Great Depression.
Rudd and deregulation
If Kevin Rudd thinks that neo-liberals have pushed the deregulation barrow too far then why does he have a “Minister of Deregulation”? I mean he could have called the position “Minister of Regulation” if it was just about tightening up regulations. Is this more Kevin Rudd double speak? Is he a closet neo-liberal?
Hunting ferals
There is this bunch of volunteers that want to spend their spare time helping to rid NSW national parks of feral animals. I’m not sure why they want to do it for free but it seems they do. The NSW government wants to amend the law to allow them to help. According to one media report “the Public Service Association, which represents park rangers, has ordered its members not to assist“. I’m not sure where it’s authority to order people about stems from but in any case it seems a little bit knee jerk. Surely removing feral animals from national parks, essentially for free, would be a good thing.
As I understand the state of play in NSW hunting is already allowed in state forests and on some other crown land. South Australia allows hunting in national parks and national park rangers have worked effectively with hunters to remove pest species in several parts of the state.
Perhaps some of the opposition to this stems from the fact that they won’t be hunting bare foot with spears or clubs. Apparently they want to use firearms.
Crickeynomics
For those of you sensible enough not to read Crikey, I’m sorry to do this to you. If I was a stronger person I would also just stop reading neo-socialist commentary. But like a gawker at a car crash, I just can’t seem to look away.
Crikey’s main writer — Bernard Keane — has been telling us for months that expansionary fiscal policy works well, and that the ETS is good policy. I have occasionally sent him a quick e-mail pointing out some of his more egregious errors (not understanding how national accounts work, claiming that most economists prefer an ETS to a carbon tax) but he hasn’t responded or corrected them.
But today’s mistake deserves a special mention.
Flicking through the recently-released MYEFO (Commonwealth mini-budget) Keane claims that it “gives the lie to the absurd line from ETS opponents such as the Nationals that the CPRS is a giant tax.”
For Keane, the reason that the ETS isn’t a big tax is that the government is going to match the tax with higher level of government spending. In the world of neo-socialists, if you tax and spend then you haven’t really taxed. Wow.
The ghosts of global warming
Hat tip to Terje. A slighted edited version of this post was published in the weekly “ideas@centre” e-mail sent out by the Centre for Independent Studies. If you haven’t signed up, you should.
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In just over a month, world leaders will meet in Copenhagen to work out a plan of action to tackle climate change. But something spooky is happening in America that may get in the way of an agreement.
According to the latest Pew poll on climate, only 36% of Americans agree that the earth is warming and that humans are responsible.
By comparison, a Gallup poll has found that 37% of Americans believe that houses can be haunted.
At first the two issues don’t seem linked – but there are some similarities between global warming and ghost stories. Both are dangerous. Both are hard to see. Both are used to frighten children and simple-minded people.
Stephen King has made a fortune writing about haunted houses (and won many awards in the process), while Al Gore has made a fortune talking about global warming (and won a Nobel Encouragement Award Peace Prize).
But there is a very important difference.
Bulb ban
Due to legislation introduced by Turnbull during the John Howard years the the sale of incandescent bulbs is prohibited as of today. More accurately the ban prohibits the sale of light bulbs with an efficacy of less than 15 lumens per watt (lm/W). I checked at the local supermarket and the shelf where the incandescent bulbs used to be was empty. Technological advances were going to see the incandescent replaced over time anyway. I suspect that the compact fluorescent bulbs that I have throughout my house will also be dated technology within a decade as long life LEDs drop in price. Conceivably we will see the day when light bulbs last nearly as long as the house.
The ban isn’t unique to Australia. The EU will see them banned by 2012 and the USA by 2014. Even so this law would have been a really good law to slap a sunset clause on.
M-PESA
Nearly everybody would be familiar with pre-paid mobile phone accounts where you can go to the corner store and buy airtime credits for your mobile phone. What if for a small fee shops also allowed you to exchange your surplus airtime for cold hard cash? And if the phone company set up a system by which you could transfer airtime to other subscribers via some sort of SMS mechanism? Suddenly we would have a very simple but robust payment system. One that would compete with the likes of EFTPOS, would be really convenient and which might under cut the traditional banks.
Of course in places like Australia the regulators wouldn’t readily allow such financial innovation without a banking license and the associated regulatory barriers to entry. Such a pity. Luckily the financial regulators in Kenya are a bit slow moving and exactly this scheme did get off the ground about two years ago. It now has over 7 million users and a lot of other mobile phone companies across the developing world are moving to copy the service. It’s called M-PESA (Swahili for mobile money). Check it out.
