Aug 21 2009
Libertarian Hypocrisy
Libertarian are a strange breed:
1. They blieve the absolute realization of individual autonomy to be the chief aim of the political economy, but spend large amounts of time defending Corporations using sweat shops and child labor in Third World countries.
2. They insist that free trade will bring about unprecedented levels of financial prosperity to all, but see no problem with the extraordinary concentration of wealth, ownership of land and means of production, as well as political power in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
3. They argue for the legalization of prostitution, the so-called right for women to murder their babies through both medical abortion and abortifacient contraceptives, seek to safeguard no-fault divorce law, and defend pornography as a legitimate form of free speech and artistic expression, all the while denying one’s right to a Just and Living Wage, accessible health care, and a more equitable distribution of wealth.
4. They defend corporations choosing to outsource and offshore American jobs, only then to have foreign laborers create products formerly produced by Americans, eventually to flood the very market they abandoned with “cheap goods” that their former employees are left having to purchase on account of their having little to no money after losing their jobs to Juan or Habib Doe.
5. They insist that manufactures and textiles are things of the past, and yet readily admit that rather than these jobs vanishing off the face of the earth, they are merely transported to countries that allow these new economic colonialists to have free reign in deciding to exploit both the children and the poor for the personal gain of profit.
6. Catholic libertarians adhering to the philosophy of the Austrian school are hell-bent on minimizing (or flat out denying) the Magisterium’s competence, authority, and universal jurisdiction over the social affairs of men, yet resort to papal encyclicals whenever it suits their fancy.
What a strange breed. Yes, a strange breed indeed.
While it is true that the Libertarian party itself does support NAFTA and other similar free trade policies which have resulted in all of Michigan becoming the greater Metro Flint area, there are a lot of people like me who claim to hold Libertarian leaning ideals, who takes the basic premises of the philosophy and apply them in certain ways which differ in the final view on particular issues from the Party. For me thats abortion and free trade. Holding to the basic cocept of appealing to the intent of the framers, Alexander Hamilton and others strongly believed in protectionist policies, so I point to him and say that my belief in protectionism was shared by many of the framers and can be called an originalist concept. As to abortion, the general concept is that individual rights end where the rights of another begin. Since it can be shown that feti meet the scientific criteria for a living organism, and they are genetically human I say they are living humans and have individual rights. This is divergent from the party but also uses the general philosophy to guide the reasoning.
No offense, sir, but you do not seem to comprehend or recognize the nuances of libertarianism. You are furthermore very uncharitable to those Catholics who consider themselves as, more or less, libertarian, such as me. It is much depressing to see such Catholics behave this way to other well-meaning Catholics. Moreover, there are, as you seem unwilling to appreciate, many things that unite us versus divide us. How can a more constructive conversation and debate be had if a man does not at the very least understand the positions of many thoughtful Catholic libertarians?
Your characterization, for instance, of libertarians seeing no problem with the apparent concentration of wealth and political power is erroneous. Nothing could be further from the truth, as a peek of the many writings of Catholic gentleman like Jorg Guido Hulsmann would show. If you were familiar with his works, e.g., “The Ethics of Money Production,” it seems almost impossible that you could characterize libertarians universally and categorically as you do, and it is intellectually dishonest. For example, he has convincingly argued that the concentration of wealth is in part hugely due to the current monetary system of central banking and its top-down promotion of fractional reserve practices. This system has played a huge part, he argues as well, in the upward centralization of governmental powers. Little question should exist concerning the tendency of today to make the middle and poor classes helpless and dependent on the higher-ups. But this is why so many Catholic libertarians are against something like fiat inflation. The status quo is awful, and that’s why I’m personally against it.
Very similarly, it has been argued against the concentration of wealth and power by seeing that much of the unnatural and bad disparities are caused by today’s revolving door between government and big business. And, by the way, who is more likely to influence a powerfully centralized government? Not the poor man but the rich man. Marxist Gabriel Kolko has been highly recommended by several libertarians on this subject. Many in big business have helped to design regulations to their advantage over their smaller, more local, and better competitors. In lots of cases they can externalize some of their costs onto government. They have helped design horrible free trade agreements. Etc. But why do these businessmen go to government? Not because they have power but because they don’t and big, non-localized, non-federalist government does. It is a privileged institution—which, unlike a private firm, no one can boycott—that has the biggest edge in the competition over limited resources. It is not surprising that it is like a magnet. Human nature, which is invariantly imperfect, is human nature. And, unless a man is an egalitarian, yes, there will always be rich men and some hierarchy. If we had a localized world, men could only get rich by serving their fellow men. He gets rich by serving the public at large which thereby increases their richness. This makes us all concerned about the well-being of others: because I can only get what I want by thinking about what others want. That is, I get what I want by giving what others want. And, thus, the “ends” (goals) of others become my “means” to get my “ends.” To me at least, this seems like a humane system. Today, however, we have a system where, largely, no requisite exists for big businesses to be cost-effective or to put maximum effort into improving the quality of their services. Government, especially, has none of these requisites because it is independent versus dependent on changing consumer demands, since they can easily expropriate property.
There is in addition ample literature showing that it is untrue that all libertarians are for abortion or today’s no-fault divorce law. Probably 90% of Catholic libertarians would agree with me that the status quo here, too, is extremely awful. This mischaracterization is not excusable, sir. More than that, in “The Church and the Market,” Thomas E. Woods has defended the right of libertarian private communities to implement covenants to ban activities like prostitution. It has further been argued that it should surprise no one that the family is in its present condition. Not only do we today have taxation, inflation, and regulation eating away at almost 50% of one’s income (directly and indirectly), we have public education, feminist civil rights and affirmative action, the welfare state supplanting fatherhood, community, and Church, and on and on. Then, of course both parents have to enter work. It is not as if “the market” made mothers enter the labor force. A freer market, many have tried to show, would lead to family wage conditions superior to alternatives. Furthermore, how can man invest more labor, resources, and time into Church, community, family life, and so on without thinking about the problem of what leads to the best wealth creation? And I mean this in a non-material sense, too, since the more wealth man has, the more reason he has to invest in non-material things because of diminishing marginal utility.
And, the last time I checked, I am not against better access to healthcare. Neither, for that matter, are Catholic libertarians against localism or the poor. I would never, sir, say that you are. I hope that you don’t claim people like me are. I also see many problems with the current corporatism internationally. Peter Schiff, someone who you can label as an “Austrian,” has given many reasons to be concerned about the issue of American productive capacity, i.e., how much/little Americans are physically producing, and investing in, economic goods. But he would argue that the causes are different than what you might argue. The author of “The Western Confucian” blog has noted that he wished that there could be civil debate and recognition of the things that unite us. But, maybe (and so sadly), this is just hopeful thinking.