Libertarianism Declared Dead

[SaulOhio]

No bother. Just make it the terms of the contract that if Joe homeowner doesn't make his mortgage arrears you can shoot his brains out.

Still trying to discredit ideas by presenting exaggerated, radicalized versions of them that nobody advocates, huh?

No libertarian would advocate any such thing.

 

[Darat]

Still trying to discredit ideas by presenting exaggerated, radicalized versions of them that nobody advocates, huh?

No libertarian would advocate any such thing.

Why would a Libertarian interfere with someone's right to enter into an agreement with someone else? How would they stop people making such a contract?

 

[SaulOhio]

Why would a Libertarian interfere with someone's right to enter into an agreement with someone else? How would they stop people making such a contract?

Who WOULD enter such a contract? Why would there be a need to stop anyone from entering such a contract?

 

[Darat]

That is not really the question; most Libertarians on this Forum have said that people should be free to enter into whatever contracts they wish to enter into with no one else being able to interfere with that, therefore such a contract is in line with such a principle.

 

[volatile]

Who WOULD enter such a contract? Why would there be a need to stop anyone from entering such a contract?

The answer to that question is the answer to why libertarianism is ridiculous. Ponder it a while, grasshopper, for you are close to reaching enlightenment.

 

[Darat]

On this point of extreme contracts the "blow your brains out" is a rather extreme example of an extreme contract but I mentioned in another thread the example of my own great-grandfather, who entered "willingly" into a contract that meant that if he couldn't work for any reason he and his family would immediately lose their home. That may have been over a hundred years ago however you only need to look at the (actual) sweatshops of the world today to see hundreds of thousands people entering into terrible contracts today of their own "free will" when the other "choice" is starvation for them or their families.

It is the idea that such contracts, that the conditions that force people to make such a "choice", should be of no concern to society is what is truly repulsive about the ideology often espoused by Libertarians.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The gold standard is by definition goverment regulation. Libertarianism requires that indivduals be allowed to trade with gold backed currency but also that they be allowed to trade with say land backed currency or indeed oil backed currency.

Yes so we get back to barter as you never know who will accept your currency and what value they will place on it.

Why don't you just get rid of currency?

 

[dudalb]

No fan of Libertarianism, but to be fair. most Libertarians think that the Anti Fractional Banking campaign is stupid.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Who WOULD enter such a contract? Why would there be a need to stop anyone from entering such a contract?

That is easy, because they want to own a house and all the loan offers they get have that as one of the terms.

It is the standard exicution for non payment clause.

 

[geni]

Yes so we get back to barter as you never know who will accept your currency and what value they will place on it.

Why don't you just get rid of currency?

Well that is certianly an option yes but generaly only has been tried by smaller economies (montenegro doesn't have a currency for example).

Generaly people tend towards finding an acceptable universal currency.

 

[SaulOhio]

On this point of extreme contracts the "blow your brains out" is a rather extreme example of an extreme contract but I mentioned in another thread the example of my own great-grandfather, who entered "willingly" into a contract that meant that if he couldn't work for any reason he and his family would immediately lose their home.

That is nowhere near the "blow your brains out" clause. If this was a mortgage contract, it sounds a bit strict, but reasonable. And this was, as you say a hundred years ago. Its the economy that has progressed considerably. Was this in a small town with only one or two mortgage lenders? More competition in a growing economy would mean better terms for the borrowers, in time. Would your grandfather have been better off without ANY access to a home loan? Having that one morgage company with its strict terms was clearly better than no morgage company, as your grandfather's decision shows.

That may have been over a hundred years ago however you only need to look at the (actual) sweatshops of the world today to see hundreds of thousands people entering into terrible contracts today of their own "free will" when the other "choice" is starvation for them or their families.

Notice that those sweat shops are in third world countries without free markets. Or in developing countries which are gradually liberalizing their economies, and there hasn't been enough economic progress to improve working conditions.

