GandalfTheGrey wrote:Questions for Libertarians
1.How can a libertarian system protect the poor and underprivileged from being exploited by the rich and powerful?
The term exploitation, to begin with, is highly subjective, which raises nothing but questions. What, exactly, is exploitation, and how can we identify it? Is it, as the Marxists purport, as simple as hiring people (so-called "wage slavery")? Is it, as most liberals imply, working for nothing more than a subsistence wage? The ultimate conclusion, of course, is that exploitation is simply in the eye of the beholder. Naturally, this doesn't answer your intended question, but it is none the less important to put out.
The presumed exploitation you are speaking of, of course, is the hiring of unskilled, poorly educated, and otherwise disadvantaged people at low wages. These people, in today's society, often end up with subsistence lifestyles and are burdened with debt. Liberals contend that the solution to their plight is government money. Direct capital transfers to supplement income (such as the Earned Income Credit in the United States), welfare (aka "the dole"), and price floors on labor (aka minimum wage). We disagree with this school of thought, as we
know that all of these programs cause far, far more problems than they solve.
Capital transfers, for instance, eliminate the incentive to "move up the ladder". By offering a subsistence worker a higher standard of living than his skills would allow him to earn on the job market, he has no incentive to improve his skills or productivity. As such, he will stay in his low-skill position, rather than learn. It should be noted that this harms the community, that all-important organ which liberals tirelessly defend. By choosing not to improve thanks to government assistance, the community is denied of useful services which would've improved everyone's standard of living. Thus, in the name of defending the community, the community is harmed.
Welfare, of course, is far, far worse, and creates a serious moral hazard problem. Instead of supplementary income, people are given FREE INCOME. What reason is there to work if one can exist without working at all? It is often said that in capitalism, you "work or starve." We couldn't agree more. By offering people a reason not to work, you eliminate one of the most essential mechanisms that makes people work--the need to survive. Liberals often counter that welfare only provides a subsistence existence. If that is true, which it is not (according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the average family of four on welfare receives $35,700 in all benefit forms--enough to fund a comfortable lifestyle), so what? Granted, this will deter those seeking something BETTER than a subsistence existing from living off of the dole, but what of those who are merely happy on a subsistence existence? Clearly, short of
forcing them to work, there is no way you could deter them from going off the dole. It is simply not acceptable to offer people such an incentive.
In Economics 101, one of the very first lessons you learn is supply and demand--the most simple law of economics. In it, you learn that an artificial price floor will create a surplus, and an artificial price ceiling will create shortages. A price floor on labor, it follows, will create a surplus of labor--unemployment. In 1999, in an argument to increase the minimum wage, Sen. Ted Kennedy quoted the noted economist Laura D'andrea Tyson, saying that a fifteen cent increase in the minimum wage (the current in the US is $5.15) would eliminate "only" 200,000 jobs. So by pricing hundreds of thousands of people out of jobs (or millions, if wage increases touted by liberals are enforced), how does this advance the liberal cause of assisting the community? Those remaining in minimum wage jobs will benefit, whereas business, poor and unskilled workers, and consumers (by being forced to pay higher prices for goods and services), will all suffer. How will these losses be made good? The typical liberal response is that businesses can afford it and that consumers will have to "pay for the common good". Even if we assume that these two groups can afford these burdens, what of the many people now priced out of the labor market? How are they to survive? On the dole? This creates a vicious cycle, where workers priced out of the labor market are forced to live on government subsistence, denied the oppurtunity to advance. They, in turn, will pass this poverty on to their children, creating a permanent underclass (as we have today in American inner cities).
So how does a libertarian society allow those born poor to advance? Simple. We leave it to the free market. History is rife with such rags to riches stories. Andrew Carnegie. Henry Ford. Thomas Edison. George Westinghouse. Nikola Tesla. The list goes on and on. By allowing people to keep their paychecks (instead of taxing them), and by allowing them to be rewarded by saving (by ending monetary inflation), they automatically will be able to save up for a better life. The elimination of burdensome economic regulations and taxes, combined with the elimination of inflation, will lead to rapidly reduced costs of living, as happened in the latter half of the 19th century to 1914 (and as happens today in the dynamic and relatively unregulated electronics industry, despite monetary inflation). This is not fantasy, it is history.
On a related note, the property rights of the poor will be protected in a libertarian society. They may not be used without their consent, since that would be exploitation and a violation of property rights. However, Libertarians reject the idea that being used with consent is a form of exploitation. Workers who make voluntary contracts with employers are not being exploited. They sell their labor for what its worth, and there is no right to receive more than its worth just because they need it. A need is not a claim. Using the force of government to make the employer pay more than he is willing to pay is a violation of his property rights, and would actually be exploitation in itself. The poor must instead rely on the charity of others.
Libertarians are very opposed to exploitation in the form of fraud. Everyone, including the poor, has the right to not be defrauded. That is because fraud is implicit theft, and therefore a violation of property rights.
GandalfTheGrey wrote:2.How can you guarantee that people will enjoy basic human rights if it is not provided through taxes?
This argument derives from the ill-conceived notions that there are such rights as healthcare, a reasonable standard of living, etc. Do not be so easily swayed by the mantras of false prophets. For if such things are rights, then they are also, as Edmund Burke argued,
duties. None of those can exist without a group of people being
forced to provide them. This constitutes a form of involuntary servitude. Perhaps we're being old-fashioned, but we feel that slavery is wrong. The
only real rights are the sacred and undeniable rights that all men and women are born with--life, liberty, and property. These, in turn derive from the right to property. One's life and person are one's own property, so one has the right and freedom to do whatever on wishes with one's own body and property, so long as others are not harmed or affected. This includes, of course, both material property (ie, capital) and intrinsic, immaterial property (ie, speech). These rights do not compel anyone to provide anything against his will. Rather, they merely oblige people to let others alone and to respect the golden rule.
