Has libertarianism ever been tried in the real world?

[Francesca R]

Sure, the question is when that threshold is crossed, do corporations typically enact these measures on their own or have they historically been shown to resist such measures until legislation requires them to make changes?

My answer would be that corporations provide some of it themselves due to competition, but that they will (voluntarily) under-supply it relative to the preferences of the people who work for them, in the absence of some level of compulsion brought to bear by an encompassing interest. That encompassing interest could be the set of "all employees" if that group was able to organise itself and act collectively, and overcome the free-rider problem at the same time, but this is normally implausible, so typically the encompassing interest needs to be the state.

And going back to the Bangladesh example, I still wonder if it's right to place this threshold on the employee's society or on that of the employer. Say an American corporation employs factory workers in the U.S. for minimum wage and supplies them with respirators. Then they move the factory to Bangladesh, where they have dramatically reduced labor costs, and don't provide the workers with respirators because there are no workplace safety regulations. How does technology or productivity factor into that scenario? The only factors would be legal regulations (or the absence of them) and the desire to maximize corporate profit.

Bangladesh needs to compete with other similarly low-cost providers of labour, so in the absence of any international compulsion it risks pricing itself out of overseas investment if it raises the cost (to foreign firms) of doing business too high. You have accepted that welfare-improving labour laws have a cost (even though it might not be much for "respirators"), so they need to trade that cost off against the benefit to their labour force, the downside being that the factory could go to the Phillipines instead. If the typical Bangladeshi factory worker can earn more doing something else than the competitive labour cost Bangladesh needs to offer (to the foreign firm) would give her, then Bangladesh can do without the foreign-built factory. Hence, yes it does depend on income levels in the society, in the absence of foreign largesse.

 

[Francesca R]

I would agree except that it isn't science, but quite simple logic:

At least theists can define "good" in terms of what they think their their deity wants. So they can in this respect claim a logical framework for morals, albeit one that I would argue is based in an incorrect first assumption: "God exists and what God wants is axiomatically good". Rejecting this first assumption, one eventually gets to the ultimate reason, "Because it feels right to my primate emotions". I like to think that I have strong opinions on morality, and right and wrong, it is just that I accept that the ultimate arbiter of my morality is based on my evolved feelings as a social animal.

Probably an interesting discussion, but one for the "inherent rights" threads...

I hesitate to call it a "third way" but Kant, by all accounts, worked like crazy to develop a moral structure that was based neither on theology nor on preferences that were not chosen by free will (he would argue that your private emotions are not chosen by you--and you say they are evolved, and many of them would be idiosyncratic to you). Kant is worth reading about (rather than directly, perhaps) for that, although it is heavy-going and off-topic. There is a lot about "inherent respect" being due to all humans, because they are capable of rational thought in addition to sentience. I suppose that is linked to inherent rights.

(The guy was theistic himself)

 

[Francesca R]

I, however see more reason and historical precedent to believe that the converse is the case and that there would be more effective monopolies and especially cartels. [ . . . ]

I agree to some extent. There is really no good evidence to my mind that special interest groups dissipate away in the absence of state support, or a state to lobby. In the absence of being protected by governments (and actually many of your examples are ones of special interests being the paymasters of weak/bad governments and extracting protection of their narrow interests) . . . they resort to other efforts to gain assymetric information and superior bargaining power with the public instead. I do tend to think that no regulation is better than corrupt regulation in this regard though, because unfettered competition is for sure a better antidote to artificial protection than is a rotten central power. But it is inferior to a central power that adequately represents society's interests.

 

[jimbob]

I agree to some extent. There is really no good evidence to my mind that special interest groups dissipate away in the absence of state support, or a state to lobby. In the absence of being protected by governments (and actually many of your examples are ones of special interests being the paymasters of weak/bad governments and extracting protection of their narrow interests) . . . they resort to other efforts to gain assymetric information and superior bargaining power with the public instead. I do tend to think that no regulation is better than corrupt regulation in this regard though, because unfettered competition is for sure a better antidote to artificial protection than is a rotten central power. But it is inferior to a central power that adequately represents society's interests.

