What's Up With the LP (Libertarian Party)?

[Gao_Bohan]

What you just wrote there says 0, zilch, nada about economics.

Sure I did. I said that the halls of the US Congress were once filled with Southern Senators admonishing the “unrealistic” views of the Northern Abolitionists because economic reality demanded slavery be kept legal. The point is that even if they were right (i.e., if it was cheaper to buy and raise slaves than pay wage workers), slavery would still be morally unacceptable. Your arguments against UHC essentially boil down to “it’s expensive”. But the alternative is 48 million Americans who can’t afford health insurance. I would argue that despite the high cost of UHC, society has a moral obligation to pay for it. And yet again and again all such initiatives are killed in Congressional committee because some Senators think UHC is not economically feasible. And yet those same Senators don’t flinch at pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq or garnering huge national debts…

It’s funny how the first part of your post suggests that you have at least some mild understanding of basic economics (which, at this point, is all I have), but it deteriorates to this so quickly (eating babies?)

For Christ’s sake, I was being satirical, not constructing an economical model.

First off, minimum wage IS NOT so low as to be useless.

When I lived in Texas the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour, and that’s what I got paid at one of my jobs. At the time I was in high school, living at home, driving a car I didn’t pay for, etc., and so it didn’t matter. But I can’t fathom living independently on $5.15 an hour, not to mention supporting a family. The minimum wage is intended to force employers to pay a salary even the lowest page worker can live on. I don’t think that $5.15 an hour meets this goal. Ergo, it is so low as to be useless.

Slavery is forced labor, where one person owns the other.

Thanks for the history lesson.

No one forces a person to work for X dollars an hour. But they do force employers to pay X dollars.

Reality forces millions of Americans to work hard jobs for low wages. “Forcing” employers to pay a pittance is hardly comparable.

Remind me to never waste my time reading through links you provide.

Off you go!

And if you continue posting in your current form,

I post here all the time, and have lively discussions with Jaboney, fred smith, and others on a daily basis.

I won’t spent much time reading your posts (let alone replying to them.)

I’m crushed.

I started this thread in effort to become more informed and “enlightened” in the arena of politics and economics.

Good for you.

I feel that all you’ve done is (weakly) attack my current views.

Oh the pain, the pain.

If you have a book to give me, or suggest I read, sweet.

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx

And before you ask, no, I am not a Communist.

If can get my hands on it, I’ll read it (though, you are losing points on the “trust of opinion” scoreboard.")

The book is not the size of a truck, I’m sure you can get your hands on it.

If you want to “battle” please try to be… good at it.

Considering what I think about the general quality of your posts, I think my ego can take the hit.

[MikeN]

@guangtou

Where’s the cut-off line between libertarian thought and anarchism? I suspect libertarians accept the validity of at least some kind of social contract while your average anarchist would have difficulty accepting anything that smacks of a “received” order. This said, they often look suspiciously similar to me. Might be time to get yourself a black flag MTK…

Libertarians agree on the legitimacy of a “night watchman” state i.e. a government that defends the country against external enemies and provides policing and a court system to protect individual rights.

[Dog_s_Breakfast]

[quote=“miltownkid”]
If you have a book to give me, or suggest I read, sweet.
If can get my hands on it, I’ll read it [/quote]

Actually, I have a good book for you to read, and in fact, all of you posting to this forum should read it. I’m in the process of reading it myself. It’s called:

“The True Believer”
Subtitle: “Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”
by Eric Hoffer

It’s an old classic, published in 1952, but still popular and easy to buy. It’s often found in the Sociology section of big bookstores. Here’s a partial review posted on amazon.com:

[i]Consider some of Hoffer’s assertions:

"Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.

“This minding of other’s people’s business expresses itself in gossip, snooping and meddling, and also in feverish interest in communal, national and racial affairs. In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder or fly at his throat.”

Now tell me, does this sound like bin Laden and/or Falwell (plus a wide number of other zealots you may wish to name):

“The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.”

Sound familiar ? It is the terrorist mind. It applies equally well to the John Birch Society and the militia movements as to the KKK and the anti-war fervor as to bin Laden and the Palestinian suicide-bombers. In America, fanatics were relegated to the silly fringes of society. In parts of the world, they are elevated to be heroes.

The fanatic is forever with us. The very definition of fanaticism rejects toleration for others; yet, to survive, we must tolerate the ideas of others – even the most outlandish. The answer is from one of the greatest Native Americans, President Benito Juarez of Mexico, who asserted “Peace is respect for the rights of others.”

Hoffer outlined the problem with brilliance, but he failed to offer a solution. Americans don’t like open-ended problems; from sit-coms to revenge for the World Trade Center, they want answers. That is the weakness of the book, and perhaps why it isn’t better known today.
[/i]

[guangtou]

@MikeN

[quote=“guangtou”]Where’s the cut-off line between libertarian thought and anarchism? I suspect libertarians accept the validity of at least some kind of social contract while your average anarchist would have difficulty accepting anything that smacks of a “received” order. This said, they often look suspiciously similar to me. Might be time to get yourself a black flag MTK…

Libertarians agree on the legitimacy of a “night watchman” state i.e. a government that defends the country against external enemies and provides policing and a court system to protect individual rights.[/quote]

Thanks MikeN. What about lighthouses (and by implication market failure arguments more generally)?

[miltownkid]

@guangtou

What about lighthouses (and by implication market failure arguments more generally)?

Are lighthouses like mud-flaps?

I ran into some things today. First, a counter to the term “market failure”, which is “government failure.” I have a feeling the government mucks things up far more often than a free market does. That’s just a feeling though, I’ll have to do more research.

I also ran into a book: [Government Failure vs. Market Failure: Microeconomics Policy Research and Government Performance]

And, to bring things back on topic, I found a quote that I like:
[ul][li]“I am a libertarian with a small l and a Republican with a capital R. And I am a Republican with a capital R on grounds of expediency, not on principle.” - Milton Friedman[/li][/ul]
and
[ul][li]“I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don’t really care very much what I’m called. I’m much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person.”[/li][/ul]

[guangtou]

@miltownkid

[quote=“guangtou”]What about lighthouses (and by implication market failure arguments more generally)?

Are lighthouses like mud-flaps?[/quote]

Which is to say, they may be superfluous. Yes and no: while lighthouses have probably been superseded now with GPS, they were once fundamental to shipping - significantly during the golden age of globalization in the second half of the 19th century. They remain an important symbol of what collective action can achieve, and, crucially, stand outside the standard libertarian call for a nightwatchman state.

@miltownkid

I ran into some things today. First, a counter to the term “market failure”, which is “government failure.” I have a feeling the government mucks things up far more often than a free market does. That’s just a feeling though, I’ll have to do more research.

There are important examples of both forms of allocation (state and market) screwing up. Except for ideological concerns (e.g. worries about reduction in freedom) why privilege one set of fuckups over another (or indeed, against what criteria)? If it turns out that both states and markets cost the community an equal amount in terms of lost efficiency, surely they are both to be condemned (or, as I would argued, REFORMED AND IMPROVED).

[quote=“miltownkid”]And, to bring things back on topic, I found a quote that I like:
[ul][li]“I am a libertarian with a small l and a Republican with a capital R. And I am a Republican with a capital R on grounds of expediency, not on principle.” - Milton Friedman[/li][/ul]
and
[ul][li]“I think the term classical liberal is also equally applicable. I don’t really care very much what I’m called. I’m much more interested in having people thinking about the ideas, rather than the person.”[/li][/ul][/quote]

Friedman arrived at this point after a lot of reading… Maybe you should put the ideological conclusions aside for the time being and concentrate on what economists actually agree to be fact (and allow yourself to be surprised in the process).

Some reading that might be useful (sorry, I’m a bit sketchy on the sources as I’ve been away from the literature for a while - Web searches should fill in the gaps):

(1) Any standard first year text covering both macro and micro by Michael Parkin (“the monetarist’s monetarist”). Will give you a good grounding in “the microeconomic foundations of the discipline.” Some of us have trouble with this approach, but it’s important to engage with it early on.

(2) Gregory Mankiw’s second year text on macro - covers classical IS-LM analysis which you will be lucky to see if you stick with the right wingers (indeed, a lot of “macro” is actually taught as microeconomics these days). NB: Mankiw was head of the CEA during the first Bush admin, and he’s got a neat blog.

(3) Paul Krugman’s “International Economics.” Strong on both the macro and micro sides of international exchange, and, importantly, is a fairly straight-forward read. Krugman received prizes for his work on strategic trade theory in the 1980s - so don’t believe the trash that he’s an unreconstructed Keynesian.

(4) Stiglitz on public finance - there’s a standard 2nd/3rd year text; can’t remember the name of it. He’s smart, but obviously left wing. Counter it by reading the legion of government-hating work on the public sector by the Enterprise Institute, the CATO institute, etc.

(5) Fred Mishkin’s “Finance and the Economy;” must be running into the 7th ed by now. I recommend this over the plethora of 2nd-year texts out there on money and banking because it gives some/more weighting to the macro side and policy implications. You won’t get that from a standard MBA reader.

That’ll do for now. Many apologies for the spelling mistakes.

[miltownkid]

@guangtou

[quote=“miltownkid”][quote=“guangtou”]What about lighthouses (and by implication market failure arguments more generally)?

Are lighthouses like mud-flaps?[/quote]

Which is to say, they may be superfluous. Yes and no.[/quote]
I meant the way mud-flaps are supposedly good for all, but not the individual. Basically, it costs the individual more money to have mud flaps, but it doesn’t directly help him. It helps when EVERYONE has mud-flaps, so on rainy days, you don’t get mud splashed on to your windshield while your going 65mph.

Someone might not keep up his mud flaps and driving around causing accidents, so a law is put into place that makes doing to illegal. So everyone pays extra to save everyone (as a whole) more (or something like that.)

So like with lighthouses, everyone (I’m assuming) paid for them with taxes, so everyone could reap the rewards of less shipping problems (thus cheaper products.)

@guangtou

That’ll do for now. Many apologies for the spelling mistakes.

You get the for that. I’ll be saving that off line and will investigate it further. Thanks.

[miltownkid]

@guangtou

(2) Gregory Mankiw’s second year text on macro - covers classical IS-LM analysis which you will be lucky to see if you stick with the right wingers (indeed, a lot of “macro” is actually taught as microeconomics these days). NB: Mankiw was head of the CEA during the first Bush admin, and he’s got a neat blog.

He does and I just subscribed to it. gregmankiw.blogspot.com/index.html

And since I’m posting again anyway, a bit more beef.

@guangtou

Friedman arrived at this point after a lot of reading… Maybe you should put the ideological conclusions aside for the time being and concentrate on what economists actually agree to be fact (and allow yourself to be surprised in the process).

I think it’s my learning style to somewhat attach myself to someone I think is smart and continue reading things with an “open mind.” I think it’s easier for me to understand new topics that way. I’ve already run into a number of surprises. Don’t economists agree that a minimum wage is a “bad” idea? That was pretty surprising to me. I haven’t found anything that has said otherwise.