GandalfTheGrey wrote:
3.How is a fair and non-partisan police and security force sustained in libertarian societies? Such institutions are required to protect property and the right of the individual. They could not be funded by taxes, since in the libertarian ideology that would mean forcing people who may not want police to support them.
Such forces will be regulated by the government, but funded voluntarily. To those that counter that people will never fund government services voluntarily, this is completely bogus. An excellent historical example is when the Ottoman government sought to have two battleships built by British shipyards, but did not have the funds available in revenue, and had no credit to borrow with. It resorted to asking the people for money, and this they received. Over six million Anatolian peasants, feeling that this was important, donated (along with number of wealthy donors), and the battleships were purchased (unfortunately for the Turks, when World War I broke out, the Royal Navy seized these ships for their own use, but elected not to refund the Turks--this was
before the Porte chose to enter the conflict).
If people choose to not voluntarily pay for law enforcement or a military, then there is no guarantee that their property rights would be protected. Anarchy would ensue. However, that exactly why they will voluntarily pay for those services. It is in their self-interest to do so. In fact, they can even take part in the provision of these services on their own. Militias can assist in providing for the common defense. Bounty hunters, private detectives, and ordinary citizens can assist in suppressing crime.
Naturally, one would worry about significant donors unduly influencing security forces, but this could be easily solved by a "blind" funding system. Donors could pay into an escrow service, which would then channel the money--anonymously--to the targeted beneficiary. Other solutions, such as anonymous wire transfers, also exist. Whatever the method of funding, it must be anonymous.
GandalfTheGrey wrote:4.Do you support the right of an individual to purchase nuclear warheads? If so, how do you prevent potential terrorists (who are not criminals yet) from doing so?
No. A person has a right to own a gun, but he doesn’t have the right to point it at you with harmful intentions. That would constitute a “clear and present†threat to your rights, and you are justified in taking any measures necessary to defend yourself. Any possession of a nuclear warhead must be viewed as a “clear and present†threat to the rights of the individuals in its blast radius. It must be assumed that the the atomic weapon owner has harmful intentions, since a nuclear weapon has literally no other purpose--it cannot even be used for self-defense, as the user, the target, and countless others will be destroyed. Even when used only in remote regions, such as Novaya Zemlaya, where the USSR tested many of its nuclear weapons, the radioactive fallout will impact others thousands of miles away. And he is in effect pointing it at you, since you are in danger simply by being near him. Thus, action to defend the rights of those individuals threatened with the nuclear weapon is justified. Action to prevent people from acquiring these weapons is also justified.
GandalfTheGrey wrote:5.How do you stop large corporations from damaging the environment - who do so in the interests of short term profits? Do you consider a limited role for government intervention in such cases?
The largest source of environmental destruction is government itself. Many environmentalists decry the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, when 11.3 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Pacific Ocean. Recently, the City of Milwaukee, through a poorly designed sewage tunnel, spewed 4.3
billion gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Michigan. Thanks to sovereign immunity and Westley's Law (government grows on low expectations), no one has been charged or even fired. The City basically shrugged its shoulders and said "woops".
Of course, both of these cases do illustrate one thing that is noteworthy--the vast majority of environmental destruction occurs on
public property. Private property is typically left in good condition. The reason why, of course, is the old maxim, "No one washes a rental car." Private property owners have a vested interest in preserving the value of their property. This includes, by the way, operations which generate profits via exploiting natural resources. Environmental quality is a natural good, and people desire it. As such, lands in environmentally good or pristine condition have higher valuations than those in poor condition. As someone who has worked as a lumberjack and owns a 40 acre parcel of forest, I can attest to this firsthand. The most common reason for environmental destruction such as vast clear cuts, strip mining, etc. is not just desire for short term profits, but also property taxation. By destroying the environmental quality of land, property taxes drop measurably. Without such taxation, even when the only current desire is short-term profits, a very compelling reason to maintain the land exists. Good land can be sold for high prices, raising cash. Good land has collateral value, allowing the owner to borrow more money. Good land is valuable in and of itself, in that ecotourism, hunting, and fishing can take place on good land.
The solution here is
privatizing all publicly-held land. In the United States, all levels of government own 40% of the land, which is unacceptable. This needs to be sold as soon as possible. Public lands are routinely harmed by logging companies which lease them, ranchers that lease them, and careless campers. Private lands rarely have such problems.
There is, however, one role for government: in protecting the quality of property that cannot be owned. Air, large bodies of water, and connected water systems are examples of this, and we have no fundamental disagreement with liberals on this, though we advocate solutions that are as efficient as possible, by expressing regulations in terms of results rather than mandates (such as America's pollution trading market, which is effective and efficient), as this will allow the market to find the appropriate solution, rather than state bureaucrats.
Questions for Liberals
6. If each nation has the "freedom to implement its own laws and destiny", and if each nation has a right to self-determination, how can the right of the UN to intervene when "necessary" exist? Aren't such goals inherently contradictory and opposed?"
7. What examples of successful
developmental foreign aid, if any, can you cite?
8. Since you believe that all nations have a right to self-determination, does it follow that all inviduals have a right to self-determination? If not, why? Is the collective inherently more important than the individual, ipso facto?
9. You claim to believe in free markets, but reject laissez faire. Thus, by definition, you do not believe in free markets. What do you believe in?
10. Do liberals believe in sacrificing economic growth in the name of, as Senator Hillary Clinton terms it, "the common good"? Isn't the common good, ultimately, more harmed by economic stagnation than it can be helped by leveling schemes?
NOTE: The edit was to change the numbering on questions, in case you're wondering.
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