[nucklepunche]

Increasingly I am coming to a position that is increasingly liberal-tarian, or a synthesis of modern American liberalism and libertarianism.

I see it a sort of an antipode to American conservatism, which itself is a fusion between traditional conservatism and libertarianism.

I define this liberal-tarianism, or liberal/libertarian hybrid ideology as economic moderation, social libertarianism.

On economics I am strongly supportive of a free market however I believe that at times the state must intervene to prevent monopolies from arising and the concentration of corporate power from destroying competition.

I am a supporter of free trade, free labor (against compulsory unionism), and free exchange of ideas (in contrast to many right-libertarians, I favor scaling down patent laws to limited terms to promote invention, as originally conceived, and limiting copyright to prohibit only excessive infringements
like for instance opening a business called "McDonald's" with an identical appearance and menu to the real McDonald's and portraying it as part of the larger McDonald's corporation while not being a portion of it).

I oppose most regulations inhibiting the operations of businesses and oppose licensing laws when they are designed to protect established businesses and not to protect public safety and health (which are reasonable examples of licensing).

However in spite of this I do favor moderately progressive taxation (with fewer loopholes than we have now) and a social safety net.

On social issues I believe simply in the idea of live and let live, if it is not directly harming anybody else, the state should not be able to legislate for or against it.

I support strong civil liberties and strict adherence to the Bill of Rights.

On defense I (somewhat conservatively) support a strong military to deal with threats from totalitarian regimes like Iran and North Korea.

[SpaciousBox]

Your going to hate me for this Nuckle, but you are basically the Atheist faction of the Republican party. If we were to strip away all the Christian aspects of the GOP, we would probably find positions suspiciously similar to yours.... The only real difference between you and them is they believe in Social Conservatism, which is pretty opposed to live and let live ideas, and civil liberty.

[nucklepunche]

First of all I am not an atheist, but I do oppose intermingling of religion and politics. Also this.

However in spite of this I do favor moderately progressive taxation (with fewer loopholes than we have now) and a social safety net.

I don't see how that is a Republican position.

[emmitt]

I guess you could say that you're probably a neoliberal in economic terms.
The term might be completely useless nowadays since it's been thoroughly misused by leftists but it's still the first thing I thought of when I read your description.

Maybe you could also be considered an American paleoliberal even though the actual usage of the word seems to be a bit messy. There appear to be at least two different meanings.

[trombonepolitician]

Nucklepunche- that's where I was for awhile. I've become slightly more radical. Look up Steve Keen (Post-keynesian), and talk with some people about land value taxation. Also, if you have a facebook, I strongly recommend looking at the democratic freedom caucus group. I already post there frequently as Keiser Josiah Biggins.

Visit this website as well www.community-wealth.org

[nucklepunche]

I've heard of the DFC. It isn't too powerful under Obama, but presidents tend to set agendas. It is when parties are out of power that the real thinkers come about.

If I had to describe my politics to a T I would say I am a Rockefeller Republican on economics, a libertarian on civil liberties, a paleoconservative on immigration, and a realist on foreign policy.

[Kman]

Increasingly I am coming to a position that is increasingly liberal-tarian, or a synthesis of modern American liberalism and libertarianism.

I see it a sort of an antipode to American conservatism, which itself is a fusion between traditional conservatism and libertarianism.

I define this liberal-tarianism, or liberal/libertarian hybrid ideology as economic moderation, social libertarianism.

Stop ruining words, liberalism is a derivition of liberty, liberal and libertarian is the same thing, stop using the word liberal for your bullshit interventionist pro-government welfare crap, thank you.

[emmitt]

I've heard of the DFC. It isn't too powerful under Obama, but presidents tend to set agendas. It is when parties are out of power that the real thinkers come about.

If I had to describe my politics to a T I would say I am a Rockefeller Republican on economics, a libertarian on civil liberties, a paleoconservative on immigration, and a realist on foreign policy.

Why don't you just become a real paleoconservative? And why do you need to be a libertarian on civil liberties?
Have you taken a look at distributism?

[trombonepolitician]

Nuckle, I rather like "Progressive Conservative." Or you could be just a "Pragmatic Liberal." Liberalism is a big tent ideology. Classical Liberalism is just one slice of it. You sound like a social liberal in the UK (Liberal Democrats) with a gripe with immigration . Maybe you could look at some of our climate problems as well as dependence on oil and become a GREEN Liberal! Shift to an all-green tax system! You could call yourself a liberal-tarian. That's fine. It just bothers me because it's not a word! In fact a few social democracies in Europe are ranked higher in economic freedom than the US!