Have you heard of Hernando de Soto? Not the conquistador, I mean the Peruvian economist. His criticism of the poor countries he visited, as well as the one he lives in, is that property rights are not secure. The rich are able to get title to their property because they can pay the bribes and hire lawyers to navigate the bureaucratic maze needed to get title to their land. But poor businessmen can't afford all that, so they work in the informal economy, which he has calculated has a value greatly exceeding all the foreign aid and loans ever sent to those countries. The few rich who have title have great advantages over their poor competitors. They can easily use their property as collateral to get loans. They have the advantage in the court system. They don't have to worry about the police coming in and bulldozing what they have built because they are "squatters".

Here's an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-oHyeo3q6c

And from Capital and Property Rights

De Soto is hardly a wide-eyed idealist. He and his staff spent nearly five years painstakingly researching property holdings in numerous Third-World nations before he wrote this book. As the book jacket says, "Their findings are dramatic. The data they have collected demonstrate that the world’s poor have accumulated all the assets needed for successful capitalism. The value of their savings is immense: many times all the foreign aid and investment received since 1945."

According to de Soto, the assets of the poor in those nations amount to "dead capital." In other words, because of problems dealing with legal ownership of assets, the poor cannot transform what they own into capital through the process of offering collateral needed for business startups and expansions. Instead, the vast majority of the world’s poor operate in the underground economies of small-scale enterprises, squatter "settlements," and payoffs to bureaucrats and the police.

The legal barriers to setting up legal businesses in the Third World are enormous, he writes. In The Other Path, de Soto describes the experience where he and his "team" tried to launch fictitious legal businesses in the United States and in Lima, Peru. Working six-hour days, the team managed its U.S. approval in less than a day.

In Lima, however, the experience was much more cumbersome. The red tape was so prevalent and thick that acting legally (filling out forms and receiving official approval) took 289 days and $1,231, which is much more than most Peruvians can begin to afford. Therefore, according to de Soto, most of the Third-World poor disappear into the black market, solving one problem but creating others that condemn the poor to a much lower standard of living than they would enjoy in an economy in which property rights are easy to establish.

It is the idea that such contracts, that the conditions that force people to make such a "choice", should be of no concern to society is what is truly repulsive about the ideology often espoused by Libertarians.

The conditions that make such choices better than anything else available SHOULD be of concern to everyone. The answer to that is economic progress, or actually liberalizing the economy.

However, what would be your solution? Ban such swaet shops, so that, as you admit, people would be forced into the alternative of starvation? Or force the employers to pay more? They would hire fewer workers, then. Force them by law to improve working conditions? That would also take money, which is then not available for wages.

Your concern for the poor working in such conditions is noble. But are you sure you have the right solution?

 

[ServiceSoon]

Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate that just as the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 finally proved for good that communism was an unworkable ideology, the financial crisis of 2008 proves that libertarianism is also dead.

Nothing has proven that these system are unworkable. They did prove that they were unworkable in the circumstances present.

 

[Highly Selassie]

However, what would be your solution? Ban such swaet shops, so that, as you admit, people would be forced into the alternative of starvation?

False dichotomy. The only reason the alternative is starvation is because there are no labor laws in these third-world countries. (This seems at odds with your earlier claim that these markets aren't free.)

Or force the employers to pay more? They would hire fewer workers, then.

Perhaps each company would hire fewer workers, but the large labor pool wouldn't just go untapped. New companies would form, or foreign businesses would set up shop to tap this resource.

Force them by law to improve working conditions? That would also take money, which is then not available for wages.

Only if the government doesn't provide subsidies to this end.

Nothing has proven that these system are unworkable. They did prove that they were unworkable in the circumstances present.

This raises the question, what about the present conditions makes libertarianism unworkable?

 

[SaulOhio]

Nothing has proven that these system are unworkable. They did prove that they were unworkable in the circumstances present.

