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?
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.
right, I ran out of space in the post to say that the whole "you can't just start an airplane company, and as a housing consumer probably can't start a building company" thing is also there
I guess like I'm a libertarian in the sense that I want regulations that make businesses do cool things
I'm just really tired of the underlying assumption that everything would in fact be better if the government did it, that innovation definitely doesn't come from business, that if you want to have a business to, say, make indie video games, with a couple of employees, you're a cop, etc.
I hear you on that. When I was at Pokémon for example I advocated for strong safety regulations for kids products, in large part because I felt it gave us a competitive advantage with parents to show that we cared about their kids like they do.
Our PR and Marketing teams didn’t feel that way, so they asked me never to speak about this. But now that I’m out here with no NDA because they were too stupid to try to get one, my book is going to be full of stories about how I tried to do this and was blocked internally.
