It's been a while since I've posted on this blog, and it looks like it's been a while since anyone has even looked at it. But I really wanted your input on a blog post I wrote recently.
I started a website called UtahLiberty.org back in September, intended to promote libertarianism in our grand state. I wrote a post in November entitled Why You Don't Actually Believe in Free Markets. It was based on a conversation I had with a conservative friend of mine. Within hours it had been visited a couple thousand times and was shared on Twitter and Facebook by many people. There were a lot of good comments on it.
I wanted to see what you all thought of it since this is generally a conservative crowd but also an intelligent crowd. Show no mercy.
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Donkeys and Elephants
Become active in politics. Help destroy the myth that “politics are dirty.” The fact is: politics are essential. The Lord has stressed that we ought to be concerned and involved in promoting good government. You simply have to realize that the political process is the way to attain that objective.
-D. James Cannon
-D. James Cannon
Book List
- I have granted every contributor admin privileges so that you can add your favorite political books yourself. Just follow the same format and be sure to keep this comment first in the list. Thanks!
- "The Constitution of Liberty" by F.A. Hayek (Jeff)
- "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith (Devin)
- "1776" by David McCullough (Devin)
- "The Road to Serfdom" by F.A. Hayek (Jeff)
- "A Matter of Interpretation" by Antonin Scalia (Devin)
- "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand (Rich)
- "1984" by George Orwell (Devin)
- "The Birth of Plenty" by William J. Bernstein (Devin)
- Very quick read: "The Curses of Entitlement: 30 Frightening Consequences of Government Payments" by Roger Fritz (Rich)
- "The Tempting of America" by Robert H. Bork (Devin)
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4 comments:
Well Nic I read your article and agree with most everything you said. I don't agree with the idea of it, for I am not an anarchist or even a conservative for that matter. I am with you on less regulation of social issues, but not for education, national security, infrastructure, things like that. I thought it was interesting though.
It has been years since I have looked at this blog but I just have to comment. You play yourself off as so intelligent and try to convince us that your "conservative" friend is so politically unsophisticated / stupid. Creighton is right, you are not advocating libertarianism, you are (with a chip on your shoulder I might add) putting forth an argument for anarchy.
Pure freedom = pure isolation. The minute you take upon yourself a relationship with another person you offer up a compromise to that individual or community. Relationships share a correlation to freedom and it is one of diminishing returns. The truth is that any ideas of freedom, as well as your's and your "friends", are compromised from the beginning. Each sharing a very similar spot on the grey scale of what your calling freedom. What's embarrassing is that you don't recognize this, and proceed to treat your (so called) friend as a pariah. As if YOU grasp what true freedom is and your friend is floating in some mirage that he and his Christian values have created for him.
Prostitutes spread diseases (and pretty awful ones at that) through their "voluntary exchanges". But what the Hell, all in the name of freedom right? If people would start paying closer attention to the value of their relationships rather than the value of their freedoms I am pretty sure the freedom stuff would work its self out.
So in exercising your freedom to say what ever you want, you have probably lost a friend. (I know I wouldn't be your friend after you wrote me this letter.) See how that diminishing returns principle works.
So my dear friend, (who I have not met) my purpose in writing this response has been to show you just how empty your ideas of freedom really are. So empty, that if you had them you would most likely be alone and miserable.
Love,
Matt Daines
Comment from Nic in response to Matt's comment (edited by Devin for length):
I really appreciate your feedback. Your comment gives me the opportunity to address some misconceptions and fallacies that I encounter frequently when debating political philosophy.
First, the anarchy comment. I encounter this lack of familiarity with history far too often and actually find it humorous at times. For 150 years, libertarianism was synonymous with anarchism. This was the case even in the United States up until 1974 when the few remaining anarchists were implicitly uninvited from the Libertarian Party by the Dallas Accord, and the prevailing minarchism of the Party is what the mainstream began associating with the term. This philosophy can more accurately be termed “paleoconservatism” and it is a far cry from what libertarianism is considered to be outside the U.S. and in political history. I use the terms interchangeably. I do advocate anarchy if by anarchy you mean a society without a state, and if by state we mean an entity that funds itself through theft and maintains coercive monopolies on many services.
The notion about compromising liberty through associations. Another frequently encountered notion, a dangerous one. This notion claims that individual rights are all well and good, but must be sacrificed upon the altar of society. This is absurd. Each individual has the right to do as he pleases with his person or property. It is universal, which means you would not be justified in violating this right of any other person. It also means that this right is present and valid no matter how many people you associate with, whether you are alone or whether you are in a crowded marketplace in Hong Kong. The notion that your individual rights are fewer or less valid the more people you associate with is absurd and necessarily arbitrary, and would ultimately result in those rights being null and void given a high enough population density.
Your prostitute argument is that if a certain activity has the potential to result in crime, it is wrong. Giving a disease to someone without their consent is the crime here, not prostitution. People say drug use is wrong because it can result in birth defects if the mother uses while pregnant. Well, the crime is forcing a harmful substance upon another without their consent, not using drugs. If you follow this notion through to its logical conclusion, you must either outlaw all human action (because every human action has the potential to result in some harm to another) or outlaw activities that have some arbitrary likelihood of resulting in harm to another. Arbitrariness is never good philosophy or policy.
Interesting and fitting that you mention losing friends, because the only people in my life who have been personally offended by my expression of my political views to the point that it affects our relationship have been conservatives. It turns out that this isn’t merely anecdotal. Psychological research has found that conservatives tend to be close-minded, intolerant and unreceptive to new or different ideas and experiences. They also tend to be driven much more by emotion (particularly fear) than by rationality or reason.
Also these aren’t "my" ideas. These are truths that I discovered through study and reason. They also comprise the only normative ethical system I’ve encountered that is objective, consistent, logically valid and empirically accurate, and therefore true.
I want to stay out of this melee, but Nic, I’m curious – did your relationships with your “conservative” friends take a nose dive before or after you informed them that they tend to be close-minded, intolerant, unreceptive and driven much more by emotion than reason? That was pretty funny.
I’m positive that you could find (and research that supports that there are) hosts of close-minded, intolerant, unreceptive and emotionally-driven individuals of *every* political persuasion. Conservatives don’t have the corner on that market. I consider myself to be conservative, but I certainly don’t espouse many of the ideas you ascribe to me in your post. They are convenient characterizations – but inaccurate as they apply to me – that help you make your point. I am not personally offended, however, by your expressing your political views. I actually respect the fact that you express them, despite the heat you likely take from your remaining conservative friends. You and I can still be friends despite our different political views. I’d be a pretty shallow friend if it were any other way.
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