Oh yes, libertarianism is better than Stalin's Russia, or the Aztec regime, for example. Or indeed a system without a respect for property rights.

To misquote Churchill, it might even be the best system that hasn't been tried yet, and the penultimate worst system...

It is just that liberal (social) democracy is better.

 

[Earthborn]

The problem is that a lot of you are lumping all libertarians together and then taking pot shots at the fringe elements disingenuously as if they're representative of the whole.

The people you call "fringe elements" are actually the people who follow the basic principles that are the philosophical underpinning of the entire Libertarian movement.

Most libertarians are fine with our current system, they'd just prefer the balance of power to be shifted back to the states and a slightly less overpowered Federal government.

Then they are at best marginally Libertarian. Libertarians prefer the balance of power to be shifted to individuals, not just different sections of government.

The idea that all libertarians are against all regulation is as asinine as calling Democrats, Socialists and Communists.

Just because there are people who call themselves "Libertarian" because its hip and trendy while not believing in Libertarianism's main principles, does not make it invalid to criticise those Libertarian principles. It is okay to criticise democrats on democratic ideas, socialists on socialist ideas and communists on communist ideas, and therefore also libertarians on libertarian ideas.

 

[Earthborn]

As for shorter working hours, well, that goes hand in hand with lower per-capita GDP.

Even if that were true, lower per-capita GDP is not the same thing as lower wages. I don't think there are many people in Europe that would have higher wages if they were doing their job in the US.

 

[Ziggurat]

Even if that were true, lower per-capita GDP is not the same thing as lower wages.

They are not the same thing, but they are VERY correlated. For rather obvious reasons.

 

[psychictv]

As for shorter working hours, well, that goes hand in hand with lower per-capita GDP.

Any evidence for this claim? There are examples that refute it on both ends. For example, Norway has a higher per capita GDP than the U.S. while working much shorter hours. Ireland works less than the U.K. but has a higher per capita GDP. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are many countries (Greece, Japan, Czech Republic, Mexico, Poland, Korea) that work longer hours than the U.S. but have a lower per capita GDP. I know, I know, it's all to do with lower productivity due to technology but then explain Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yearly_working_time.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

 

[Travis]

I'm mystified how we can have contract enforcement in a "truly free market." That sounds like a regulated market to me. Have the words "truly" and "free" been given new definitions?

 

[jimbob]

I agree to some extent. There is really no good evidence to my mind that special interest groups dissipate away in the absence of state support, or a state to lobby. In the absence of being protected by governments (and actually many of your examples are ones of special interests being the paymasters of weak/bad governments and extracting protection of their narrow interests) . . . they resort to other efforts to gain assymetric information and superior bargaining power with the public instead. I do tend to think that no regulation is better than corrupt regulation in this regard though, because unfettered competition is for sure a better antidote to artificial protection than is a rotten central power. But it is inferior to a central power that adequately represents society's interests.

I have just been thinking about my own industry, semiconductors. This was pretty-much founded as part of the military-industrial complex with lots of government research, support and regulation in many countries.

Significant parts of the industry require absolutely stupid amounts of capital to get into. This means that there is a natural trend towards monopolies in these sectors.

In fact any industry with large capital requirements will have such large barriers to entry that they would tend towards monopolies under libertarian systems.

 

[Francesca R]

I'm mystified how we can have contract enforcement in a "truly free market." That sounds like a regulated market to me. Have the words "truly" and "free" been given new definitions?

Libertarian markets are not "truly free" in the sense of protecting total and absolute self-ownership, because in a situation of complete autonomy individuals are free to cheat and lie and steal. It is "truly free as long as you do not harm anyone".

I don't see why there is any mystery beyond the semantics of labels--the doctrine is straight-forward enough.

 

[Francesca R]

In fact any industry with large capital requirements will have such large barriers to entry that they would tend towards monopolies under libertarian systems.

