A Non-Non-Libertarian FAQ: Responses to Mike Huben
(Part of the Liberals and Libertarians web site,
http://www.batnet.com/liberty/liberal/.
Comments to Glen Raphael at raphael@liberty.batnet.com)
Text-only version last modified 3/18/96
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Is there anything GOOD about the Non-Libertarian FAQ?
3. What is Libertarianism?
4. Libertarianism in One Lesson (by David Bergland)
5. If We Didn't Pay Taxes...
6. The World's Smallest Political Quiz
7. The "How many men?" Argument
8. Quotations Popular with Libertarians
9. No Treason (by Lysander Spooner)
10. Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the Mafia.
11. Of course it's my property. I paid money and hold the deed.
12. Taxation is theft.
13. Libertarians oppose the initiation of force.
14. The Pledge.
15. The Libertarian Party: America's Third Largest Political Party.
16. Successful Libertarian Experiments
17. Conclusion
1.Introduction
For quite a few years, a liberal Usenet participant named Mike Huben has
been arguing with Libertarians in different forums. His "Critiques of
Libertarianism" web site and his "Non-Libertarian FAQ" attempt to rebut
libertarian arguments. A few of Mr. Huben's failings in that document include:
(1) criticizing books that he has not read
(2) criticizing arguments that he does not understand
(3) resorting to ad hominem attacks (Calling a book or argument or person
"evangelical" is not the same thing as answering the argument)
(4) proof by strenuous assertion.
This document is a debunking of Mike Huben's debunkings. Note: this document
is not yet complete. I have made it available in order to fill a gap, in the
hope that even in its current state it will prove useful to people.
2.Is there anything GOOD about the Non-Libertarian FAQ?
Actually there is. For instance, towards the beginning of the document Mike
Huben writes:
Evangelists (those trying to persuade others to adopt their
beliefs) generally have extensively studied which arguments
have the greatest effect on the unprepared. Usually, these
arguments are brief propositions that can be memorized easily
and regurgitated in large numbers. These arguments, by the
process of selection, tend not to have obvious refutations, and
when confronted by a refutation, the commonest tactic is to
recite another argument. This eliminates the need for actual
understanding of the basis of arguments, and greatly speeds
the rate at which evangelists can be trained.
Despite the generally offensive tone, the above characterization is an
accurate description of how SOME members of various politically interested
groups -- not just libertarians but also liberals and conservatives -- hone
and develop their public arguments over time on the Net and in real life.
This process is generally applicable to groups that have any sort of agenda
they are trying to advance. People arguing in favor of gun control do this.
People arguing against gun control do it. Libertarians, conservatives,
liberals and populists all do it. Even Mike Huben does it. There is a sort
of natural selection at work here, a survival-of-the-fittest process that
goes on even without conscious effort on the part of the participants.
Here's how it works: If you post an argument on talk.politics.misc and that
argument gets brutally shot down, you tend not to make the same argument a
second time. Similarly, if you come up with an argument that forces people to
think in a new way, if people read your post and tell you by their response
that you have helped them see through your eyes, you will tend to remember
that argument and use it again in the future. Through this process the best --
meaning most successful -- rhetorical arguments survive and the weakest ones
die off. Mike Huben seems to have noticed that the population of libertarian
arguments on the net is extremely healthy and tends to kill off competing
arguments with a high rate of success. Huben hopes to kill some of the more
effective libertarian memes in order to allow repopulation of a few native
species.
He often doesn't notice that he is using the same tactics he ascribes to his
opponents. ("Taxation is theft," proposes an unnamed source he quotes.
"Property is theft!" responds Mike Huben. They call him a statist, he calls
them evangelists. Sigh...)
But the approach outlined above and elsewhere in the document is worth
thinking about whenever you spot an argument between two sides that
don't appear to be really listening to one another. Just keep in mind that it
applies at least as well to liberal "evangelists" as it does to any other
group.
Another nice thing about the Non-Libertarian FAQ is that it conveniently
collects in one place a fair number of illogical arguments. (On both sides)
3. What is Libertarianism?
Libertarians wish to build a society based primarily on voluntary rather
than involuntary relationships between individuals. Libertarians share with
liberals a concern for freedom of expression. Libertarians share with
conservatives a concern for free enterprise. The result of this mixture is a
political philosophy which favors as little government as possible. Thus,
"Socially liberal, fiscally conservative," is a loose description. According
to recent Gallup and Times-Mirror polls between 8% and 22% of Americans
currently fit in this category and that number is on the increase. On Usenet
and among computer users generally the proportion of libertarians is much
higher than in the population at large.(1)
Although a high percentage of the population favors libertarian reforms
-- anything that involves shrinking government and giving more power
back to individuals can be categorized as such -- a relatively small number of
people have thought through these beliefs and taken them to their logical
conclusion, which is that we should rely on government force to do really very
little at all.(2) The position of the Libertarian Party is that apart from the
court system, police, and national defense, most of what the government
currently does should rather be done by private, voluntary organizations if it
is to be done at all. Registered Libertarian Party candidates for office
received about two million votes in the last major election. I would guess
that this variety of libertarian currently represents about 2% of the
population.
