The Libertarian Missionary

The first two paragraphs are absolutely, positively brilliant. The rest are good, but the first two are almost perfect.

Bryan: This is very nice, and it doesn’t deal with the main objections that conservatives have to libertarianism. In particular, they (or at least the ones I’ve seen) are unhappy with the idea that people would be allowed to engage in “immoral” behavior such as recreational drug use, homosexuality, being a “hippie” (i.e. dressing sloppy, having poor hygiene, and/or refusing to hold a job), having heterosexual intercourse outside of marriage, not going to church, and so forth.

When I talk with conservatives who are skeptical of a completely free market and even more skeptical of social tolerance for different lifestyles and behaviors, I point out that a pure free market will “punish” hippies and drug users by condemning them to unemployment, poverty, social opprobrium, and possibly even starvation (unless they are willing to grovel and/or change their habits in return for a handout from a religious charity), and and will reward decent solid citizens by giving them good jobs, high incomes, and therefore high social status.

Sometimes I claim that other “lesser” sins such as promiscuity will be punished as well (because women who bear children out of wedlock will not be given any government aid), and sometimes I simply point out that, given that a majority of Americans believes that such behavior is not inherently wrong, the best a conservative can hope for is to have the government be neutral . . . because any enforced morality would be *against* conservatives rather than *by* them.

In the back of the conservative’s mind is diminishing marginal returns. That’s the tragic vision that Sowell talks about. The missionary libertarian has a more utopian view, unconstrained or at least far less constrained by that downer of an idea.

Clearest example is the immigration case: we had open borders for over a century and it worked because there was lots of prime land available throughout. The best will fill up first, then the next best, etc. Pretty soon we’re left with only crummy land. And land will always be zero-sum.

So open borders will either keep people where they are and drive up the cost of land, or move them to a place that’s as expensive as things used to be, but of crummier quality to compensate. No one likes that picture.

Ditto the returns to having lots of immigrants here — the first hour saved by a professional because they can contract out menial jobs will go to something highly productive, like an extra hour at work. Then it goes to less and less productive activity. At some point — arguably reached by now — the time freed up by adding the next immigrant just gives the professional another hour to fart around on the internet in Starbucks or take a trip to a day spa.

And yet the cost of housing, educating, insuring, etc., each successive immigrant does not diminish — indeed increases over time, given that in the short-run these are all zero-sum resources.

Libertarianism is not just about values, given a political structure and collective decision making institutions, and Bryan neglects that. Under current simple majoritarian rules, it is much to easy to trade individual liberty for perceived “collective welfare.” But we know that the latter is not an attainable concept, because in a diverse society there can be no social welfare function. Add to that the reality that politicians and bureaucrats act mostly in their own interest, and we get liberty sacrificed for no gain, all day every day.

Thus, the libertarian critique of both liberalism and conservatism must begin with a discussion of how to restrain political decision making and political power in favor of (i) alternative means of implementing social responsibilities, i.e., non-governmental organizations based on voluntary participation, and (ii) of how to attain higher decision making thresholds, preferably complete Wicksellian/Buchananite unanimity, or something close to it. A libertarian needs to argue for limiting politics as the way to solve collective problems, and stress community based organizations, along with a stronger reliance on common rather than statutory law. The libertarian critique is that statutory legal frameworks are open to abuse, and failure.

It’s all about the imperfections of all collective decision making institutions, and how to understand their characteristics in order to blend them most appropriately, in accordance with individual values and individual liberty.

It wouldn’t take a marketing genius to win them over to the cause of American liberty.

And even if it did, we could just hire all the marketing geniuses who won our current population over to the cause of American liberty!

You won’t convince conservatives. Conservatives don’t value liberty to begin with.

You can convince libertarians to be conservatives by tugging at normal human failings–the desire for collective prestige, to eliminate competition by those they dislike, etc.–but you cannot appeal to a conservative’s “principles”. They simply don’t have any by libertarian standards.

Conservatism is a political movement. Libertarianism is mostly a political philosophy. These two things intersect rarely and briefly.

But Borjas himself, the most prominent detractor of immigration in economics, estimates that decades of immigration have cut high school drop-outs’ long-run wages by a mere 4.8%.

But this 4.8% drop in wages is due to semi-literate immigrants presently in the country. What too many libertarians want is to eliminate the minimum wage while allowing unlimited importation of poorly educated immigrants. This would push down the wages even more for those with less than a high school education.

“Consider the classic thought experiment where five people require organ transplants to survive. Almost everyone grants that it would be wrong for a doctor to murder a stranger to save his patients’ lives. It might be noble for the stranger to volunteer, but taking his organs without his consent is wrong, even if it leads to a better overall outcome.”

This thought experiment ignores the question how the doctor can know that murdering the stranger would produce the best outcome. This is Hayek’s problem of knowledge in society; the nearest we can come to solving it is by instituting a libertarian regime, including property rights (in one’s own organs, inter alia). This isn’t perfect, but it is far better than relying on the off-hand judgments of doctors, or anyone else.

By the way, note this little detail: that the victim is supposed to be a *stranger*. So far as the argument is concerned, he might as well be the doctor’s own child. But the experiment is designed to insinuate that the doctor’s judgment will be *biased*: he will care more than he objectively should about his patients, less than he should about the stranger. He will be *tempted* to discount the stranger’s interests unduly. Also, although it is stipulated that the doctor knows that sacrificing the stranger will be for the best, making him a stranger makes this practically unlikely: how would the doctor come by the stipulated knowledge about a stranger?

As with many thought experiments in moral philosophy, this one is set up to suggest factors that are not officially part of the story, factors that prompt intuitions which are then treated as if they were responding to just the official elements of the story. These insinuated factors contaminate the intuitions in ways that are hard to recognize.

I think you need a conservative to write this one, it only focused on a few issues and not central ones for conservatives. It’s difficult to write persuasively on arguments your opponents have already dismissed.

I don’t believe this a weak defense of libertarianism; I also don’t believe it’s inferior to his arguments for conservatism.

One person who has advocated libertarianism as a defense of conservatism is Hans-Hermann Hoppe:; I wish Bryan would have incorporated some of Hoppe’s thinking:

“In conjunction with the even older compulsory system of public education, these institutions and practices [the welfare state] amount to a massive attack on the institution of the family and personal responsibility. By relieving individuals of the obligation to provide for their own income, health, safety, old age, and children’s education, the range and temporal horizon of private provision is reduced, and the value of marriage, family, children, and kinship relations is lowered. Irresponsibility, shortsightedness, negligence, illness and even destructionism (bads) are promoted, and responsibility, farsightedness, diligence, health and conservatism (goods) are punished. The compulsory old age insurance system in particular, by which retirees (the old) are subsidized from taxes imposed on current income earners (the young), has systematically weakened the natural intergenerational bond between parents, grandparents, and children. The old need no longer rely on the assistance of their children if they have made no provision for their own old age; and the young (with typically less accumulated wealth) must support the old (with typically more accumulated wealth) rather than the other way around, as is typical within families. Consequently, not only do people want to have fewer children – and indeed, birthrates have fallen in half since the onset of modern social security (welfare) policies – but also the respect which the young traditionally accorded to their elders is diminished, and all indicators of family disintegration and malfunctioning, such as rates of divorce, illegitimacy, child abuse, parent abuse, spouse abuse, single parenting, singledom, alternative lifestyles, and abortion, have increased.”

The problem with this argument is it clearly doesn’t have a philosophical understanding of Liberty

Nor do most Libertarians

Yes. I guess I’m libertarian. My Mom won’t even know what that means.