The Problem with GDP – Shane Killian
A Bastardised Attack Against Libertarianism
Dec.21, 2011 in
Anarcho-capitalism, Articles, Economics, Freedom, Guns & War, Philosophy, Regulation, UK Politics, Videos, World Politics, capitalism
8 Comments
NB, I am not Davy.
Not exactly sure what prompted it, but good golly is George Monbiot not mincing any words about his thoughts on Libertarianism over at the Guardian. Sadly, all we get is a horrible collection of misrepresentation, straw-man arguments, demagoguery, and outright misunderstanding of basic Libertarian principles. Let’s take this a bit at a time and attempt to dispel these faulty claims (and ruin my Tuesday evening in the process)…
In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy.
Anybody who believes that there was a lack of regulation leading up to the recession is entirely deluded. The economic structure of this time was the antithesis of a laissez-faire (no regulation) free market. What we have now is corporatism, or crony capitalism. In the US (practically the exact same economic policy as the UK), did you know that there are already 115 agencies that regulate the financial sector? Or that since 1980 Congress has passed four new sets of regulations for every one deregulatory act, and between 2001 and 2008 there were nine new sets of regulation and not one bit of deregulation?
It should be a clear signal that the only people predicting an economic recession in the years leading up to the recession (as early as 2001!) were libertarians/Austrian economists. Why? Because the policies being enacted were the basis of Keynesian economics – the mainstream economic thought -, which is what Austrian economics rebels against. Austrian economists always predict recessions/depressions because the cause of them is always exactly the same – central bank manipulation of interest rates, false lending signals, moral hazards, easy credit, inflation, and government debt – which is exactly what it advocates not doing to create a prosperous economic environment.
“The banking industry is by far the least laissez-faire sector of the U.S. economy; it is a cartel arrangement overseen by the Federal Reserve and shot through with monopoly privilege, bailout protection, and moral hazard.” – Tom Woods
“It’s not exactly clear how the Federal Reserve’s policy of pushing interest rates well below where the free market would have set them, thereby inflating the biggest asset bubble in the history of the world, could be the fault of the free market, or attributable to “laissez faire.” But since hardly anyone discusses the Fed, no one has to answer this inconvenient question. The Fed’s very existence is a violation of laissez faire. Yet the destructive effects of what it does are then blamed on the market. This charade has gone on long enough.” – Tom Woods
The Bank of England manipulated interest rates and set them at record low levels, creating easy credit for banks and a moral hazard for them to take part in fractional-reserve banking and lend ludicrous amounts of weak, sub-prime mortgages, and loans to people that had little to no chance of being able to repay them, simply because the banks knew they would be protected by the Bank of England and the government financially. They had no incentive to differentiate risky loans from productive, profitable loans – regardless of their results the loans would be guaranteed by the Bank of England. This created a “boom” – an artificial rise (a “bubble”) in the desire for an item (housing and finance, as was the case here) because of the easy credit provided, and the “bust” is merely the recession attempting to liquidate the bad debt, correct the malinvestment, and redirect resources to their more useful and productive areas. In a free market, interest rates would be determined by the free market and would be, in simple terms, a reflection of the demand for loans and the supply of savings available. A central bank setting interest rates is nothing more than a price control or price fixing, which always proves to have disastrous economic consequences.
No, no, no, Mr. Monbiot. There was certainly regulation, it’s just that the regulations put in place by government were there to protect the banks and the corporations from competition so as to create a monopoly and allow them free reign to do as they pleased. Yeah, banks were allowed freedom to enact these dangerous policies, but they were only granted this privileged because of government power of coercion where they were protected from failure and guaranteed revenue. And this is the only natural relationship for government and regulation.
Government and politicians have absolutely no incentive to unbiasedly regulate the financial sector. They will continue to protect any corporation that supports their campaign to stay in office financially and create regulations to favour those corporations at the expense of smaller businesses which diminishes competition in that field so that this corporation has more money to constantly donate to those politicians helping them so that they can continue to help them and maintain the cycle. It’s so far removed from capitalism and the free market and the laissez-faire economic system that many Occupiers blame for causing this situation.