The barrier of very high capital requirements doesn't lead to natural monopoly, unless the cost of organising a firm are always lower than the gains the firm can earn in the market, no matter how large the firm becomes. I am not aware of any example of that being true unless government directly subsidises those costs, which it does with military production etc by being a monopoly (legal) buyer.

Global industries, I would contend, can never become monopolised/cartelised even if some governments would like them to be. OPEC's complete inability to control the spot oil price is the best example of this.

I think Coase's "Nature of the Firm" is the authority on this.

In summary, I'm afraid I have to let libertarianism off the hook on this one. Monopoly power and cartel power is more likely the more regulation there is.

 

[jimbob]

I'd have to disagree in the semiconductor industry:

Currently only TSMC, Intel, and IBM are really able to develop the next process generation.

TSMC is a foundry, so has no *real* competitors, although the formation of Globalfoundries, with its Abu Dhabi based money is an interesting development.

 

[Chaos]

Libertarian markets are not "truly free" in the sense of protecting total and absolute self-ownership, because in a situation of complete autonomy individuals are free to cheat and lie and steal. It is "truly free as long as you do not harm anyone".

I don't see why there is any mystery beyond the semantics of labels--the doctrine is straight-forward enough.

Funny. The bulk of the Libertarians I´ve met so far are not for "truly free as long as you do not harm anyone", at least not to the extent that they would allow for any measures that ensure that harm is acted against, because that would be infringing on their rights. For example, I have seen them dead set against any and all agency to prevent fraud - starting with the FDA, you might remember the discussion - because they fantasize that "the free market" takes care of that automatically.

 

[Francesca R]

That'll be them disagreeing about how far the state has to reach out to prevent harm then. I doubt that many think "Fraud is OK". Conversely, few people of any stripe want a police state with zero tolerance for any fraud whatsoever.

 

[Chaos]

That'll be them disagreeing about how far the state has to reach out to prevent harm then. I doubt that many think "Fraud is OK". Conversely, few people of any stripe want a police state with zero tolerance for any fraud whatsoever.

They won´t say out loud that they think fraud is okay. Many of them probably actually think fraud isn´t okay. However, the ones I´ve seen are strictly opposed to any and all measures that would be effective against fraud, as long as the government is involved in it to an ever-so-tiny degree. They seem to have deluded themselves into thinking fraud doesn´t work because the free market makes it fail.

 

[Phrost]

The people you call "fringe elements" are actually the people who follow the basic principles that are the philosophical underpinning of the entire Libertarian movement.

Then they are at best marginally Libertarian. Libertarians prefer the balance of power to be shifted to individuals, not just different sections of government.

Just because there are people who call themselves "Libertarian" because its hip and trendy while not believing in Libertarianism's main principles, does not make it invalid to criticise those Libertarian principles. It is okay to criticise democrats on democratic ideas, socialists on socialist ideas and communists on communist ideas, and therefore also libertarians on libertarian ideas.

This is like being lectured on skepticism by a fundamentalist.

 

[jimbob]

Why?

 

[brodski]

This is like being lectured on skepticism by a fundamentalist.

So you believe that one cannot understand a position without agreeing with it? Or are there only certain positions which you feel this holds true for?
Would you complain about being lectured on homoeopathy by a skeptic, for instance?

 

[lomiller]

Libertarian markets are not "truly free" in the sense of protecting total and absolute self-ownership, because in a situation of complete autonomy individuals are free to cheat and lie and steal. It is "truly free as long as you do not harm anyone".

I don't see why there is any mystery beyond the semantics of labels--the doctrine is straight-forward enough.

It is simple enough. The problem is that they don’t want to discuss the issue of how much regulation is needed to prevent people from harming one another. They will tell you that current regulation is to much, but won’t say why it’s to much or how much they deem sufficient.

Basically they haven’t gone beyond the principle on paper stage, while real economies have been refining that same principle for better then a century.