Monthly Archives: January 2020

In a much-discussed recent blog post, economist Tyler Cowen advocates what he calls "state capacity libertarianism" (which I will call "SCL" for short). He makes two claims: that "state capacity libertarianism" is the view that "the smart classical liberals and libertarians" are already moving towards even as traditional libertarianism is in decline, and that SCL is the right world-view for libertarians to adopt.

Tyler's mini-manifesto has already attracted insightful responses from David Henderson, John McGinnis, Vincent Geloso and Alex Salter, Nick Gillespie, Henry Olsen of the Washington Post, and John Cochrane. But I think there is more to be said.

In particular, it's important to emphasize that Tyler's normative argument is distinct from his positive claim about what libertarians are actually doing. One can be right even if the other is wrong.

Although I'm a big fan of Tyler's work, I am skeptical about both the normative and the positive aspects of his case for SCL. This post takes up the positive issue. I will cover the normative one in a subsequent piece.

Here's Tyler's positive analysis of where libertarians have been headed over the last few years:

Having tracked the libertarian "movement" for much of my life, I believe it is now pretty much hollowed out, at least in terms of flow. One branch split off into Ron Paul-ism and less savory alt right directions, and another, more establishment branch remains out there in force but not really commanding new adherents. For another, smart people are on the internet, and the internet seems to encourage synthetic and eclectic views, at least among the smart and curious. Unlike the mass culture of the 1970s, it does not tend to breed "capital L Libertarianism." On top of all that, the out-migration from narrowly libertarian views has been severe, most of all from educated women.

Along the way, I believe the smart classical liberals and libertarians have, as if guided by an invisible hand, evolved into a view that I dub with the entirely non-sticky name of State Capacity Libertarianism."

Tyler's definition of state capacity libertarianism is not a simple one. But, in so far as it differs from previous versions of libertarianism, largely boils down to a focus on expanding and improving the quality of government, including performing at least some substantial range of functions that most libertarians have traditionally argued should be left to the private sector.

Both the claim that there is an outmigration from libertarianism and the claim that "smart" libertarians are turning towards SCL strike me as wrong, or at least unsupported by the available evidence. Here's why:

I. Is there an Outmigration from Libertarianism?

Has libertarianism experienced a large outmigration of "alt right directions?" We can certainly find examples of notorious alt rightists who used to be (or at least used to claim to be) libertarians. But none of them were actually at all prominent within the libertarian movement, and there is no indication they are a large group of people (even relative to the total number of libertarians out there).

It is also fair to point out that there have long been some libertarian-leaning people who are sympathetic to various of right-wing nationalism and have tried to make alliances in that quarter. But this is not a new problem, and such people have long been condemned by the majority of the libertarian intellectual community. The issue actually came to public prominence in 2008 and 2012 during the controversy over Ron Paul's 1990s racist newsletters, at which time numerous prominent libertarians condemned them.

The genuinely prominent defectors from libertarianism in recent years, have actually gone not to the right, but to the center and left. The most notable are probably Jerry Taylor, Will Wilkinson, and some of their associates at the Niskanen Center. I took issue with Taylor's rejection of "ideology" here, and Wilkinson's views on democracy and libertarianism here and here. Taylor and Wilkinson are important figures, and we should take their critiques of libertarianism seriously (as I have tried to do). But, so far at least, their shift has not triggered a more general exodus from libertarianism.

Various measures of the number of libertarian-leaning voters in the general public show that their numbers are roughly the same as they were 15-20 years ago (somewhere between 8 and 20 percent, depending on which measures you use). The number of self-conscious, rigorously consistent libertarians is surely much smaller. But the same can be said for adherents of other ideologies. Many studies show that most voters don't take a carefully consistent and rigorous approach to political ideology, and often don't even understand the basics of those world-views.

I don't know of a good measure of the number of libertarians in the intellectual word, such as in academia or policy analysis. Quantitative studies of academic ideology (at least those I am familiar with) fail to differentiate libertarians from other non-left scholars. But my admittedly anecdotal impression is that the percentage is at least as high as a decade or two ago, and perhaps modestly higher. In my own academic field (law), there are more libertarians now than when I started my career in 2003.

Finally, I see no evidence that there has been a "severe" outmigration by "highly educated women." There is no doubt that self-identified libertarians are disproportionately male, and this is a problem for the movement (by contrast libertarians are much more racially and ethnically diverse than many think). But this is not a new problem, and has not gotten worse in recent years than it was before.

If anything, the percentage of women among younger libertarian intellectuals strikes me as higher than that in my own generation and those that came before. This is another point on which we lack systematic data, so I could be wrong. But the percentage of women in groups such as Students For Liberty (I have spoken at several of their conferences) is much higher than that in libertarian groups I saw when I was a student in the 1990s. Ditto for the percentage of women among younger libertarian academics in law, economics, and political science (the fields I am most familiar with).

It's also worth noting that virtually all the prominent defectors from libertarianism in recent years have been men, not women (Taylor and Wilkinson are, again, notable examples). Though, in fairness, that's in substantial part because there were more men in the initial population.

Perhaps Tyler's claim of an exodus can be defended on the ground that it only applies to "narrow" libertarianism, as he puts it. Much depends on what counts, as "narrow." But if that term means categorically rejecting all government intervention beyond the most strictly defined minimal state or endorsing absolute property rights that can never be overcome by any other considerations, then most libertarian thinkers already rejected those views a decade or two ago. That was certainly true of nearly all who were at that time prominent in the academic and intellectual worlds. Perhaps even more have rejected that position since then. But if so, it's not a major trend.