Without the government there to print the money out of thin air and tax the wealth creators and give it all to the banks, they would not have been able to do what they did – or if they did they would have gone of of business extremely quickly.
So no, libertarians are not anti-regulation because we want to allow banks to do things like this, we’re anti-regulation because we believe that because government is the one enforcing the regulations, this will naturally disintegrate into a system that protects special interests and favours some over others, i.e the “1%”. The libertarian regulation comes from the free market and each autonomous individual’s voluntary human action and person choices that force these banks to compete for their business in order to stay in business. As of now, they are merely allowed to stay in business because government bails them out with our money. Remove the safety net government provides and banks will be forced to change their incentive to pleasing the public with their services and earning money consensually and morally through non-coercive manners.
In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours.
“This unholy union of unions and big business can be explained if one looks at the real consequences of raising the minimum wage: unskilled workers that might be able to compete with unionized workers thanks to their lower salary are put out of work safewarding the jobs of the well off unionized workers. At the same time small retail business that have very small margins are driven into bankruptcy by big corporations that take advantage of economies of scale and can afford to pay their workers salaries slightly above the minimum wage.”
Of course, minimum wage is merely a price control that asserts authority for government to dictate the minimum value that every individual’s labour per hour is worth. Sure, the intentions are noble and good – to protect the poor from greedy businesses who would exploit and pay them pennies if not mandated to do otherwise – but the results do not reflect these means. All the minimum wage does is force employers to discriminate against those with the least education and the least amount of skills and the least amount of work experience (AKA the most risky people to employ), which just so happens to be poor people. Those that are most vulnerable in finding a job are those with little education and little skills or work experience, so to literally prices them out of employment and provides them with no opportunity to gain these much needed skills and work experience to climb up the employment ladder. The worst thing you can do for poor people is make it unprofitable for employers to hire them, which is exactly what every increase of the minimum wage does. It fundamentally increases unemployment. An employer is simply not going to hire someone if they do not provide a marginal value above the minimum wage from their labour. Just as not all products are worth paying £6 for, so too not all labour is worth paying £6 for. And if forced to pay for the minimum wage without letting any workers go, employers will raise the price of the product/service to offset the cost of an increase in expenditure in wages, thus raising the prices of everyday products and services on poor people. It’s a truly lose-lose scenario for the exact group of people it intends to help.
It also violates the liberty of each individual to personally and voluntarily enter into any employment agreement they see fit. If an employer offers to pay someone £4.50 an hour and the person agrees to this as they would rather work and gain skills/experience than be forced to sit at home and collect a benefit check, then he has every right to not be stopped. Why is the government going around and legislating how much my labour is worth? I am the only person who can decide that. Not to mention that it’s been proven time and time again to be an incredibly racist tool as it actively discriminates against blacks and other minorities.
But please, have a read of the countless material on the subject (the first 2 are especially wonderful at tackling all aspects of the issue and coherently debunking any views of why you could support the minimum wage):
Do We Really Need a Minimum Wage?
50 Years of Research on the Minimum Wage (seriously, this amount of evidence and support is impossible to deny!)
Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity
Minimum Wage Discriminatory Effects
How the Minimum Wage Encourages Discrimination
Why Racists and Unions Support the Minimum Wage
The Job-Killing Impact of Minimum Wage Laws
In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare
The basis of Obamacare is a mandate that requires all US citizens to buy GOVERNMENT APPROVED HEALTH INSURANCE. Obamacare does nothing to change the current US healthcare problem of over-reliance on insurance and too much government interference creating a massive rise in prices, nor change its structural layout of primarily being insurance led; it simply gives entire control to insurance companies. So no, insurance companies in the US were not against Obamacare – they helped write the language of it. Obamacare gives them a monopoly on the healthcare industry and guaranteed funding, why would they not be all for this?! Sounds pretty greedy to me. It’s an entirely corporatist piece of legislation.
Also, calling anything government does as “effective” is highly amusing.
the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.