Okay but we have EFTPOS so why is this significant? In the developing world we are rapidly approaching (ie perhaps within a decade) the point where nearly everybody has a mobile phone. And yet vast number of these people don’t have access to a traditional bank account and are not likely to have one any time soon. Suddenly a whole section of humanity that has previously missed out is about to be able to access an in your pocket electronic payment system. Interesting times. I love innovation.
Stand and Deliver
It’s tax time! Just a reminder, that unless you’re using an agent, your Australian tax return is due the end of October.
In unrelated news, here is a music video from the early 80’s for your entertainment:
An upper house by sortition
One of the checks and balances in Australias system of national government is our bicameral legislature. Before a new law can be enacted it must pass through two separate houses of parliament. Laws are introduced in the lower house (the house of represenatives) but must also be accepted by the upper house (the senate).
The upper house was at the time of federation intented to safe guard the interests of the states. It has essentially failed in this regard. Many have criticised it for impeding the will of executive government, which may mean that it has perhaps at times safeguarded the interest of the people. In terms of representing the people of Australia it has likewise been criticised as unrepresentative. Most famously Paul Keating called it an “unrepresentative swill” but probably more because it impeded his personal agenda.
Our upper house is modelled on the British House of Lords. However the British House of Lords has certainly never being a particularily popularist body because members were appointed by herditary title and serve for life rather than by any system or election. This tenure allowed its members to obstruct governments without too much regard to popular sentiment. Arguably this has at times been a good thing in terms of limiting government power (and maybe sometimes a bad thing). Canada also modelled it’s upper house on the British House of Lords but rather than using heridary title its members are appointed by the prime minister and serve until age 75. Tony Blair reformed the British House of Lords to fill vacancies more along the lines of the Canadian model.
Scary news!
Amusing or frightening? Apparently recent opinion polls show that more Americans believe in ghosts than in human caused global warming. Has anybody told Obama?
Hat tip to Andrew Bolt.
Allan Ramsay and Pavlovian politics.
I was never a great fan of the politicians of yesteryear, Gough Whitlam was a pompous old bastard, Fraser was an elitist prick, and I often clashed with Joh and the Nationals. In some cases after they retired I grew to like them, Chip, Gorton, and Hayden come to mind, even Hawke and Keating. I don’t tell anybody this, but I grew quite fond of Joh.
My opinion hasn’t changed on Gough and Mal. The reason I miss some of them is that back in those days we had politicians who were real people with real character, which brings us to the subject in mind. Last night one of our veteran parliamentary press gallery reporters was interviewed on 7:30 report, and was scathing about the type of politician we have today, some of which mirrored some of what is said in the US.
One of the reasons Palin inspired people was that she was seen widely as, “One of us.”
From the 7:30 Report:
KERRY O’BRIEN: Compare today’s backbencher, walking through the doors of Parliament House for the first time, with the MPs that you saw arriving to Parliament for the first time in those earlier years.
ALAN RAMSEY: They were much more representative of the Australian community in the earlier years, they really were. They didn’t come with their university degrees and they didn’t come out of ministerial offices. They really did come from the community at large – the great majority of them.
Not anymore. It’s a real – it’s a career path now. We don’t have two separate political parties; we just have two groups of people who represent political careers. The Labor Party, to all intents and purposes to what it was, up until relatively recently, is dead. Read more »
Refugees who can pay
Refugees are getting a lot of press recently with an increase in boat activity between Indonesia and Australia. Whilst it is perfectly legal for a refugee to come to Australia and claim asylum we continue with political solutions that entail imprisoning those refugees who lawfully arrive by boat. Or else we try to offshore the problem with the help of third parties be it John Howards pacific solution or now Kevin Rudds somewhat similar Indonesian solution.
There are a lot of aspects to this problem including both moral and political concerns. The key political argument in simplistic terms seems to be that if refugees who arrive by boat are allowed easy entry (even after extensive mandatory detention most do get to stay) then the other 9 or so million refugees in the world will see a green light and all decend on Australian shores. Obviously there is some fallacy in this simplification purely because there are other nations besides Australia into which at least some of those 9 or so million refugees might seek to go irrespective of Australian policy. However on the face of it there is enough of a grain of truth in the claim for the Australian government to continue to pursue the same political solution as the last government (dressed up differently of course).
In seeking a political solution it seems to me worth noting that the refugees that pay people smugglers to come to Australia are not like a lot of other refugees. What sets them apart is a capacity to pay. A lot of the worlds 9 million people avoid travelling to Australia simply because of the costs imposed by our policies and the cost imposed by geographic factors. To solve the politicial problem (ie to take images of boat people off TV) this distinction is worth noting. A recent article in The Australian indicated that people smugglers are able to charge $15000 to smuggle people to Australia from Indonesia. Presumably many of them pay additional costs to get to Indonesia in the first place. Lets presume for the sake of the argument that the total financial cost is $30,000.
