Why do Libertarians need Natural Rights?

Libertarians will talk about "Natural Rights" until they are blue in the face.

My question/comment:

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The Government/Slavery Analogy, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: "

Why does *anyone* need to umpire disputes? Life is not fair, and the concept of 'fairness' was invented by those who desired for the power of the umpire.

That is the most confusing thing to me about libertarians. Why the need for a third party to enforce contracts? 4 billion years of life without the need of an umpire, then, less than 10,000 years ago, some umpires talked themselves into a job and never left. And they guard their position jealously.

I am supposed to be grateful to these umpires for the lack of anarchy around my person, ignoring the fact that I have exactly as much anarchy around my person as I can stand to tolerate. I don't remember any useful order around my person that I didn't have to work and plan for, at great cost to my own leisure.

"

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Once bought a book at Tower Records (back when there *was* a Tower Records) titled _The Myth of Natural Rights_. [ The Myth of Natural Rights and Other Essays - L.A. Rollins http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Natural-Rights-Other-Essays/dp/061519298X ].

The essay/book asked valid questions: why would anyone care about Natural Rights, and could any inalienable Rights provided by Nature be of practical interest? L.A. Rollins is Holocaust denier, or some kind of Holocaust provocateur. (Ugh, how I hate people who are glib about hot-button issues. Who the hell has the time to ape skeptical poses to gain hostile attention? I wish they could have been adequately breast-fed as infants, so their psychological lack wouldn't be pressed upon society, as imbecile gurgling of would-be controversies.) I read it, it made a valid argument, but I cannot endorse the anything else the man may have written.

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Live your life like Diogenes the Cynic, or accept the consequences - your choice. There are no Natural Rights to ensure your good results in life. (I love this picture of Diogenes in his tub, surrounded by dogs.) [Edit] My snarky comment got an emotional, but honest, reply:

Rajeev writes: Manuelg, how many countries in South America, Asia, and Africa have you lived in? Better yet, have you lived in any of the inner cities of the US? Have you been bullied in kindergarten? I live in South Asia, and I can assure you that you have inherited, not created, most of the useful order around your person. If you lived in some parts here, you would quickly find you need an umpire, or suffer severe physical violence. Posted November 19, 2009 10:18 PM

My reply back:

> If you lived in some parts here, you would quickly find you need an umpire, or suffer severe physical violence. How shall I distinguish these helpful umpires from the other potential bullies? Hold out hope that whomever isn't assaulting me physically - at just that very moment - is in fact a well disguised blessed umpire with only my best interests at heart? I do not possess infinite stores of credulity. I see stationary bandits exacting protection monies from those under threat from roving bandits. The monies seem to be enough - I will deny them my gratitude.

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[ I maintain this extreme position as an intellectual exercise. Only to remind myself what I must give up when I _choose_ not to live my life like Diogenes the Cynic - in a gutter, living off of wild onions, with wild dogs. I cast no judgment on a man who chooses to be grateful to the agents of justice and equity, even though I, personally, am cynical. Cheers. ]

This is my newly learned argumentative technique of backing off my extreme positions at the end of a communication. I have heard the people in my life call me crazy so many thousand times, it finally sank in. As a human, I cannot support my most extreme positions in the face of other humans who are earnestly opposed. [ Why the question of being bullied in kindergarten? Are libertarians predominately victims of bullying, who still feel the sting of that past bullying? I guess it is a way to form intellectually something constructive from the experience. As a response, I cannot find must to recommend it, though. Does it lead to less anxiety and more positive outcomes? As opposed to assuming the lion share of a human's potential positive outcomes will come from self-mastery from inside that human. ]

Annoyed by Fisker electric cars

Was so annoyed by Fisker electric cars getting a $528.7 million loan from the US Department of Energy, had to write this comment: How to Kill Entrepreneurship, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: "

Leave aside the farce of a 'plug-in' vehicle. These Fisker cars will create a lot of jobs for the coal industry in the USA. I don't much mind mercury in the lake fish I eat - at my body weight it would take a lot to bring me down - but I am less excited to further poison myself so these alleged virtuous souls can pretend to be environmentalists.

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Leaving aside this particular farce... One question I have for libertarians is: why is the example of South Korea supposed to to be noxious? They have a heavy government hand in all industry. Seems reasonable, seems to produce good results.