As is directly stated here, the blame naturally lies on government and big business. Why? Government, because it is powerful – it has a monopoly on force and can do as it bloody well pleases and you have no choice but to accept it or vote for somebody else to do the exact same thing every 4/5 years. Big business, but only if they are “big” for one reason – they have colluded with government. If they are a big business because they have earned their profits morally and through voluntary, peaceful exchange then they are deserving of their wealth earned. There is an obvious distinction between Steve Jobs at Apple who has earned his money by providing the world with wonderful products that have benefited us all, and the likes of Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs and SOLYNDRA who simply take money from the government to stay in business.
Furthermore, this 99% vs. 1% language is incredibly collectivist and simply assumes that anyone who has created a vast amount of wealth and has become rich has done so at the expense of those who were not able to do that. This “profits before people” message is economically flawed thinking. Rather, profits are for people!
So no, libertarianism does not advocate any of this. It advocates limiting the power of government so they have less ability and scope to provide favours to selected businesses and interfere in the freedoms of individuals. Because government is nothing else but a monopolistic authority over a group of people, and the nature of this tyrannical set-up will incentive the most evil human beings to seek out its positions of power.
Rightwing libertarianism recognises few legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others.
The first of many uses of incorrectly categorizing libertarianism as “rightwing”. Libertarians generally don’t believe in the left-right paradigm, rather we feel a better gauge of political placement based by posing freedom against tyranny. Because libertarians value limited government so strongly, we consider both leftwing and rightwing policies to be conducive to big government and lead to less freedom. So scratch that misrepresentation proudly flaunted in every paragraph.
If there is a negative “impact” on somebody that has been brought on through a violation of that persons liberty/freedom by someone else, then Libertarianism allows them to act as much as they like to prevent this aggression from occurring. But if it is a negative impact that has been brought on by the user themselves, such as voluntarily choosing to spend all their money or something, then that is primarily that person’s own problem. People may voluntarily choose to help the individual, but they are under no jurisdiction to be forced to help and that person is under no jurisdiction to forcibly go to the government and demand to be helped and given money. Why should I be forced the bear the burden of somebody else’s voluntary, unwise mistakes? That is the price of personal responsibility; the freedom to do as you wish so long as you do not infringe on anybody else’s freedom to do as they wish. You can do whatever you want, but you must face the consequences of your own voluntary actions and choose to act responsibly.
Their concept of freedom looks to me like nothing but a justification for greed.
In the free market, a greed (or a desire for profits) is beneficial to all. All that profits do is incentivize entrepreneurs to take risks with capital which, if resources and capital are risked and used productively, not only benefits the entrepreneur but benefits the consumers it directly interacts with and thus services our fellow man. Greed and a seeking of profit is evident in all human actions, for if we are not attempting to profit ourselves from an activity we’re engaging in, why on earth are we doing it? Profit is not limited to monetary profit but a profit of happiness, satisfaction, hunger, relief etc.
In a truly capitalist, free market environment the only way to make a profit (or any amount of money) is through voluntary transactions and trades. I value your pen more than I value my £1, and you value my £1 more than you value your pen, so we trade the pen for £1. We both profit from the transaction and it is purely voluntary with no government involvement. If the pen was £2, however, I would perhaps not value the pen to be worth more than £2 so I don’t take part in the exchange and search for someone else selling the pen at a cheaper price, or a better pen for that price. Your greed or desire for profits would require you to alter your price to not lose out on my (and others’) money; this provides the consumer with a better deal and enriches us both.
“It is not the case that [free market] capitalism “encourages greed,” though we hear this constantly from socialists and “traditionalists.” Capitalism is merely a series of exchanges, bounded by property and contract. “Greed” will be evident in any system — full-fledged socialism, medieval guildism, crony capitalism, whatever. The difference is that in those systems, people improve their position by harming others, and only by harming others. Under the market, where the consumer is king, one advances by pleasing his fellow man.” – Tom Woods
“Greed is a very, very good thing ONLY in the context of a free market. If your economy is mixed with government, and greed can be most effectively acted on by using the guns of government, then it’s a problem. But the problem is coercion, not greed. Greed is an amoral force which is corrupted by a moral code that says it’s acceptable to claim ownership of another human’s life.” – Free Broccoli
Also, Greed is Good + A Screed on Need and Greed.