Mike Huben claims that libertarians are a tiny group whose ideas are generally
unknown and unpopular, but several major American newspapers and magazines
would disagree with him. As _USA Today_ recently put it: "What liberalism was
to the 60's and conservatism was to the 80's, libertarianism may be to the
youth of the 90's."
[*1 Evidence of overrepresentation: whenever presidential polls are held on
the net the libertarian candidate tends to win or do extremely well, but in
"the real world" he tends to lose.
*2 Henry David Thoreau's _Civil Disobedience_ is an example of a thoughtful
individual reaching this conclusion. ]
4. _Libertarianism in One Lesson_
One problem with political debate on Usenet is that it lends itself well to
short, oversimplified arguments. There simply isn't enough time or space in
net postings to fully explore the ideas behind all the assertions being made.
When defending a given position a poster inevitably has to make some
assumptions about what the other guy already knows in order to avoid boring
him to death.
But when you want to explore ideas in greater depth there is no
substitute for reading an actual book. Book authors have the luxury of being
able to start at the beginning of an argument, proceed leisurely through the
middle of it, and eventually arrive at a conclusion. Book authors have a
larger canvas to paint in. They can take more time to consider all the
ramifications of each argument. So it isn't surprising that Libertarians on
the net might recommend that someone who is seriously interested in a given
topic actually read a book on the subject.
A number of posters have suggested that Mike Huben read a book by David
Bergland titled Libertarianism in One Lesson. Bergland was the Libertarian
Party's 1984 candidate for President, and wrote a good book. The book is
short, simple, to the point, and does a decent job of presenting libertarian
views in contrast with other views on a variety of subjects. So here is what
MH says about the book in his FAQ:
27.Haven't you read "Libertarianism in One Lesson"?
Every belief system has its evangelistic writings, designed to
help convince or draw in new members. The Campus Crusade
for Christ uses "Evidence That Demands A Verdict", Scientology
uses "Dianetics", and libertarians use "Libertarianism in One
Lesson".
All of these books are very convincing-- in the absence of
counterargument. However, they are easily rebutted by
skeptics because they MUST omit the exceptions to their point
of view to be convincing.
[...]
Any time I read how simple it is to understand the world
through system X, I know I'm dealing with a convert from
evangelistic writings. They blithely assert that their
explanations show the true cause of current problems. And the
key to showing them to be wrong, is to show that there's more
complexity to the world than is encompassed by their
simplistic explanations.
Note here what MH does not do. He claims that the book is easily rebutted by
skeptics, yet he fails to actually do any rebutting. There's a good reason for
this, which is that he *hasn't read the book*. That's right, he is willing to
compare this book to "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" (a creationist tract)
sight unseen. Worse still, he implies that the people who read _LIOL_ must be
mindless zealots and even lists the book as a source!
So in response, I would note that the fact that a book is influential, wins
many people over to its point of view, is easy to read and is "very
convincing," is simply not evidence that that book is wrong. Given that by
MH's account dozens of libertarians have referred him to a book written by
someone they find convincing or informative, he would do well to _read that
book_. Just as skeptics on talk.origins respond to Velikovsky himself rather
than the people who quote him, MH should do the same with libertarianism. If
he is unable to do so then all he is demonstrating is that some libertarians -
- based on comments often taken out of context from a long-dead Usenet thread
-- can be made to sound like poor arguers for a possibly correct philosophy.
What he seems to want to prove is that libertarians are arguing for an
incorrect philosophy, but that can't be done unless he is willing to go to the
sources.
When it comes to something as complex and as complete as a political
philosophy, we can't spoon-feed you every idea. If you want to confront
the issues head-on and actually understand the reasoning behind the
debates, you need to read some actual books on both sides of the issue.
Read Libertarianism In One Lesson; you can order it from Laissez-Faire
Books at 1-800-326-0996. Or read Harry Browne's new book; you can find
it in your local bookstore. Draw your own conclusions.
5. If We Didn't Pay Taxes...
Mike Huben writes:
Think how much wealthier we'd be if we didn't pay taxes.
This is a classic example of libertarians not looking at the
complete equation. If taxes are eliminated, you'll need to
purchase services that were formerly provided by government.
This response is an example of not looking at the complete equation; it
ignores that a great many of the "services" provided by government do not need
to be provided at all and therefore the corresponding expenses would disappear
entirely. For instance, over half the prisoners in the federal prison system
are there for non-violent drug-related offenses. Most commentators on Usenet
from all sides of the political spectrum favor legalization of drugs; even the
Liberalism FAQ which Huben cites takes that position. But if governmental
persecution of non-violent drug users goes away, there will be no
corresponding private expense.
It is in the nature of government that half the new programs created each year
are designed to fix problems created by last year's new government programs.