Answering my own question, as best I see: The best argument against such a heavy government hand here in the USA would come from Mancur Olson _The Rise and Decline of Nations_. After the devastation of the Korean War, South Korea was starting from scratch. They don't have the burden of steadily accumulating rent-seeker and entitlement government lobbyists, as the USA has accumulated.

The most interesting reply I received was:

david writes: I wonder whether it's possible for a country to have an arrangement of interest-groups such that virtually all power is concentrated in the hands of a few groups with an interest in longer-term growth. Caplan might consider Singapore, whose government has been noted to absorb or demolish other civil institutions. It is also a small open economy. So presumably it can be modeled as one rational actor restricted by international competition rather than by local politics.

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South Korea is presumably similar, but with its massive industrial conglomerates instead. Since most of their markets are overseas, beyond the control of their own government, there are perhaps fewer attempts at domestic regulatory rent-seeking. They have to be competitive or die anyway. Posted September 25, 2009 3:59 PM

I still think government intervention into technological innovation is irrationally too low.

Libertarian angst at American demographic shifts

I was distressed to read this rabid piece from libertarian Arnold Kling "The Emerging Stagnant Majority", where a poor argument is laid out for a permanent shift in increasing government entitlements due to demographic shifts in America from Hispanic and Asian immigration.  It is hysterical and shows a bad case of "Democrats/Obama on the brain".  Here is a representative quote:

I think we will see this trend emerge much more strongly over the next decade, as it becomes clear that the Republican Party is not going to win another national election.

The recent actions of the Republican Party shows them to be friends of Libertarians? This sounds like Moon-Man talk.  That so much hysteria is generated from a fellow, Obama, who is a hair slightly to the left of Clinton, who was himself a hair slightly to the left of Reagan. The dismal fortunes of the Republicans comes from their agenda of making themselves as loathsome as possible to a majority of voters, short of a explicit party plank of poisoning the beloved pets of likely voters.

How am I supposed to distinguish this piece from bald racism? I will just force myself to be charitable, and say it is a sign of personal stress.

Happily, co-blogger on the Econ-Log site, Bryan Caplan, wrote a comprehensive reply to point out the silliness of libertarians worrying about demographic shifts in America from Hispanic and Asian immigration: "The Case Against Libertarian Hispanophobia".  The post is short, readable, comprehensive, and persuasive.

This is my comment, posted:

> Ethnically homogeneous countries like Sweden tend to have large welfare states, because voters are happy to help people "like them." Ethnically diverse countries like the U.S. have smaller welfare states, because voters aren't so happy to help "the other."

Thank you for reminding us of this point. I think this particular argument shows most clearly that there is very little worry that the on-going demographic shift will lead to a Scandinavian welfare state.

Frankly, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants are the first to laugh in the faces of the very worst of mindless left-wing thinkers. 1st and 2nd generation immigrants often have direct exposure to the follies and horrors of communism, left-wing dictators, and violent left-wing militants, which makes them the loudest proponents of the American style of reduced entitlements. They see, clearly, the direct path between promises of mass entitlements and left-wing confiscation and violence.

In my own household, I would suppose I am the most left-wing. My deceased father-in-law was tortured in a communist Vietnamese re-education camp, so if I make a statement that smacks of Marx, I can expect anything up to, and including, a slap across the face from my wife, for which I am grateful, for I can repair my political stance. All the Hispanic immigrants I have encountered (outside of university) are the first to call out Castro and Hugo Chávez as dangerous monsters and laughable clowns, which is much more than the very worst of mindless left-wing thinkers in America, and their intellectual enablers, are willing to do.

Again, thank you, Bryan Caplan, for making the argument that libertarian angst at American demographic shifts is overwrought and silly. All your points are sound, and I would only emphasize the solidly libertarian tendencies of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants with direct exposure to the follies and horrors of communism, left-wing dictators, and violent left-wing militants.

[Added 05/19]

Arnold Kling replied, and pointed to a response to Bryan Caplan's take on his post: "Why I Fear a One-Party State".  The argument for the United States becoming a One Party State is expanded further in two posts: Caplan "One-Party Democracy Is Not Coming: I'll Bet on It!" and Kling "Bet Accepted".

I have to be honest, it is difficult to see consistancy between the starting article "The Emerging Stagnant Majority" and how the cross-posting progressed.  Kling got called out for this statement, which is difficult to defend:

In the NWW world, an open-access order avoids stagnation because of political competition. [...] The demographic picture, in which traditional Republican voting groups are shrinking as a proportion of the electorate, means that the Democrats have to worry less and less about alienating economic elites, as long as they can maintain an identity politics that appeals to non-whites.