In fact, Government also incentivizes greed, and that is exactly where it is most dangerous – If humanity is evil then would it also make sense that the laws created by evil-natured humans are for the benefit of those evil-natured humans? To elaborate…
“The proponents of the state and its regulations become impaled by their own logic. If people are greedy, as they rightly say, then regulation by the state cannot improve matters: it may well, however, worsen them. Regulators, remember, are people, and people are greedy; therefore regulators are greedy. Or is greedy restricted to corporations and altruism to public servants?” - Chris Leither.
“Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their agents form a part of the human race? Do they consider that they are composed of different materials from the rest of mankind? They say that society, when left to itself, rushes to inevitable destruction, because its instincts are perverse. They presume to stop it in its downward course, and to give it a better direction. They have, therefore, received from heaven, intelligence and virtues that place them beyond and above mankind: let them show their title to this superiority. They would be our shepherds, and we are to be their flock. This arrangement presupposes in them a natural superiority, the right to which we are fully justified in calling upon them to prove.” – Frédéric Bastiat, “The Law” (read it at once, I make it the law that you do this [in the most libertarian way possible]).
Rightwing libertarians claim that greens and social justice campaigners are closet communists trying to resurrect Soviet conceptions of positive freedom.
Nope, I’ve never claimed this. Pure hyperbole and demagoguery. What might be a reasonable libertarian position is what is categorized by previously mentioned French political philosopher, Frédéric Bastiat, rather wonderfully and is viewable at the top of this website.
“Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Stated differently, the relationship between government and society will naturally devolve into a scenario where all the population seek to use the government’s unique power of wealth distribution and vote to benefit themselves and get from government as much as they possibly can at, ergo at everybody else’s expense. You may alternatively know this as greed, and government most certainly encourages greed through the democratic voting process. All most people think about when choosing who to vote for is “which party will do the most good for me personally, regardless of the effect on anyone else?”
So yeah, these “greens” are doing exactly what everyone else is doing in relation to government – using their power to force its intentions on everyone else, regardless of whether its intentions are for any supposed “social good”.
So, he argued, some people’s freedom must sometimes be curtailed “to secure the freedom of others”. In other words, your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
Yes, this is the very definition of liberty and the non-aggression principle of which libertarianism is entirely founded on.
The negative freedom not to have our noses punched is the freedom that green and social justice campaigns, exemplified by the Occupy movement, exist to defend.
Who is metaphorically punching their nose? Government! It is always the culprit. (am I beating a dead horse yet?)
Berlin also shows that freedom can intrude on other values, such as justice, equality or human happiness. “If the liberty of myself or my class or nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system which promotes this is unjust and immoral.”
The only way their liberty would lead to “the misery of a number of other human beings” would be through their own voluntary actions/choices, or through government intrusion. Businesses and corporations and banks, minus government backing, have no coercive power what-so-ever to force anybody into “misery”. Voluntary exchange and interaction relies on personal responsibility, and the liberty to undertake this voluntaryism relies on it’s unequivocal lack of interference in anyone else’s liberty to undertake whatever action they so wish to do. As LA Liberty said,
The only just law is that which initiates aggression against none. In other words, one that echoes natural law; that is, one that protects and respects the life, liberty, and property of all equally. Any violation of a person’s self-ownership is illegitimate. So laws against theft, assault, battery, murder, slavery, rape, fraud, trespass, destruction of property, and the threats thereof are all legitimate because they would exist irrespective of a state. They are axiomatic consequences of human self-ownership.
The landlord was exercising his freedom to cut the tree down. In doing so, he was intruding on Clare’s freedom to delight in the tree, whose existence enhanced his life. The landlord justifies this destruction by characterising the tree as an impediment to freedom – his freedom, which he conflates with the general liberty of humankind.