So after sixty years of government growth we now find ourself in a situation
where there may be five government programs to subsidize tobacco and another
five programs to encourage people not to smoke. There are programs that drive
up the cost of food to protect some farmers and then there are programs that
subsidize the cost of food because poor people can't afford it now. And
programs that protect other farmers from growing broke because the first
programs drove up the cost of the land.
When you privatise government, most of the programs or combinations of
programs that are completely useless or counterproductive will simply go
away. Without the Department of Agriculture no private company would be
likely to step in and lose vast amounts of money in the commodities market
just to make sure that poor American consumers continue to pay twice the world
market rate for sugar. Instead of that, the price of sugar will drop in half.
The price of peanut butter will drop by 2/3rds. It will once more be legal for
a California grocer to buy ice cream from Canada and milk from Wisconsin.
Finally, according to "Friedman's Law" (named after the libertarian
nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman) any services which we do
still require will cost about half as much to provide in a free market as they
did under government. In short, we would indeed be a lot better off if we did
not pay taxes. There would be more abundance; we would be better able to
provide for those in need, and those in need would be better able to provide
for themselves.
6. The World's Smallest Political Quiz
Mike Huben writes:
The World's Smallest Political Quiz. [Nolan Test]
This libertarian quiz asks a set of leading questions to tempt
you to proclaim yourself a libertarian. The big trick is that if
you answer yes to each question, you are a macho SELF
GOVERNOR: there is an unspoken sneer to those who would
answer anything else. It is an ideological litmus test.
The most obvious criticism of this quiz is that it tries to graph
the range of politics onto only 2 axes, as if they were the only
two that mattered, rather than the two libertarians want the
most change in. For example, if socialists were to create such a
test, they would use a different set of axes.
The second obvious criticism is typical of polls taken to show
false levels of support: the questions are worded to elicit the
desired response. This is called framing bias. For example, on a
socialist test, you might see a question such as "Do you believe
people should help each other?" Libertarians would answer
"yes" to this question; the problem is the "but"s that are
filtered out by the question format.
Many libertarians use this as an "outreach" (read: evangelism)
tool. By making it easy to get high scores on both axes, subjects
can be told that they are already a libertarian and just didn't
know it. This is the same sort of suckering that cold readers
and other frauds use.
The quiz in question attempts to place people on the Nolan Chart, a two-
dimensional political spectrum invented by political scientist David Nolan in
1972. The accusations of deliberate framing bias are false with respect to the
most common Advocates For Self Government version of the quiz. The Advocates'
version tries very hard to make the distinctions meaningful and get a good
spread of results, because if the quiz were biased in any consistent direction
it would lose most of its predictive power and people could shrug it off as MH
seems to want to do. Toward that end, the wordings and topics were carefully
selected so that nobody would score at the very top who was not absolutely a
libertarian, and also selected so that the right and left are pretty
consistent with the opinions of people in those categories . To accomplish
this there are even a few "weed-out" questions in both categories that almost
nobody answers yes to.
Tests which are designed to show false levels of support (framing bias)
generally exclude the middle, which forces people to make yes/no
statements about fuzzy subjects. But the World's Smallest Political Quiz does
not do this; instead it includes a "maybe/unsure" category and explicitly asks
respondents to pick that answer if they have any problems with the nature of
the question. If you answer maybe/unsure on all the questions you end up with
a score right in the middle which does not make you a libertarian. So the
"but"s are NOT filtered out by the question format after all; in fact they are
an important part of the scoring.
In any case, a more accurate response would note that there are a variety of
Nolan tests out there and that anyone who gives such a test to real people
(non-computer people, that is) will find a wide range of responses. NONE of
the questions are obviously YES to all people, and most of them are obviously
NO to most politicians. Take the test on behalf of Clinton or Bush or Reagan
or any other public political figure answering as you think he or she might
based on their actions and positions, and I can almost guarantee you will get
an answer below the middle line.
As for the choices of axes, one would be hard-pressed to find a better
choice for a 2-D graph that includes within it both the traditional right-left
axis and a new separate set of polar opposites (up/down) for the "reformers"
and the "hard liners" in the Chech Republic. The reason Gallop and
Times/Mirror are using this model is that it works. It says something useful
about the distinctions between various political groups and is much better
than the simple one-dimensional "left-right spectrum" that it replaces.
Incidentally, the on-line World's Smallest Political Quiz at
"http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html" is now one of the most popular sites
on the Web, and well worth the trip if you haven't been there yet.
7. The "How Many Men" Argument
The following is a thought-experiment that is relevant to both libertarian and
anti-libertarian morality. I will refer back to it later in this document.
======
Suppose that one man takes your car from you at gunpoint. Is this right or
wrong? Most people would say that the man who does this is a thief who is
violating your property rights.
Okay, now let's suppose that it's a gang of FIVE men that forcibly takes your
car from you. Still wrong? Still stealing? Yup.
Now suppose that it's ten men that stop you at gunpoint, and before anything
else they take a vote. You vote *against* them taking your car, but the ten of
them vote for it and you are outvoted, ten to one. They take the car. Still
stealing?