Imagine Hispanics comprising 51% of electorate.  Mayor Villaraigosa has a tenuous hold on Los Angeles with such a Hispanic majority, and this can possibly be described as putting the 51% Hispanic majority against "white" economic interests.  Does it follow that this logic can be extended to nationwide control of the United States, by pandering to a national Hispanic 51%?

Even Kling cannot argue this.  In his post "Bet Accepted" Kling lists 7 reasons why the Republicans would continue to fail at the national level.  Only 2 of the 7 relate to demographics of immigrants at all, and "The larger Hispanic population poses a challenge for Republicans" is simply stated at not fleshed out at all.  It is taken as a given, even though Hispanics are not heavily unionized and Hispanics are social conservatives, both of which could be exploited for a Republican in-road.  I tend to agree with Kling that "The larger Hispanic population poses a challenge for Republicans", but notice how the argument has shifted, from causality purely from a growing Hispanic electorate to causality from a Republican inability to deal with 7 distinct national trends.

Pandering to a Hispanic 51% nationwide, just cannot be done in the same way that Mayor Villaraigosa panders to a Hispanic 51% in Los Angeles.  Nationwide, the issues that could possibly contain 51% of Hispanics become too diverse, and quickly also encompass non-Hispanic voters.  Expanding this point: any nationwide 51% that supports larger entitlements cannot be monolithic enough to forbid any possible entre by Republicans, no matter how large a percentage a particular ethnic group may hold.

Libertarians and Rick Santelli, the intellectual successor of Joe the Plumber

Comment to very weak stuff from Wil Wilkinson, who should know better.

Redistribution, Fairness, and Stability: commentary broadcast by American Public Media's Marketplace Morning Report.

> ... Rick Santelli ... a small flame of populist resentment shouldn't be ignored.

How am I supposed to distinguish Rick Santelli from Joe the Plumber? Personally, I am going to ignore this "small flame of populist resentment" because it seems to be fully contained among floor traders and Republican establishment dead-enders.

There are substantive criticisms of the Obama stimulus, namely, that it has zero connection with fostering businesses using profits to hire from an educated work force. Exiting this recession is impossible without businesses using profits to hire from an educated work force. The crudest of Keynesianism will not do it -- breaking windows for great success.

So the libertarian response is to embrace the intellectual successor of Joe the Plumber. (Don't plead ignorance of this, I read the same libertarian blogs you do.) Disappointing, considering the stakes. I can point out at least one omission: you didn't follow Bobby Jindal's lead and rail against volcanoes and the volcanistic arts. Perhaps in a follow-up...

{Follow-up}

Wil goes off on me.  Here is my reply:

I read the whole piece.  I didn't listen to the audio.  If there was some undulation of inflection in your voice that was supposed to telegraph your disapproval of the pseudo-populism of Santelli, I missed it.  I apologize.

I read your stuff daily, and I was genuinely disappointed that you would take Santelli's rant as _indicative_ of _anything_.  I swear, I cannot see the difference between Santelli and Joe the Plumber.  Maybe it was the forum, audio for Marketplace Morning instead of your blog, that pressed that choice of topic upon you, but I was truly disappointed.  It is not your duty to care about my disappointment, but I read you everyday, so I have a basis to say commenting on Santelli is beneath you.

[The "volcano" bit was unfair.  I plead, I did it for the lolz.]

I am a Leftist, but I am rooting for the libertarians in this fight.  Arnold Kling's analysis is the only one that rings true (cautiously approaching sound post-Keynesianism from side of the libertarian right: jobs paid for with business profits).  So I am disappointed when Kling gets recorded making a hysterical and inopportune sound-bite about "thugs ransacking my house" [why not just lay out the facts before the people who pay the bills, and let _us_ worry about how it makes us feel], and I am disappointed when you hitch a wagon, rhetorically, to the phenomena that is Republican pseudo-populism [Rick Santelli and Joe the Plumber, I guess Sarah Palin too].

Kling lets his inner Libertarian Crank come out, at the worst possible time.