How on earth do you propose that government actively regulate and monitor this type of collective liberty of humankind? If one person simply desires something or gets value from it, does government need to protect every single individuals unique desires? Does this mean that because because I derive delight from the TV show Community, that the government has to step in and force NBC to not cancel Community as it would be an infringement on my freedom to enjoy it? What about others who derive hatred from Community, does the government not need to step in and make sure it’s cancelled for their freedoms? No, this type of action would be catastrophic and lead to a 100% tyrannical, totalitarian, autocratic police state.
Suppose I gain pleasure from a comedian, but if that comedian chooses to retire. By this theory he is directly assaulting my freedom to enjoy his comedy. So the government has to step in and force this comedian to continue his work, until when? Until I no longer derive pleasure? Until nobody derives pleasure from it? Until he dies? Just because nobody is currently deriving pleasure from it, that doesn’t mean someone won’t in a couple of months. He has to keep going regardless of what the comedian actually wants or thinks, because for him to stop would prevent the freedom of opportunity for someone unknown to his material from encountering it.
This is quite obviously slavery and not an attempt to preserve true freedom at all.
The libertarian solution to this is property rights. If the landlord owns the land/property that the tree is on, then he ergo owns the tree. Because he owns the tree, he can do as he wishes with the tree. It is his, just as you can do whatever you want with your property (your books, DVD, furniture, appliances, car, house etc). You would clearly object if I got the government to come and stop you from selling your house to move to another one because I felt that this infringed on my pleasure to use that house for parties.
Without the involvement of the state (which today might take the form of a tree preservation order) the powerful man could trample the pleasures of the powerless man.
Not so, property rights are the little guys best friend! But regardless, it is the landowners property. Clare is of full power and ability to talk to the landlord and reason with him out of chopping down the tree by explaining the negative effect it would have on him and others that enjoy it. In a free market (without the involvement of the state), Clare and the other tenants could group together and tell the landlord that they will no longer use his business if he chops down the tree, therefore moving their money to another landlord and making this landlord bankrupt due to a lack of customers. But it is the landlords choice what to do with the tree, because he owns it, and he alone will suffer the direct consequences of his actions and their implications
Someone does not have a right or a freedom to anything they simply like. Libertarian’s recognize a clear distinction between positive and negative rights; it’s practically the foundation of the entire philosophy!
“Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the State and nothing else.”- Ayn Rand (actually not a bastardised libertarian).
They assert their freedom to pollute, exploit, even – among the gun nuts – to kill, as if these were fundamental human rights. They characterise any attempt to restrain them as tyranny.
Property rights once again solve this. In accordance with liberty, polluting another person’s property is considered a violent act of aggression and would be illegal. Here’s Walter Block explaining how environmentalism is handled in a free market.
On guns, this is laughably exaggerated beyond all reasonable lengths. The non-aggression principle states that individuals have no right to initiate force against another individual unless it is in direct retaliation to force initiated on you, in order to defend yourself. I have the right to defend myself from aggression or force with aggression or force, but under no other terms may I use aggression or force. Anybody who uses a gun in a forceful way when unprovoked – a criminal robbing a store for instance – is in direct violation with this Libertarian principle. A tenant of Libertarianism is that the state shall have no powers that the people don’t have. Therefore, a government police force being the only ones allowed to legally carry guns does not fit in with libertarianism. So no, we don’t advocate a right to kill for goodness sake; we advocate a right to defend oneself (with a gun) from an attempt to be killed (with a gun). It’s not difficult to grasp, and I guess it’s also not difficult to manipulate and horribly distort.
More on property rights and Positive vs. Negative rights.
Modern libertarianism is the disguise adopted by those who wish to exploit without restraint. It pretends that only the state intrudes on our liberties. It ignores the role of banks, corporations and the rich in making us less free. It denies the need for the state to curb them in order to protect the freedoms of weaker people.
As pointed out numerous times already, the state is the only thing that can forcefully intrude on our liberties. Anything else has no monopoly on force/coercion to exact such an intrusion without doing so illegally or involuntarily. And the state cannot curb these organizations for the betterment of the “99%”, because the “99%” do not have the influence on the government that the money of the “1%” does.
As long as government and Wall Street are connected in any form, this pattern will occur because it is the only natural rationale within the relationship. The solution to this is not to provide more power to the government to regulate because this would simply result in more of the same regulation that favours selected banks/corporations/business; the solution is to eradicate the relationship and leave regulation to the free market. They are mutual benefactors and form an evil partnership that needs to be completely severed.
Seriously, name one thing a bank, corporation or business can do – without the help of the government – to forcibly make you worse off; to make you have less than what you had before the action too place? Absolutely nothing, it requires government to achieve what it has today…
In future, please redirect your hatred from Libertarianism and free markets to central banks. They are the cause and source of all your woes, and Libertarians are right behind ya!
I must only use these powers for good…
Spotted on Reddit, had to post it here:
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Apathy as the state shows no limit to its evil & malice
I think the reason I haven’t written any articles lately is partly because nothing surprises me anymore and seriously thinking about UK issues and writing long pieces on the topics is just frustrating. I could have written about the London riots but I feel like I’ve been saying it all over and over again. The riots were caused by a combination of 50 years of government housing and welfare hand outs, general corruption at the top with bank and corporate bailouts and of course government schooling which, at its worst, can stunt a child to such an extent they may be permanently incapable of ever growing up or thinking logically.
And so I’m more and more interested in philosophy and economics and less and less interested about writing on specific topics as there are other people who do that so much better than I do. I will write more in the future but I just wanted to explain why I’ve slowed down so much. Of late I have been using this blog mostly to just share with people who are reading anything interesting that other people have made. This website now comfortably occupies the top Google result for “UK Libertarian” and so I know it’s a good place to help promote people towards the best new material so I will continue to do that in between articles.
That said, if anybody else would like to contribute work to the site I am happy to publish anything that is written to a reasonable standard and is consistent with the ideals of a voluntary society. If the articles apply to UK politics in some way, all the better. By submitting your work here you’ll be guaranteed to be read by at least a few hundred unique visitors at a minimum and probably a lot more than that. It’s pretty common for an article to be read by over a thousand unique visitors. Please message me on the forums if you’re interested, my username there is Davy.
I’ll leave you with a few things that have left me part furious and part numbly apathetic over the last few days:
- Ian Freeman sent to jail for 90 Days
Ian is the co-host of Free Talk Live, a radio show that does more to bring the message of liberty to new people than almost anything else out there. He’s also a prolific activist and to see him put in jail for 1/4 of a year for simply trying to stop his friend being kidnapped unjustly by the state is upsetting indeed. If anybody else stands by Ian you can send mail to him for free via the excellent mail-2-jail service. - Antiwar.com a terrorist organisation…?!
I mean this one is just ridiculous. Antiwar.com is a website literally dedicated to saving lives and promoting peace and the government is watching them like they’re planning another 9/11… Orwell’s predictions are repeatedly proven correct: WAR IS PEACE! - Children attempt to sell lemonade, multiple activists arrested:
This one speaks for itself, truly horrific. How can anybody, and I really mean anybody, justify these kinds of regulations? How can it be illegal to sell LEMONADE without a permit? How can anybody claim America is a free country with this going on? Over here you can replace lemonade with haircutting or selling ice cream or any number of thousands of violently regulated activities. Just watch the video and prepare to get depressed… the woman cop who keeps hitting the camera with her hand makes me want to pull the hair I don’t have out of my own head, what an awful person:
Jon Stewart Bashes the Media Over Ron Paul
Not sure how long this will stay up on YouTube as Daily Show clips are prone to be taken down very quickly but Ron Paul got this treatment 4 years ago and he’s been getting it since he entered the 2012 race; this is the first time I’ve seen anybody in the MSM effectively call shenanigans. Kudos to Jon Stewart.
It is Smart to Get a PhD in Economics
Awesome “inside the family” (as Block puts it) debate at the Mises institute between Gary North and Walter Block on the topic of whether future austrians should attempt to get a PhD. Some pretty tense words are exchanged as it concludes which made me ponder what side of the issue I really stand. Let me know in the comments what you guys think about the moral arguments made by Gary North against working in a government university.