[nucklepunche]

Nuckle, I rather like "Progressive Conservative." Or you could be just a "Pragmatic Liberal." Liberalism is a big tent ideology. Classical Liberalism is just one slice of it. You sound like a social liberal in the UK (Liberal Democrats) with a gripe with immigration

I am a progressive conservative with roots in classical utilitarian liberalism. I use the words interchangeably because all conservatives are liberals (thought not all liberals are conservatives). So in some sense I am both a liberal and conservative. Only in America is it mutually exclusive.

Stop ruining words, liberalism is a derivition of liberty, liberal and libertarian is the same thing, stop using the word liberal for your bullshit interventionist pro-government welfare crap, thank you.

Actually read Adam Smith, JS Mill, and Friedrich Hayek. None of them were domatically committed to laissez-faire the way you are. If Adam Smith saw his "disciples" he would laugh them out of the room.

Smith's views on free trade were identical to my own. He favored free trade but also supported reciprocal tariffs against protectionist nations as he recognized nations could not compete when engaging in free trade with those who embrace protectionism, like the US has done with China more or less.

[ralfy]

There are different types of libertarianism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

[Kman]

Actually read Adam Smith, JS Mill, and Friedrich Hayek. None of them were domatically committed to laissez-faire the way you are. If Adam Smith saw his "disciples" he would laugh them out of the room.

I dont give a shit about Adam Smith, he was a pretty poor economist compared to many of his contemporaries.

Even though an inveterate plagiarist, Smith had a Columbus complex, accusing close friends incorrectly of plagiarizing him. And even though a plagiarist, he plagiarized badly, adding new fallacies to the truths he lifted. In castigating Adam Smith for errors, therefore, we are not being anachronistic, absurdly punishing past thinkers for not being as wise as we who come later. For Smith not only contributed nothing of value to economic thought; his economics was a grave deterioration from his predecessors: from Cantillon, from Turgot, from his teacher Hutcheson, from the Spanish scholastics, even oddly enough from his own previous works, such as the Lectures on Jurisprudence (unpublished, 1762-63, 1766) and the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).

http://mises.org/daily/2012

If you support the welfare state you are not a liberal or a libertarian, period.

[nucklepunche]

Murray Rothbard was not an economist, he was an ideologue who dressed up his ideology in economic reasoning. He can be an entertaining writer, and his play Mozart Was a Red is a must read for anybody who wants to understand the absurdity of Ayn Rand. However Rothbard was first and foremost a purist ideologue.

[Kman]

Murray Rothbard was not an economist, he was an ideologue who dressed up his ideology in economic reasoning.

If the Federal Reserve induced changes in discounts through
the rediscount rate, it should certainly have always set it at a
“penalty rate,” i.e., high enough so that the banks would lose
money by borrowing from it. If a bank earns 5 percent on its loan
or investment, for example, and the Reserve sets its rediscount rate
above that, say at 8 percent, then a bank will only borrow in the
direst emergency when it desperately needs reserves. On the other
hand, if the rediscount rate is set below the market, the bank can
make a pleasant career out of borrowing, say, at 4 percent and
relending the money at 5 percent. To discourage bank discounting,
then, a permanent penalty rate above the market is essential.
There was considerable opinion in the early 1920s that the FRB
should maintain penalty rates in accord with British central banking tradition, but unfortunately the proponents only wanted rates
above the lowest-yielding loans—prime commercial paper. Such a
penalty rate would have been rather ineffectual, since the banks
could still profit by discounting and relending to their riskier borrowers. A truly effective penalty rate would keep the rediscount
rate above the rates of all bank loans.
118 America’s Great Depression
17H. Parker Willis, “Conclusions,” in H. Parker Willis, et al., “Report of an
Inquiry into Contemporary Banking in the United States” (typewritten ms., New
York, 1925), vol. 7, pp. 16–18.

An excerpt from a book by Murray Rothbard, yeah I can totally see how he is not an economist and just an "ideologue".

Btw did you ever finish reading economics in one lesson or the General Theory like you said you would?

[nucklepunche]

I announced long ago that I finished reading both. I stated it in an earlier thread long buried but will sum up my conclusions here.

Hazlitt makes some good points in his book, about rent controls, free trade, and automation, not to mention minimum wages (to some extent). However these points are largely agreed upon by modern economics. It was not as bad as I thought, as it stated many points upon which people agree.

My main objection is his chapter "Saving X Industry" he ignores the point that at times the collapse of an industry will have a ripple effect destroying several more industries in the process, as it would have been if we had not baild out banks.

As for Keynes I realize how archaic his original work was, and economists have expanded upon it. Either way the ideas can be better explained in an economics textbook, one that focuses on modern Keynesianism. To read the General Theory is good only as a matter of posterity, just like Wealth of Nations. In both cases they are helpful to understanding the history of economic thought but I would not necessarily say they ought to be the bibles we base our economic policies on.