No. The communists actually got to try to implement their ideology. Maybe it could be argued that it was the circumstances at the time that were to blame (Though I don't believe so), but Libertarians don't need that excuse. They haven't even gotten the chance to try.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

No. The communists actually got to try to implement their ideology. Maybe it could be argued that it was the circumstances at the time that were to blame (Though I don't believe so), but Libertarians don't need that excuse. They haven't even gotten the chance to try.

Because no one can stop laughing long enough to listen to them.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

You are claiming that libertarianism was tried in 1929? You mean the Fed was abolished, and we had a 100% reserve gold standard? I didn't know that!

In 1929 we still had a gold standard. If I recall correctly, gold wasn't taken out of our system until 1933 and we didn't go off the gold standard until 1973.

As far as the Fed goes, we had depressions and panics about every ten years since our founding, but since then there was one with a number of hiccoughs like in 1987 and currently as I noted, both of which were caused by economic libertarianism.

Epic fail.

 

[Francesca R]

No libertarian would advocate any such thing.

"Don't worry, we only want libertarian-lite"

 

[SaulOhio]

In 1929 we still had a gold standard. If I recall correctly, gold wasn't taken out of our system until 1933 and we didn't go off the gold standard until 1973.

It was taken out in 1933, and the Great Depression lasted another decade. If gold was the problem, why didn't getting rid of gold solve it? And why didn't FDR's New Deal solve the problem? As a matter of fact, why didn't Hoover's New Deal solve it? Hoover implemented all of the measures attributed to Roosevelt. Roosevelt only continued and expanded the programs started by Hoover. Go back and read the OP in the thread I started, What government should do in a recession

Murray Rothbard demonstrates, quite clearly, the cause of the 1929 crash in America's Great Depression

Bernanke: Federal Reserve caused Great Depression Fed chief says, 'We did it. …
very sorry, won't do it again'

As far as the Fed goes, we had depressions and panics about every ten years since our founding, but since then there was one with a number of hiccoughs like in 1987

Just a couple?
From A History of Recessions:

May 1937-June 1938 13
Feb. 1945-Oct. 1945 8
Nov. 1948-Oct. 1949 11
July 1953-May 1954 10
Aug. 1957-April 1958 8
April 1960-Feb. 1961 10
Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970 11
Nov. 1973-March 1975 16
Jan. 1980-July 1980 6
July 1981-Nov. 1982 16
July 1990-March 1991 8
March 2001-Nov. 2001 8

Looks to me like the frequency of recessions was the same after the Fed was founded as after. In fact, you said before the Fed, it was about once a decade. This looks like closer to twice a decade.

and currently as I noted, both of which were caused by economic libertarianism.

Epic fail.

Since economic libertarianism has never been implemented, especially in banking, how can you blame it for the problem? Especially seince that problem has gotten even worse since the founding of the Federal Reserve and the abandonment of the gold standard?

I keep seeing this argument, that all sorts of problems are caused by free markets (libertarianism), when it is absolutely, crystal clear, that there was no free market invloved. In every one of these situations where the free market is blamed, the government is regulating the market in precisely the way free market advocates warn will cause the exact problem being blamed on free markets!

"Don't worry, we only want libertarian-lite"

What you describe isn't libertarianism in ANY form. Its a strawman intended as an attempt to discredit ideas without actually arguing about them. Just like your conspiracy theory attack on the other threads.

 

[Francesca R]

What you describe isn't libertarianism in ANY form.

You assert that but have not backed it up other than by suggesting "Libertarians just wouldn't be so nasty, OK?". Well what would stop them? Here I am merely repeating Darat's post 24 which you have avoided. Please get onto it.

 

[soylent]

I keep seeing this argument, that all sorts of problems are caused by free markets (libertarianism), when it is absolutely, crystal clear, that there was no free market invloved. In every one of these situations where the free market is blamed, the government is regulating the market in precisely the way free market advocates warn will cause the exact problem being blamed on free markets!

Really now, which regulation caused the banks and hedge funds to issue tonnes of junk Mortgage Backed Securities and ~$60 trillion of completely unregulated Credit Default Swaps?

Because that's what turned this minor problem in the housing market into a global problem.