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I endorse Arnold Kling's "macroeconomic" analysis of the current crisis.  Quoting myself in a comment on Will Wilkinson's blog:

http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/02/04/macroeconomics-as-mind-control/

Arnold Kling's "Macro out of the mouths of children of the Austrian School" makes the most sense, in my uneducated opinion:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/02/my_current_outl.html

summarized as:

#1) The way out of the recession will be powered by business profits (as usual). A targeted macro solution: tax cut on the payroll tax (profits go up, and only after the profits have been locked in, employment will go up)

#2) Nobody wants leverage. Let the modern finance system built on leverage die, quickly and painfully, because drawing it out will only be more painful (like removing an adhesive bandage). Nobody wants leverage, people will only pay attention to profits (see #1)

But Mr. Kling recently wrote a really unfortunate post "Stimulus Bill or Reparations Bill?".  I will quote the worst bits, because I think it is a candidate to fall into the Memory Hole by Kling deleting it (he already blocked further comments).

I think the answer is that it is a reparations bill, not a stimulus bill. People who pay income taxes tend to vote Republican. People who live off taxes tend to vote Democratic. [my emphasis]  To the Democrats, the Bush tax cuts were a heinous evil, comparable to Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality in World War I. Now, they are demanding reparations, with hundreds of billions of dollars to be paid into teachers unions and other members of the coalition that won the election.

[Aside:  To be perfectly honest, Libertarians are much less likely to use the Memory Hole than Leftists.]

The problem here is that there is a net flow of federal taxes out of the Blue Democratic states, and a net flow of liabilities in the form of subsidies into the Red Republican states.  You can make some more subtle argument here, maybe by claiming federal taxation is mainly on the back of Republican businessmen working in Democratic states, but, make the argument.  You can't just assert this crap and think people outside of right-wing shout-o-sphere will buy it.

[Edit:  found some base statistics from Joseph Fried: Democrats and Republicans - Rhetoric and Reality, p. 154 (via Google Book Search)

http://books.google.com/books?id=wGtJ66o3EyIC&printsec=toc&dq=REPUBLICANS+WHO+PAYS+MORE+TAXES+DEMOCRATS&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0#PPP10,M1

"Does the government collect more from people in the blue states than from people in the red states?  The answer is "yes," and the reason is obvious: People in blue states tend to earn more  than people in red states.  However, this does not mean that Democrats pay more taxes than Republicans...

... on average, Republican men paid about 70 percent ($2,900) more in federal income tax than did Democratic men, Republican women paid about 53 percent ($1,700) more than Democratic woman, and, on a gender-neutral basis, Republicans paid about 62 percent ($2,300) more."]

The bigger problem is that Reparations already has a meaning in American politics: Reparations for slavery.  In that light, Kling's comments come off a very ugly.

Libertarians are cranks.  They are not always cranks, but none fail to indulge in crankishness.  See Denailism Blog for their "Unified theory of the crank".

Libertarians exist as a meaningful social entity because they provide intellectual cover for the worst abuses of majorities abusing minorities, corporatism, and folk paranoia.  And majorities interested in abusing minorities, corporatists, and folk paranoids have considerable political power.  That isn't all Libertarians do, proving intellectual cover for this crap, but they are completely ignored by their benefactors for their other work.  So they can get paid (supported, published, otherwise compensated) for their politically convenient statements, and the other 95% of their writings never interferes with getting paid.

They are never punished for crankishness, they are sometimes rewarded for it, so they develop themselves into better cranks.  Along with the definition of the crank from the Denailism Blog, I would add:

• ignorance of all human activities outside of their small area of personal interest (example: Kling having no idea that Reparations has a prior definition)
• Holding themselves to a very low intellectual standard at the exact moment that they should be holding themselves to a very high one, to secure influence in the broader world
• repetition of shouted talking points from their little worlds
  

And I am rooting for Kling.  His analysis of the alleged Obama stimulus package is correct.  His suggestion for the best way out of the crisis is correct.  His take on the limits of macroeconomics is correct.

And he knows he has to hold his own side to a higher intellectual standard to secure influence after the market crash.  Kling didn't let Fama's lame analysis pass without critism: "Boo, Eugene Fama".

Readers of this blog know that I am against the Paulson/TARP bailout thingy and against a big stimulus. Some of you may also have read that distinguished (some would say Nobel caliber) financial economist Eugene Fama has a new blog, where he wrote a post against bailouts and stimulus. I did not link to that post, because I did not think that he contributed to our economic understanding of the issue. Today, I want to go further, because it occurs to me that we should not just leave it up to ideological opponents of Fama, such as Mark Thoma or Brad DeLong, to bear the sole burden of pointing out the vapidity of Fama's analysis.  [my emphasis]

But, at heart, a Libertarian is a crank.  That crankishness has to come out.  Always at the worst time.