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Originally Posted by Derwood
Interesting discussion.
Here's what I've gleaned from debating with a few Libertarians:
- Every one of them have a personal anecdote about "working hard" and "pulling themselves up by their boot straps", and have projected their personal story onto the world as a whole. I've never met a Libertarian who tried hard and failed.
- They are extremely pro-business and anti-government. I've had a few "by-the-book" Libertarians argue that we should eliminate not only the EPA, but OSHA, the FDA, etc., because the "market" would eliminate the companies that were making unsafe products or created an unsafe work environment.
- Despite some protests to the contrary here, Libertarians are very much in it for themselves. Altruism and Libertarianism do NOT mix. The irony is that the argument is often that we should (or could) eliminate all government social programs and replace them with private donations, despite the fact that the general Libertarian mindset is to keep every penny that they "earn", and fuck those who don't work as hard. Where are all these private donations coming from?
Admittedly, these are broad generalizations and don't apply to everyone, but I've gone head to head with quite a few self-proclaimed Libertarians and the pattern is pretty consistent.
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Actually, Derwood, I have had both failure and success. Both are features of a free society. You are trying to analyze a libertarian "mindset" by reference to your own views and priorities rather than on its own terms. So the features you find relevant are "pro-business and anti-government", for instance. But that's not accurate. I'm pro-freedom, including the freedom of people to make a living as they choose, to follow their muse and seek their fortunes and self-fulfillment within the bounds of the law. Sometimes that requires being anti-business and pro-government, depending on the circumstance. People should be respected as sovereign individuals, free to make their own choices and decisions, free to acquire, use and enjoy their property, free to aspire, free to achieve, free to fail.
It's important to demystify this notion of govt as the agency of the public good. People don't become angels just because they work for the govt. They are normal human beings with normal human needs, wants and desires, and they respond to incentives just like any other person does. Govt by its nature is a mechanism for restricting liberty - sometimes for good, sometimes for not-so-good - so it needs to be used carefully and sparingly. That isn't an anti-govt stance; it's a recognition of the limitations of govt as a tool.
Law enforcement, courts, military, certain public infrastructure, certain kinds of environmental regulation and a very basic social safety net are all things govt can do reasonably well, and are not usually well-accomplished by private actors who don't have the ability to force compliance. Past that, govt tends to be wasteful, corrupt (using a broad definition; we can get to this some other time), inflexible, and a vehicle for rent-seeking by the politically connected (which is another way of describing corruption). Also, govt can't tailor itself to individual circumstances very well; its rules are usually one-size-fits-all, or scaled in ways that don't account well for individual circumstances. This has nothing to do with whether the intentions of the actors are good or bad (or, in the case of most political actors, the
stated intentions - you never really know what someone's
real intentions are, but usually it's self-interest of some kind). Even the best of intentions have unforeseen consequences, but in the case of govt those get embedded in law, so good luck getting rid of it if it doesn't work out well, especially if the program has a constituency. On the other hand, if another person, or a business, is violating my rights, it makes perfect sense to go to the govt (courts or police) for protection. So I'm not anti-govt as much as realistic about what govt is good at and good for.
I'm rambling so I'll stop now. My point simply was that you're using your own lens to evaluate this stuff, and it distorts things a bit. The liberal (as in classical liberal) premise is that people should be left alone - not that business is good and govt is bad.