Let's add specialization of labor. Suppose it's twenty men and one acts as
negotiator for the group, one takes the vote, one oversees the vote, two hold
the guns, one drives. Does that make it okay? Is it still stealing?
Suppose it's one hundred men and after forcibly taking your car they give you
back a bicycle. That is, they do something nice for you. Is it still stealing?
Suppose the gang is two hundred strong and they not only give you back a
bicycle but they buy a bicycle for a poor person as well. Is it still wrong?
Is it still stealing?
How about if the gang has a thousand people? ten thousand? A million?
How big does this gang have to be before it becomes okay for them to vote to
forcibly take your property away without your consent? When, exactly, does the
immorality of theft become the alleged morality of taxation?
======
This argument is simple, effective, and I knew it off the top of my head. For
all those reasons, Huben would like to call it "evangelical". But what's
actually *wrong* with it? Note that "you don't have to stay here and be taxed,
you could always move to another country" is not an acceptable retort, because
I don't have to stay in the neighborhood where a single thug steals my car
either. The fact that I can avoid some petty crime by moving to a different
neighborhood does not excuse that crime or the criminals. If living in East
Palo Alto doesn't mean I consent to a "social contract" which includes having
my car broken into, then living in the US doesn't mean I consent to a "social
contract" which includes income taxes.
8. Quotations Popular With Libertarians
In this section Mike Huben lists a bunch of what he calls "bumper sticker
phrases" used by libertarians. He criticizes these for being short and simple,
and apparently feels compelled to rebut each one. But one thing he seems
oblivious to is that many of the phrases he has chosen are primarily used as
signatures. A signature phrase has the exact same purpose as a bumper sticker
does: it says something about the sort of views held by the poster without
taking up too much bandwidth.
Signature quotes by their very nature must be short and simple. The logical
response to a signature you dislike is to come up with a retort that is just
as pithy to use as your own signature line. If you are clever enough, other
people will adopt your quote as their own.
Huben writes:
Bumper sticker analogies are as poor a method of understanding
libertarianism (let alone anything else) as science fiction. Too bad
so many libertarians make such heavy use of those methods.
However, Libertarians make most of their serious arguments in actual studies,
books, magazines, and essays. Anyone who is interested in libertarian topics
should try reading a few of those in addition to quotes like these:
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
* "A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master
once in a term of years."
To this Huben responds:
When you contract for government services, you are a customer, not a
slave. If you think you cannot change with whom you contract, you have
enslaved your self.
The government sets the terms of the contract. The government can arrest me or
shoot me for failing to hold up my end; I cannot even sue the government for
failing to hold up its end of the bargain without the government's permission.
The government can force me to work; I cannot force the government to work.
The government even sets the terms on which I may leave the country. This
makes me a customer?
Thomas Jefferson
* "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits
of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the
bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." (First Inaugural
Address)
Huben writes:
Perhaps as an unreachable goal.
So what? If you agree with that goal, you are a libertarian. Even if you think
it's unreachable (and many do). The whole point of the libertarian movement is
to try to get as close as we possibly can to that goal. Yes, it might be
unattainable; we know that. But it's still a good goal. There are a great many
goals that are probably unattainable that people still value and work towards.
For instance, trying to entirely prevent all rapes and murders and burglaries
in your state this year is an unreachable goal. Should we therefore throw up
our hands and not even try to improve matters?
Certainly Jefferson practiced differently than this[...]
Trust me, libertarians are aware of this. By modern standards Jefferson was
not perfectly libertarian in his personal life. And you can even find a few
quotes that reinforce that. But this particular quote stands on its own merits
and needs no further defense from me.
But if you want get into a founder quoting contest[...]
I don't. So instead I'll tell you what: you feel free to use your favorite
founder quotes in your signatures, and we'll use ours in ours. One reason
libertarians like to quote Jefferson is to emphasize that they aren't quoting
Hamilton...
Libertarians might endorse their interpretation of the initial quote
without the backing of Jefferson:
No, they endorse the initial quote *with* the backing of Jefferson. Deal with
it. :-)
Alexander Fraser Tyler
* "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the
Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the
candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result
that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by
dictatorship." From: "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic".
[...]However, we could make a pretty good case that voters in the US
have always known that they could vote themselves benefits from the
Public Treasury.
Indeed, it's been done pretty often. Yet we've lasted 200+ years.
If Huben were to look up the source quote, he would find that the very
next sentence Tyler writes is: "The average age of the world's greatest
civilizations has been two hundred years." So the fact that *our*
civilization has so far lasted for just about two hundred years is not
exactly conclusive proof that Tyler is wrong.
Ayn Rand
* "I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters."
Huben writes:
Did Ayn Rand pay her taxes out of friendship then? That's a new one on
me.
No, she paid them out of force rather than out of choice. I choose to give
money to the Nature Conservancy, but I am forced to give money to the state.
See the difference?
James A. Donald
* "We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the
kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the
arbitrary power of the omnipotent state."
I'm not qualified to defend "true law" or "natural rights". I'm not sure I
understand those concepts and even less sure I agree with them. But I will
note that Huben writes:
People who compare us to animals usually know little about animals and
less about people.
There's one little problem: that quote doesn't compare people to animals.
Oops, try again!
Mark Wilson
* "It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money."
Huben writes:
Almost all charitable organizations use other people's money.
But they usually ask before taking it out of your paycheck.
What they overlook is that, in many philosophical and religious systems
(including Judaism and Islam), charity isn't a virtue of the giver:
charity is the relief of the receiver.
This quote is clearly using charity in the Christian sense of the word, so
even if other religions have different conceptions of charity that doesn't
invalidate the quote. I'm Jewish but that doesn't mean I haven't heard of
"faith, hope and charity."
In any case it does not follow from a moral obligation to take care of the
needy that government is the appropriate instrument with which to fulfill that
obligation.
(BTW, my own objections to coerced charity are practical, not religious.)
Mark Wilson
* "Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a
government."
Mike Huben writes:
Corporate feudalism isn't any prettier merely because the corporations
prattle about free markets. Strawmen are SO easy to create. The
presumption that the US government is the equivalent of mob rule is
ludicrous.
The "mob rule" quote is actually a sort of shorthand for the "How many men?"
moral argument, which I have listed above. If he wants to rebut something, he
should rebut the actual argument rather than some signature-line version of
it.
Anon
* "Utopia is not an option."
it applies to EVERY political theory.
That's the whole point. 'nuff said.
Mark Wilson
* "Democracy is like three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for
lunch."
We are not a simple democracy: we are a representative democratic
republic:
Yes, this quote is indeed primarily an argument against simple democracy.
If you don't advocate simple democracy, feel free to ignore this quote!
(see how easy that is?) But don't underestimate the number of people on
the net who firmly believe in simple democracy. It is mostly to them
rather than to you that that quote is likely directed.
there are not direct elections of laws and there is a constitution that
limits what laws can be enacted.
"Used to limit, sort of" would be more accurate. Now that the Commerce Clause
and others have been stretched as far as they have it is not at all clear what
limits still remain. For instance, we passed a constitutional amendment to ban
alcohol once because it was thought at that time that the federal government
didn't have the power to ban a recreational drug like that. Later on the
government became capable of banning any drug it felt like banning complete
with federal penalties for noncompliance and even became capable of
extraditing foreign drug suppliers to stand trial under US law.
9. _No Treason_.
Mike Huben writes:
Have you read "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority"?
No Treason" is a lengthy rant that doesn't take longer than the first
paragraph to begin its egregious errors. For example, in the first
paragraph: "It [The Constitution] purports, at most, to be only a
contract between persons living eighty years ago." Thus he focuses his
attention on the Preamble, and evidently ignores Article VII, which says
EXACTLY who contracted for the Constitution
What the constitution says regarding its own ratification procedure is
essentially irrelevant to the argument that Spooner is making. Spooner's
comments speak to the question of who this contract should be considered
binding upon. Article VII is not overlooked, it is simply irrelevant to
this question.
To illustrate: Suppose I wrote a document which I called the "NNL
Constitution" that included the line, "Glen Raphael hereby has the legal
right to seize Mike Huben's television and automobile."
In Article VII of this document I would write this: "The ratification of the
conventions of three Fiefdoms shall be sufficient for the establishment of
this Constitution between the Fiefdoms so ratifying the same. Done in
Convention, by the unanimous consent of the Fiefdoms present, the nineteenth
day of January, in the year one thousand nine hundred and ninety-six. In
Witness whereof, we have hereunto subscribed our names."
[signatories FOR FIEFDOMS omitted.]
"I'd sign this as a representative of my fiefdom. I'd get Tim Starr and
Caliban to sign for the other two. Starr would be operating as the
representative of a fiefdom defined to include you and your property, having
been duly chosen for that role in a popular vote that didn't happen to include
you. Now, is the NNL a valid document with respect to YOU? The answer is
clearly no. No matter what the document says, the people who signed that
document didn't have your power of attorney so they have no ability to
contract on your behalf. They can make binding contracts with each other but
not with you, unless you consent to it.
He's wrong on this simple matter of fact: the constitution says who
contracted with whom.
And our NNL constitution says who contracted with whom. Does that mean I get
to take your stuff? If not, then maybe Spooner is worth a second look. So read
Spooner yourself, he's on the Web at:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/NoTreason/NoTreason.html
10. Government versus the Mafia
Huben writes:
Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the
Mafia.
This is a prize piece of libertarian rhetoric, because it slides in the
accusation that taxation is extortion. This analogy initially seems
strong, because both are territorial. However, libertarians consider
contractual rental of land by owners (which is also fundamentally
territorial) ethical, and consider coercion of squatters by those owners
ethical. The key difference is who owns what. The Mafia doesn't own
anything to contract about. The landowner owns the land (in a limited
sense.) And the US government owns rights to govern its territory.
The mafia owns the right to govern its territory in the exact same sense as
the Government does. Which is that it stands willing and able to defend that
right by use of force.
Thus, the social contract can be required by the territorial property
holder: the USA.
Then the Mafia's social contract can be required by the territorial property
holder: the Mafia. same deal. You have yet to establish a difference that
makes a difference. (See also the "If one man does it" argument.)
11. Property By Deed
Huben writes:
Of course it's my property. I paid money and hold the deed.
What do you hold the deed to? Property as recognized by a government.
Note that we say a claim to property is recognized by government rather than
granted by it. There is a reason for that, which is that government is not the
source of the property right. All the government can do is "recognize" it,
taking notice of the fact that a valid claim exists. This claim predates the
government's involvement in the matter. In the old west somebody would stake a
claim to grazing land by publishing that claim in the local newspaper. Or by
marking it, hence the term to "stake" a claim. Government's role in keeping
track of deeds is simply a bookkeeping function.
Now, it may be true as a practical matter that these days you need the
government to recognize your property right before you can safely exercise
that right to its full extent. But you also need Bob, your next door neighbor,
to recognize your property right in order to exercise it -- and this fact does
not grant Bob the right to place arbitrary restrictions on your land!
For example, a clear statement of such an "easement" is in the Fourth
Amendment, which essentially says that the government can enter your
property with a valid search warrant and not be trespassing.
The Fourth Amendment says that the government will not violate your property
right without such a warrant. This is a restriction on the government's
ability to search legally, not a restriction on your right of ownership.
You still have that right to be secure, even when the government violates it.
For reference, the fourth amendment says:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
12. Taxation as Theft
Huben writes:
5.Taxation is theft.
Two simple rebuttals to this take widely different approaches.
The first is that property is theft.
If you don't grant the legitimacy of property then you have no business
criticizing people for theft of it. Specifically, you can't object if I come
and take away your television set, because you had no right to claim ownership
of it in the first place. As for taxation, "taxation is theft" is a claim
that the two acts are morally equivalent, because the "wrongness" of a
taking does not depend on its legal status. [See also the "if one man does
it" argument.]
The second is that taxation is part of a social contract.
This alleged "social contract" is not valid. (See Huben's sections 7-13 plus
the mafia argument and _No Treason_) The chief validity that the social
contract does have is the fact that the government will force you to adhere to
it if necessary. But this is no different than the "social contract" you
have with the Mafia when you are born in or move into a neighborhood which it
controls.
13. Opposing initiation of force
Huben writes:
Libertarians oppose the initiation of force.
How noble. And I'm sure that in a real libertarian society, everybody
would hold to this morality as much as Christians turn the other cheek.
[ :-( For the sarcasm-impaired.]
Let's try this in a parallel context and see how it sounds:
"Jews oppose pogroms.
How noble. And I'm sure in a real Jewish society, everybody would hold to
this. <smirk, smirk, what idiots these guys must be for having an unattainable
goal>."
What was he thinking? Sure, some people won't live up to the goal, but that
fact doesn't make it a bad goal nor does it reflect poorly on the people who
hold it.
"Initiation of force" is another libertarian newspeak term that does not
mean what the uninitiated might think. Libertarians except defense of
property and prosecution of fraud, and call them retaliatory force.
Or rather, they call attacks upon property initiatory, which makes defense
against them retaliatory. This is hardly a secret; it is what "initiation"
*means*. If there were no varieties of force other than initiatory force then
libertarians would simply be opposed to "force" and therefore
indistiguishable from pacifists.
Like most other non-pacifistic belief systems, libertarians want to
initiate force
A quick correction here, there actually are some libertarians who are
pacifistic. The chief reason that the Minerva project failed was that the
libertarians who were involved did not want to fight for their territory. Most
libertarians are not pacifist, but the fact that some are means that
libertarianism isn't a specifically non-pacifistic belief system. One should
point out that the emphasis is on the fact that "initiation of force is
wrong", not "retaliatory force is right". Retaliatory force *may* be right,
but it depends on the circumstances and there are disagreements as to when it
is appropriate and what degree of force is allowed. Confusion over this
particular point generates a great many illogical anti-libertarian arguments
that sound like: "Libertarianism says that if you accidentally step on my
lawn, I get to kill you in cold blood with my bazooka and eat your entrails,
posting your head on a pole to warn the next guy." (For example, Rich
Puchalsky's tongue-in-cheek "FAQ for Prospective Libertarians" does this.)
Let's avoid such statements as much as possible, as they tend to generate more
heat than light.
for what they identify as their interests and call it righteous
retaliation, and use the big lie technique to define everything else as
evil "initiation of force".
"And use the big lie technique." Wow, speaking of evangelistic rhetoric, that
one was even better than slipping in "newspeak" earlier!
They support the initial force that has already taken place in the
formation of the system of property, and wish to continue to use force
to perpetuate it and make it more rigid.
Here Huben is claiming that the institution of private property is
illegitimate and that we should not "use force to perpetuate" that system.
Which must mean that we should stop prosecuting thieves and trespassers and
bank robbers. And he claims that *Libertarians* have an agenda which is
utopian and which the general population would not approve of if they knew?
Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle!
14. The Pledge
Huben writes:
The National Libertarian Party membership form has "the pledge" on it:
"I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of
achieving political or social goals." It's quite amusing to hear how
much libertarians disagree over what it means: whether it is or isn't
ok to overthrow the US because it has "initiated force" and they would
be "retaliating".
What it originally meant is uncontested. The LP was formed at a time when the
FBI was generally regarded as big on infiltrating and breaking up
organizations which were perceived as a danger to society. Including "the
pledge" was seen as a prudent means of sending a message that the LP was
not a bunch of bomb-throwers. It was a way of distinguishing the LP from
socialists and anarchists.
Of course, now that we've HAD the pledge for 24 years, it naturally means
different things to different people. Some people have grown rather fond of
it, others think it's safe to get rid of it now that we're an established
party that can get on the ballot in all 50 states and qualify for (but not
accept) matching federal funding for our candidates. The ones who are fond of
it are fond of it for different reasons, and some of them don't know where it
came from. So they disagree.
Beyond this perceived class interest, libertarian dislike of "initiation
of force" isn't much different than anyone else's. It may be
humanitarian, defensive, etc.
The fact that other groups share a particular goal doesn't reflect negatively
on that goal or the people who hold it. (see also: "Libertarians defend
Freedom".)
15. Size of Libertarian Party
Huben writes:
The Libertarian Party: America's third largest political party.
Wow, third! That sounds impressive until you realize that the
Libertarian Party is about 0.1% of the size of the other two. Funny how
they don't mention that in their slogan.
They wanted to include it in the slogan, but then they realized it would be
tough to keep current since the LP keeps growing and the other partes keep
shrinking. After considering the example of McDonald's ("Billions and Billions
Served") they decided it would be simpler to leave it out of the slogan. :-) Of
course, sooner or later we might outgrow the "third largest" designation too,
but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Almost as comical is the Libertarian Party's '94 election results. They
now have even fewer elected dogcatchers and other important officials.
Most notable, their loss of 2 out of 4 state reps in New Hampshire.
We lost one of those two state reps because he died, and we actually gained
in overall numbers especially at the lower levels. More importantly, our
*ideas* won that election, and we've been getting a tremendous amount of
positive publicity ever since. The Cato Institute (a libertarian think-tank)
and the LP are both getting noticed now. A lot. Since many LP members think
the purpose of the LP is to send a message rather than to win elections,
that's no small victory. Some other victories:
(1) In this next election the LP will be the first third party to be on the
ballot in all 50 states two years running.
(2) One of our candidates (Harry Browne) qualified for matching funding. (he
will be refusing it)
(3) half of the Republican presidential candidates have chosen to steal some
of our "unthinkable" ideas, like a flat tax and term limits. Steve Forbes is
campaigning almost exclusively on these ideas.
16. Successful Libertarian Experiments
Mike Huben writes:
24.Why shouldn't we adopt libertarian government now?
Because there are no working examples of libertarian cities, states, or
nations.
Innumerable other ideologies have put their money where their mouths are, if
not their lives. Examples include most nations that have had Marxist
revolutions, Israel, many of the American colonies, a huge number of religious
and utopian communities, etc.
[...]
Let libertarians point to successful libertarian programs to seek our
endorsement. For example, narcotic decriminalization in Holland has been a
success. So has legalized prostitution in Nevada and Germany (and probably
other places.) Privatization of some municipal services has been successful in
some communities. But these are extremely small scale compared to the total
libertarian agenda, and do not rule out emergent problems and instabilities of
a full scale libertarian system.
Mike Huben starts to claim that there are no successful libertarian programs,
and then lists several. What's wrong with this picture?
MH proposes that we should "Let libertarians point to successful libertarian
programs to seek our endorsement," but that is exactly what they do,
constantly. Every libertarian reform has some precedent somewhere. "the total
libertarian agenda" is the sum of a lot of parts, just as the total republican
agenda, the total democratic agenda and the total communist agenda are. Does
MH hold libertarians to a higher standard than other groups?
"these do not rule out emergent problems and instabilities" could apply to any
conceivable program or collection of programs that might be proposed by any
group whatsoever. Once MH demonstrates his own coherent political worldview,
is it going to survive this critique?
Mike Huben goes on to say:
A working libertarian experiment could be easily county sized. A tiny
religious sect was able to buy control of Antelope, Oregon and relocate
there a few years ago: the vastly more numerous libertarians could do
much more. Privatize the roads, schools, libraries, police. Abolish
property taxes, zoning, anything not required by the state. Then show
the benefits. Yes, the state will prevent you from achieving some
libertarian goals: do what you can to show how you can improve things.
You shouldn't have to go 100% libertarian to show marked benefits
according to most libertarian claims.
What makes him think there aren't oodles of working libertarian experiments
going on right now? In fact, we have libertarian mayors, libertarian city
councils, and cities that pass libertarian initiatives. There's a town in Utah
with a predominantly libertarian city council, elected partly because oodles
of libertarians chose to relocate there.
Libertarian experiments have been tried, are being tried, and are working.
We know from past and present libertarianish experiments that:
--
Marijuana legalization reduces use, abuse, and crime (Holland)
Decriminalization of heroin possession reduces crime and improves the public
health (England)
Legal sales of syringes reduces the spread of AIDS without increasing drug use
(dozens of places including England.)
Allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons reduces all categories of
violent crime. (Florida, Vermont, soon to be Texas)
Allowing multiple competing electric networks drives down utility prices and
increases consumer satisfaction without noticable additional environmental
impact (Lubbock, Texas)
Allowing multiple competing cable companies can drastically reduce consumer
costs, increase channel availability and increase consumer satisfaction. (in
dozens of cities; see the 1989 survey in _Consumer's Digest_ magazine)
Big cities can exist and thrive without any zoning laws at all, using free-
market mechanisms to anticipate and resolve disputes. In such a situation,
housing costs are reduced, homelessness is reduced, self-employment is
encouraged and lower-income/minority members are the chief advocates for
maintaining the lack of zoning. (Houston, Texas)
Private libraries are cheap and can provide high-quality service even to
people who can't afford to pay for it. (in dozens of cities)
Fire service can be provided through voluntary means, either with a nonprofit
volunteer department or a for-profit subscription service (hundreds of cities)
Security services can be provided either via contract or volunteer patrols
(hundreds of cities)
Not having a minimum wage or huge package of mandatory benefits and
restrictions serving as barriers to employment frequently coincides with low-
to-nonexistent unemployment (places like Singapore)
Having extremely high barriers to employment frequently coincides with a very
high unemployment rate (most of europe)
Private services can deliver stuff faster and cheaper to more places with
higher reliability than public services can (UPS, New Zealand, Spooner's
American Letter Company...)
Legalized prostitution tends to reduce crime and improve the public health
(Nevada)
Abolishing rent control reduces homelessness and (after a few years) housing
prices; instituting rent control destroys housing stock and increases
homelessness (everywhere it has ever been tried)
Government ownership/management of land can destroy it in ways which the free
market could never afford to do because it is so spectacularly unprofitable.
("Chaining" of the Tongass National Forests by the USFS and BLM to create
grazelands at ridiculous expense. IMF and World Bank subsidies that support
Brazillian rainforest destruction.)
Private management of land can produce win-win solutions that preserve
endangered species while also providing economic benefit (The Nature
Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, those african countries that allow private
ownership of elephants and as a result have elephant OVERpopulation)
--
And so on. In fact, the reason why many pragmatically-oriented people like
myself end up libertarian is that we see SO many examples of libertarian
reform working (or at least failing to fail) that it's hard to imagine it NOT
working. The basic principles follow directly from the study of real-world
examples and from standard economic analysis.
If you _look_ for examples of a specific libertarian reform, you can usually
find them. If you look for counterexamples, cases in which libertarian reform
was tried and demonstrated to fail, it is extremely hard to find them. The
books carried by Laissez-Faire Books are filled with thousands of examples of
libertarian reforms that worked. There are so many examples that you need
entire books just to deal with tiny subcategories of libertarian reform like
local service privatization or free banking or medical reform. Libertarians
and Libertarian organizations like the Pacific Research Institute and the Cato
Institute publish several hundred books a year in the US, increasingly through
major publishers. Some of these books are almost nothing BUT a vast array of
positive or negative examples.
So if Mike Huben thinks that there haven't been any libertarian experiments
and that libertarians can't point to them, all that I can conclude is that he
hasn't looked.
17. Conclusion
Libertarians can point to hundreds of examples of successful libertarian
reforms. But Mike Huben prefers to restrict himself to meta-discussions which
are about arguments on the net instead of discussions about the real world.
His FAQ contains a list of books for and against Libertarianism, but he admits
that he hasn't really read most of them on either side, because books don't
interest him. Instead, what he seems to have done is collect a bunch of
strawmen and knock them down. Ironically, a document which claims to be
devoted to the demolition of illogical arguments is actually founded upon
several of them.
And so it fails. Even the occasional error that he does find just indicates
something that most of us knew all along, which is that Usenet tends to be
full of college students who are just starting to encounter and understand
-- and occasionally misinterpret or poorly defend -- a bunch of new ideas.
But if you want to discredit Libertarianism you do not need to confront the
worst advocates of it, you need to confront the best advocates. You need to
look at the *underlying* ideas. Start with the economists F.A. Hayek, Milton
Friedman, and David Friedman. Read the books that others refer to. Or read
good essays by libertarian writers; I reference several at this site. After
you've done that, then we can talk. Good luck.