As I've studied economics more I have become a monetarist as opposed to a Keynesian. I believe in the need for stimulation in the economy but I think monetary policy is more important than fiscal policy now.

As of right now I think Bernanke is doing the right thing. I would actually say he needs to expand the money supply a bit more, but only a bit. Other than that I think we should stay the course.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/04/08/130408ta_talk_surowiecki

Over the past four years, the Fed has kept interest rates near zero and has pumped money into the economy by buying trillions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities and government debt. The idea is that a so-called “loose” monetary policy can help galvanize a weak economy—for instance, by encouraging businesses to invest and hire and by making it easier for people to buy homes. But, to his detractors, Bernanke is guilty of waging a “war on savers”—fleecing people, especially retirees, of hundreds of billions of dollars that they could have earned in interest. Among many conservatives, this notion has become mainstream.

Certainly, it’s not the easiest time to live off interest income. The average rate on a savings account is less than 0.25 per cent. Long-term certificates of deposit offer rates well below inflation, and even a ten-year government bond yields less than two per cent. No wonder people with lots of savings want the Fed to start tightening—to stop buying bonds, and to raise interest rates. But most Americans depend on wages and salaries for their livelihood, not on interest income, and higher interest rates would hurt the job market, which is still weak, with unemployment near eight per cent and wages barely rising. Also, most Americans have more debt than savings, which means that they benefit directly from lower interest rates. Only an estimated seven per cent of all financial assets nationally are directly held in interest-bearing assets (like CDs or savings bonds). Even seniors, one of the groups most obviously hurt by low interest rates, get only ten per cent of their income from interest payments. Bernanke has been accused of waging class warfare and forcing senior citizens to eat cat food, but the simple fact is that people who are net savers are, on average, wealthier than those who aren’t.

[trombonepolitician]

Nuckle, seems to me like you definitely are a moderate conservative/libertarian. How do you feel about having the government step in and forgive personal debt? Mortgage debt, student loans, etc? I really like that solution. It was put forth by Steve Keen, a post-keynesian

[nucklepunche]

How do you feel about having the government step in and forgive personal debt? Mortgage debt, student loans, etc? I really like that solution.

The problem is that if it keeps going on at an excessive rate it will only raise the cost of borrowing in the future and risk turning us into a banana republic, as surely the first one's at the trough will be indebted corporations as opposed to individuals. However I am open to a one-time forgiveness of some (but not all, only that which is deemed excessive and impossible to get out of within a reasonable time frame) mortgage and student loan debt if it is coupled with a reform of both systems. I think desperate times sometimes call for drastic measures. In this case, admittedly, we would be giving the shaft to lenders, but the economic benefits would outweigh my concerns about this.

[trombonepolitician]

I have been thinking about how to reform student loans. What is your opinion?

[nucklepunche]

I think we need less people going to four year liberal arts universities for one thing, to lower the cost. Many more people should be in trade schools learning trades and technology. This can be done in two years or three years for more skilled trades. Business school except for accounting and finance should be abolished. Marketing and business administration degrees should be wiped off the face of the Earth.

Finally the loan system I favor is to give people loans covering the full cost of college tuition and then making them pay back a certain percentage of their income over the course of a period of time, say 5% over thirty years. This will also include interest. Also you will have the option to pay it back faster than this.

Obviously the danger is people will take lower paying jobs and this has been a danger to some income based repayment plans, as it attracted students who planned on majoring in low wage things like the humanities. This is why any such plan would require a transfer of the entire federal loan based system to such a plan.

[Technology]

That's interesting.

Perhaps an ideological justification of "liberal-tarianism" would be to argue that regulation is too restrictive and prevents people actualizing themselves, whereas taxes provide compensation for inequity and are justified, as they do not prohibit things explicitly, and allow more opportunity to be spread, which is then channeled by the free system of low regulation. Both things are forms of legislation, but one limits practices explicitly, whereas the limitation in taxation is opportunity cost, but this is spread out among the populace to yield collectively more opportunity.

This position would be an anti-regulation, but pro tax position. Basically the free market, relatively unrestricted in practice, apart from high progressive taxation to dollop a big layer of welfare on top of things.

I don't know how much traction this would ever get, but it's a coherent combination and distinct from both conservatism and mainstream liberalism by splitting the issue into three sections rather than the normal two (purely econ and social).

Modern Conservatism: low economic regulation, low taxes and welfare spending, high social regulation.
Modern Liberalism: high economic regulation, high taxes and welfare spending, low social regulation.
Libertarianism: low economic regulation, low taxes and welfare spending, low social regulation.
Liberal-tarianism: low economic regulation, high taxes and welfare spending, low social regulation.