Self-described libertarians have been explaining to me on Facebook how my criticism of a Supreme Court ruling that puts the most powerful government official in the world above the law is proof that I'm no longer a libertarian.
I forget who said it (possibly the existential comics guy) but someone said "libertarians are just authoritarians who haven't found a preferred dictator yet"
That’s always been mine: libertarians are just Republicans who like weed. They purport to stand outside of the party system but, when it’s time to put an X in a box, they always seem to find comfort with the Republican candidate.
Or they used to be, anyway. I think more and more those guys are just like “wait a minute, I’m rich and white, why am I trying to pretend sociopathy isn’t more fun for people like me?” and go full scale MAGA
As something of a libertarian, these comments make me angry and depressed. A lot of us libertarians just think "It ain't nobody else's business" is an excellent first approximation guideline for government and society. But I can't stop all those other assholes from calling themselves libertarians.
I think the problem is most of the "just leave us alone" libertarians are trying to do just that, leaving assholes to bray and scream and cede power to authoritarians.
On one hand, the government stays out of my business, but also there needs to be regulations to keep peoples hands out of my food.
There are very few problems that “the market” can correct. As I often point out, it took the government to end child labor, as we can see by the push today to cripple government so it can be brought back.
Disagree that it's "very few," but the market can only solve problems that the market can solve, and there are many problems that the market can't solve or that it will not solve before unacceptable damage has been done.
I can’t think of a problem that’s solved by the market that isn’t more effectively and efficiently solved by regulation, but that may be a paucity of imagination on my part. Got any suggestions?
To be clear, I am hardly anti-regulation. But I think about something like energy generation, where a lot of incentives and investments (in large part by governments, to be clear) have gotten us to a point where cleaner ways of generating power are now generally cheaper than dirtier ways.
so I think the problem there, if I put on my "I'm not really a libertarian in any policy sense, but am negatively polarized to defend the market abstractly" hat, is that those are all cases where some kind of huge asymmetry in either information or market structure is being exploited
in my mind the purpose of regulation is to create a socially beneficial level playing field for those kinds of situations
we regulate building codes bc it's not possible for individual consumers to easily choose to live/work in only safe places, given scale, and that should be important
whenever I get into these discussions, people are just like "yeah, ellie, you should just drop it, you're a lib not a libertarian" but like, in terms of like, abstract political points, I think there's a libertarianism that comes to lib goals on regulation based on "the market should be *good*"
Information asymmetries are a part of it, but I pick those 3 because to my mind they emanate from different sources. Building codes is information asymmetry. Airplane safety is an artefact of high costs of entry into the market constituting a barrier to competition.
Building codes are partially responsible for the lack of housing variety available in the middle (The middle being not single family and not apartment complex, but the in-between)
Cottage courts and similar multi-residence get punted over to commercial building codes and get added requirements/cost
How much of product X should there be at location Y at time Z so that there's neither shortages, nor large surpluses.
That's probably the most straightforward problem that the market solves best.
Sure, except: Amazon created an entire vector of counterfeit goods by this. If the market were supplemented by legislation requiring Amazon to be liable for “fulfilled by Amazon” goods, well that’s section 230 reform I can get behind.
Except that the market has deliberately restricted supplies to drive up demand, among other things. Left to its own devices, the market will /always/ work towards an outcome that benefits the market, that's it.
The market is always in it for itself, never for us.
In functioning markets, competition prevents that. Suppliers can only restrict supply in a monopoly or cartel, which are market failures. They are also somewhat illegal.
The market has no incentive to function the way you describe.
Just because we'd /like/ competition to actually affect the market, doesn't mean it will. Amazon doesn't give two shits about competition and actively tries to shut it down.
And suppliers restrict supplies all the time, monopoly or not