It is, I think, more useful to define libertarianism as the ideology that has a very strong presumption against government intervention in both the "economic" and "social" spheres, and therefore rejects a very high percentage of the activities of modern states. By that definition, there has been no major exodus to speak of.

Thus, Tyler is, I think, wrong to claim that there has been a substantial exodus from libertarianism in recent years. That does not mean libertarians can afford to rest on our (very modest) laurels. Far from it. After all, it is also clear there has been little, if any, significant expansion of the libertarian movement in that time. Our position has also weakened because of the rise of nationalism on the right and "democratic socialism" on the left, both of which are deeply inimical to libertarianism. Even if the number of libertarians has not declined, we face more hostility from adherents of other ideologies than was the case 10-20 years ago.

A group that was a small minority to begin with needs to more than just maintain its position. It badly needs growth. On that point, I very much agree with Nick Gillespie's response to Tyler's post.

II. Are "Smart" Libertarians Adopting SCL?

What of Tyler's claim that "the smart classical liberals and libertarians" have moved towards SCL? A lot here turns on who qualifies as "smart." If it means those who have the highest IQ or other forms of raw intellectual ability, then we don't have the evidence we need to figure out the answer. Who knows whether the libertarian intellectuals who agree with Tyler's position are smarterin this sensethan those who don't?

It may be more productive to interpret "smart" as referring to the most prominent and successful libertarian thinkers. The quality and reach of thinkers' ideas surely matters more than how high their IQs are.

Consider those American libertarian thinkers whose work has had the biggest mainstream impact over the last decade, as measured by both public and academic attention. The three cases that most stand out are Jason Brennan's work on democratic theory and related issues, Bryan Caplan's work on education and immigration, and Deirdre McCloskey's series of books on the nature and history of liberalism. Little if any of their work focuses on enhancing state capacity. To the contrary, all three emphasize the case for limiting and constraining government power, albeit in quite different ways.

The same is true for nearly all the most notable recent libertarian scholarship in my own field: law. Here too, state capacity is mostly notable by its absence. My impression is that the same is true of recently successful libertarian-leaning scholars in economics, philosophy, and political theory, such as John Cochrane, Casey Mulligan, Michael Huemer, and John Tomasi, among others. As David Henderson points out in his response to Tyler, state capacity is also largely absent from the recent research agendas of the most prominent and influential libertarian think tanks and publications, such as the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, and Reason.

With the important exception of Tyler himself, I am hard-pressed to name any prominent libertarian thinker who has found success in recent years by focusing on state capacity. The most plausible exception that comes to my mind is Brink Lindsey, who unlike many of his Niskanen Center colleagues, might still be considered a libertarian, at least in some important respects. His excellent and widely discussed 2017 book, The Captured Economy (coauthored with Steve Teles, who is not a libertarian), does indeed advocate a number of state capacity-focused reforms, which are combined with a more traditional libertarian emphasis on deregulation of licensing and zoning (I assessed the book's arguments here and here). I am not at all sure Lindsey would embrace the SCL label. But he may be the closest thing to an example of the phenomenon of "smart" libertarians moving in an SCL direction.

While I follow libertarian intellectual developments closely and know many people in the movement, I have to admit that Tyler knows more. Perhaps he can point to notable examples of libertarian SCL-ers whom I have missed. I would be happy to post any response to my argument that he cares to make. For the moment, however, the available evidence suggests that there is no significant outmigration from libertarianism, and that very few "smart" libertarians are adopting an SCL perspective.

The fact that SCL seems to have very few adherentseven by comparison with conventional libertarianismdoesn't mean SCL is wrong. Many, perhaps most, great ideas start out with very few supporters. In my next post on this issue, I will take up the question of whether libertarians should embrace SCL, regardless of whether any significant number have done so already.

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Tyler Cowen on "State Capacity Libertarianism" I: Is it the Wave of the "Smart" Libertarian Future? - Reason

Rush drummer Neil Peart performs during a sold-out show at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nev., July 17, 2004.(Ethan Miller/Reuters)

Like every true rock fan I was saddened to hear of the passing of Neil Peart, the lyricist and virtuoso drummer for the prog group Rush. We all love the bands key albums, the handful culminating in 1981s Moving Pictures, and we inevitably have some opinions about the others too. I absolutely loved their 2007 effort Snakes and Arrows, for example, and I cant stand the really synth-heavy stuff they did in the mid and late 80s. (Before anyone asks, in my definition that includes Power Windows but not Signals.)

We on the right, of course, have a special debt to Peart for being the rare entertainer to espouse political beliefs other than lefty ones. The incredible first side of 2112 is based on Ayn Rands Anthem, and in The Trees, from Hemispheres, Peart makes a point about equality: All trees can be the same height . . . if you cut them all down.

But like a lot of us who had strong libertarian tendencies when we were young, Peart saw his views evolve as he aged. The Larger Bowl (A Pantoum), from the aforementioned Snakes and Arrows, is a heartfelt meditation on the different fortunes and fates human beings find themselves subjected to. And in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012, Peart identified as a bleeding-heart libertarian rather than the Randian kind:

For me, [the work of Ayn Rand] was an affirmation that its all right to totally believe in something and live for it and not compromise. It was a simple as that. On that 2112 album, again, I was in my early twenties. I was a kid. Now I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of libertarianism as an ideal because Im an idealist. Paul Therouxs definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, Ive brought my view and also Ive just realized this libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and were all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And thats when I evolve now into . . . a bleeding-heart libertarian. