My Take on Libertarian Policies
I threatened to do it, so here it goes. Because there are such a wide range of beliefs among people who self-identify as libertarians, I’m going with the official platform as listed on the Libertarian Party website. If you want to see what they have to say on each subject, please visit their site, I’m just going to list the heading and respond to it.
1.0 Personal Liberty
Yes, in very general terms, I agree people ought to be generally left alone to follow their own path, so long as they accept responsibility for their actions. That said though, there are things which individuals can do that affect the overall health of society itself and those things ought to be limited or controlled because of the potential for damage. That’s something that most libertarians, at least the ones I’ve talked to, disagree with.
1.1 Expression and Communication
Sure, again in general terms, what they say is fine, although I find myself questioning “regulation”. Many media companies will, in fact, censor or control what the end-user can see or access for ideological reasons and I’m firmly convinced we need government intervention to stop them from doing so. This is especially important in areas where one or two companies have been given exclusive monopoly rights to control a particular communication format. You wouldn’t like it of your phone company, the only company that you can use in the area, decided to put “profanity filters” on your phone which would disconnect your call if you said anything they found objectionable, would you? It isn’t like you can just find another company. We need government intervention in cases like that.
1.2 Personal Privacy
I agree in broad strokes, but not in the details. They want to make drug use legal, I absolutely do not, although for something like marijuana, I’ve got no particular objection. I am absolutely against drug legalization. I don’t agree with how we presently prosecute drug crimes, those people do not, in most cases, belong in jail simply for personally possessing and/or using drugs, but that doesn’t mean we ought to ignore them either. Like I said before, I’m all for freedom so long as it doesn’t harm others or society as a whole and I think drug use, especially rampant, widespread drug use, has a very damaging effect on society. I am all in favor of declaring drug dealing a capital crime. Every dealer, from the lowliest street pusher to the highest level smuggler and kingpin, ought to be put to death on their first offense, no exceptions. We exercise zero tolerance and sell everything, and I mean everything that said individual owns at fair market prices, not for pennies on the dollar and confiscate all of their drugs for use in treatment programs. Drug users are not imprisoned, they are required to go through said treatment programs and associated counseling to get off of drugs. If done right, this program should pay for itself almost entirely. The social costs for permitting drug abuse is just too high, from the potential lost revenue of users, gang and other violence, etc. We have to actually have a war on drugs, what we have at the moment is a media campaign on drugs. It’s just not sufficient.
1.3 Personal Relationships
This is becoming a trend. I agree with most of the wording, but the reality is, their wording doesn’t tell the whole story. They say anyone ought to be able to have any relationship they want and I entirely agree with that. What they don’t say though is that libertarians want to end *ALL* marriage, at least government-recognized marriage. Unfortunately, that just doesn’t work. We need some authoritative source to control such things as inheritance rights, parental rights and children’s rights. Without government intervention, who is to say who gets what in a separation? Who is to stop deadbeat moms or dads from walking away from their children? These are serious questions that need answers and the libertarians don’t seem to have any. I will agree entirely that the government has no place in saying who can get married and who cannot, but the idea that government has no business whatsoever in the marriage business is absurd.
1.4 Abortion
And I will agree entirely. Abortion is a matter for the woman and her doctor, no one else.
1.5 Crime and Justice
Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work. Sure, it sounds good to say you’re in favor of restitution to the victim, but to say that the criminal doesn’t deserve to be punished beyond restitution is absurd. That’s essentially what they’re saying with “We oppose reduction of constitutional safeguards of the rights of the criminally accused.” If you do not reduce the constitutional rights of the accused, you can never put them in prison. So great, we get rid of prisons, what do we do with the violent offenders, the people who are a danger to themselves and others? We can’t let them go, we can’t imprison them and we can’t kill them, that might infringe on their rights to live and pursue happiness. Sorry, completely wrong.
1.6 Self-Defense
No thanks again. I’m all in favor of gun rights and the rights of the individual to keep and bear a reasonable category of firearms, but having no regulation and no control whatsoever is absurd. This kind of thinking is what leads extremist gun nuts to think they ought to be able to own howitzers, RPGs and in extreme cases, nukes. No rational society could ever allow that. Taking this to the extreme, what happens when you’ve got a crazy person with a nuke and their finger on the trigger going “Ha ha ha! You can’t touch me!” Theoretically, you can’t! You cannot refuse to concede to their demands either, they pose such an extreme risk to the local people that no one could dare attack or ignore them. So what do you do? The reason that we need regulation is because there are so many unstable people out there already with their hands on firearms. You need to have some modicum of control for the good of society. We wouldn’t allow just anyone to jump in a truck carrying nuclear waste and allow them to drive around, why should we do the same for firearms?
2.0 Economic Liberty
In theory, this sounds good but we’re in the middle of an economic recession caused by the failure of the unregulated free market. I’m a big proponent of free market economics, but the free market only works when everyone is on a level playing field and everyone is playing by the same rules. Take away that regulation and you get the mess we’re in right now. One of the basics of the free market is that everyone’s business is an ongoing concern, people can’t screw over their customers today because they won’t have any customers tomorrow. That’s fine until you have scumbags who are only out for one, massive, quick score and couldn’t care about being in business tomorrow, they plan to be on a beach in the Carribean with their billions tomorrow. Unfortunately, Clinton deregulated the financial industry in the 90s and Bush ignored all the warnings that his advisers gave him about the upcoming shitstorm. Pretending nothing was wrong made their economic policies seem healthy, but in the end, the worldwide economy took one of the worst hits in history. No regulation is a bad idea.
2.1 Property and Contract
Yes and no. The problem is, as with any case of supply and demand, when you’ve got a lock on the supply, then you can demand anything and people have no choice but to pay it. That’s why there is rent control in some cities, if there wasn’t, what reason would rental property owners have for not jacking up their prices as high as they can? You’d have millions more poor people living on the street if property owners could toss anyone not paying high prices out on their collective asses. Beyond that, I generally agree that the market should determine the pricing. If you can convince someone to buy your house for a billion dollars, more power to you.
2.2 Environment
This is a hard one. I don’t buy for one second that private industry will, for one second, give a damn about the environment if they don’t have to. We’ve already got companies outsourcing labor to other countries where their environmental laws are much more lax, just so they don’t have to deal with the additional expense and headache of complying with US law. That’s where we get disasters like Union Carbide in India that killed more than 25,000 people. Given half a chance, many and perhaps most companies would ignore the environment if it gave them a higher profit. It’s not like these companies are going to advertise what they’re doing to the environment and most consumers probably won’t care so long as it doesn’t directly affect their lives. This is another area where we need a single standard across the board, guaranteed and ensured by the government, that everyone is playing ball on the same court.
2.3 Energy and Resources
Mostly, the government doesn’t get involved in the actual pricing of energy, especially gas prices, and I agree that they shouldn’t. However, I still want them making sure there isn’t price fixing or other profit schemes in any particular energy industry. Beyond that, I’ve got no problem with this.
2.4 Government Finance and Spending
Massive, major problems here. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a conservative, I’m in favor of a small government. I’m just not in favor of functionally no government which is exactly what the libertarians want. There are tons of wasteful and unnecessary government programs that desperately need to be cut and in fact, I think we could cut the federal government by 50% and be fine. However, we’ll still need a means of funding the government that we still have and the only means we have that works so far is income tax. Precisely how the libertarians plan to fund all federal programs and services required under the U.S. Constitution is not clear if they abolish income tax and the IRS. Maybe magical fairies will bring them pots of gold, who knows. There’s a big difference between a small government and a ridiculously minimalist one that libertarians want. No thanks.
2.5 Money and Financial Markets
Sure, because that worked so well with the mortgage market. As I said in 2.0 above, there must be regulation to ensure that everyone is playing on a level playing field. Once that’s done and so long as everyone plays by the rules, the free market can take over. The free market, without regulation, just doesn’t work well.
2.6 Monopolies and Corporations
Yes and no. Yes, I think private corporations can take over a lot of the unnecessary functions of government and perhaps should, but there is a significant difference that the libertarians are ignoring. The government doesn’t seek to make a profit. Private enterprise does. In fact, it’s requred, it’s the only way they have to stay in business since they don’t receive any form of public support. This leaves a lot of these potential corporations open to abuse, especially as they become monopolies in their marketplace. If you only have one place to go for health care, for instance, you pay whatever price they set or you go without. Oh, but I can hear it now… other companies will just open up and compete with the mega-corporation. Not without regulation they won’t. What’s to stop a mega-corporation from simply buying up any startup and either incorporating them or putting them out of business? Absolutely nothing without some form of regulation.
2.7 Labor Markets
I happen to agree with just about all of this, although I question how far it goes. They want the government to end *ALL* laws that impede on an individual finding employment? How about anti-discrimination laws? After all, requiring that blacks get equal consideration infringes on the rights of whites to find employment, they’d have a better chance if businesses would only consider white candidates. There’s a question about how far this would actually go.
2.8 Education
This is a sticky subject because I agree in theory with what they say. However, I can see problems with it, especially in light of some of the things happening in American education today. If you have no standards, then how does anyone know if the education offered by a particular school is worth anything? What if a school decided to teach that 2+2=5 or that the earth was created last Thursday and we were all created with memories of lives we never lived. Where do you draw the line? Education is ultimately about teaching the facts, not about passing on whatever load of malarkey someone decides to teach. I think schools should be able to compete, but not based on whatever unsupported, nonsensical dogma someone wants to fill the minds of impressionable youngsters with. There needs to be a single, unified standard for education and we’re not even doing it today, certainly the libertarian position is a step in the entirely wrong direction.
2.9 Health Care
Again, they have an overestimation of what the free market can achieve. I’m entirely opposed to the socialized health care model that Obama has proposed, but I’m also opposed to medicine going to the highest bidder as the free market would require. There has to be a middle ground.
2.10 Retirement and Income Security
I happen to agree with this, I think retirement is the responsibility of the individual. The government has nearly bankrupted the Social Security and Medicare systems, within just a few years, all of the money we’ve all been forced to put into the system will be gone and we’ll get nothing when we retire.
3.0 Securing Liberty
It’s certainly not the only responsibility of government, as I’ve shown.
3.1 National Defense
Yes, I can agree with that. We need to stop running around the world telling people what to do. It’s not our job, we were not elected to do it and we have no business in anyone else’s national business unless they specifically ask for our help.
3.2 Internal Security and Individual Rights
Again, I agree, at least in theory. There are probably exceptional cases where I might support a minor bending of some civil liberties for the overall public good, but these would be something extremely limited and only authorized by the people.
3.3 International Affairs
I can buy that too, again with a few possible exceptions in extreme circumstances. We ought to be spending our time and energy at home rather than worrying about what everyone else is doing.
3.4 Free Trade and Migration
Here’s where they go completely wrong. Free trade, at least the way they mean it, has been a disaster for America. It’s caused many companies to move their facilities to foreign countries where the environmental laws are much more lax and the labor is cheap, in order to maximize their profits. As far as I’m concerned, any American company ought to be required to follow American laws no matter what country they are doing business in. That means they follow our laws, both for the environment, for quality and for labor. It should never be a case of moving jobs offshore just because it’s cheaper and easier.
Secondly, I’ve already gone on record being entirely against illegal immigration. I strenuously oppose opening our borders to anyone who feels like wandering in. Each nation has a right to decide on it’s own who it wants to allow past it’s borders. Many other nations have harsh penalties for violating their immigration laws. We need to do the same and enforce them strongly.
3.5 Rights and Discrimination
This makes no sense. The government should not be biased on matters of color or creed or any of the other traditional metrics, but parents ought to be able to pass on their own racist beliefs to their children and, presumably, those children ought to be able to put those beliefs into practice because the government has no business telling anyone what to do? Are they serious? No one ought to be able to act in a manner that would limit people based on their color or creed, etc. We can’t stop them from feeling that way, we can certainly, and ought to, stop them from acting that way.
3.6 Representative Government
So basically, they want to open up all government positions to being bought. The reason we do restrict individual and corporate contributions is to avoid, as best we can, undue financial influence on the candidates. Yes, we do a very bad job of it, but at least we’re trying. Personally, I want to see an end to all contributions to an individual candidate. If an individual or a corporation wants to support the political process, they can donate to a central fund. On a certain date, all of those funds are disbursed to all candidates that are legally registered in a particular race. Everyone has the same amount of money to work with, that stops people from buying elections. Our electoral system is entirely broken but this isn’t the way to fix it.
3.7 Self-Determination
Sure, we have a system in place right now that allows the people to change the government and you know something? The people aren’t doing it. Imagine that. So either people are too stupid, too lazy, or are just not dissatisfied enough with the current government to do anything to fix it. In any case, they’re all exercising their right to self-determination and you libertarians aren’t getting your way. Boo hoo.
I think everyone can see that I’m not libertarian at all in my political thinking. Unfortunately, what we have here is a relatively reasonable list of beliefs, you will find a lot of self-professed libertarians who are little more than anarchists, who are fanatical about one issue, like the drug legalization issue, or who are just plain crazy. I’d be thankful if every libertarian was as thoughtful as some of these points but most I run into simply are not.
Maybe that’s why I’d never consider joining the Libertarian Party. Even when they’re relatively sane, they’re still out of their minds.
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