At the moment our policy amounts to creating costs for refugees via a tough policy, allowing people smugglers to profit from those costs by selling smuggling services, and then ultimately letting the vast majority of boat people to stay anyway. The smugglers appear to be winners from this approach.
A solution the government ought to consider would be to introduce a new permanent residency visa that refugees with the capacity to pay can purchase whilst abroad. For a fee of say $30,000 they can be expeditiously processed as refugees and then enter Australia via cheap travel means such as aeroplane. The net result is much the same except;
- smugglers suddenly lose a lot of customers
- there are a lot less boats on TV
- less people die in the ocean
- Australia makes a buck
- less innocent people end up in prisons
- the government can keep it’s tough border protection policy
The green road to fascism.
A recent posting on “Carbon Sense,” “Puppets in Parliament and Pay-offs on the Road to Carbonia” by Viv Forbes from Carbon Sense included the following:
Those calling for “certainty” are mainly the voices of vested interests, and they expect a pay-off.
Some are already celebrating the pay-offs to come.
For example, the “Carbon Market Expo” to be held on the Gold Coast in October 2009 boasts, “more than 70 businesses will exhibit at the expo”. They include bankers, brokers, carbon asset managers, carbon investment managers, carbon accounting firms, carbon management firms, carbon consultants and auditors, carbon control consultants, emissions trading forums, carbon rewards groups, tree technology consultants, green fleet firms, carbon credit offset suppliers, carbon forest service companies, carbon certifiers and verifiers, carbon registries, carbon market infrastructure providers, recruitment firms, R&D advisers, PR firms, engineering contractors, University academics, carbon market advisers and of course all the federal, state and even local “climate smart” bureaucracies and their well traveled staff. … Read more »
Illiberal anarchy
New Zealand libertarian duo, Eric Crampton and Brad Taylor, have written a paper exploring the concept of “illiberal anarchy”. They look at the consequences of “meddlesome” preferences in both anarchy and democracy, and conclude that strong meddlesome preferences will cause anarchy to be illiberal.
Crampton & Taylor (C&T) suggest that with strong meddlesome preferences democracy may work better, while with widely shared weak meddlesome preferences, anarchy will be better. They go on to suggest that the nature of anarchy will lead to strong meddlesome preferences (undermining the system) while the nature of democracy will lead to widely shared weak meddlesome preferences (once again undermining the system). Bugger.
I think they make a few mistakes regarding the anarchist situation.
The old should pay for themselves
None of you bastards showed up to listen to me talk about “the old should pay for themselves” (specifically: getting rid of the old-age pension) at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. This is the summary of what I said…
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Some see the debate about the old-age pension as between those who care about people, and want to give them money, and those who don’t care about people and want to see them starve. Given that choice, most people choose to be a good person. And that must mean I’m a heartless bastard. Perhaps.
But I see this debate differently. There will always be a pension system — the only question is whether we have a government approach (funded by tax and managed by bureaucrats) or a community approach. This debate is not “markets v government”, but “community v government”. I prefer the community approach.
100 years ago there was no government welfare system (including the old-age pension). People with a pro-government bias might assume that there was no welfare system. This is wrong. Before the introduction of the government welfare system there was a large, growing, efficient and effective voluntary community welfare system that has been nearly entirely forgotten in modern welfare debates.
The government did not invent the welfare system; they nationalised it.
At What Point Do You Intervene?
As libertarians, we all have well defined views on the role of the state, the importance of individual freedom and so on. We believe that you can not make a decision on behalf of another.
But how do we act when this intersects with our personal life?
Allow me to give a simple example, one which many of us would have faced. You’re out drinking, and a friend of yours, who is obviously over the legal limit, decides to drive home. You are worried about their safety, but your appeals to them not to drive fall on deaf ears. What do you do? Do you recognise their individual freedom, or do you take their keys – violating their private property rights, and placing your judgment above theirs, but quite possibly saving their life in the process.
What if I take this even further. You receive a phone call. Someone you know is planning suicide and calls you to say a final farewell. Do you call the police and invoke the power of the state to violate their freedom of choice, but save their life in the process? At what point do you impose your judgment over theirs? Does it matter if you know they’ll thank you for it in the morning?
Such questions have troubled me for quite some time, and I personally can’t come up with any satisfactory answer. So am quite interested in how others would act.
Over to you.
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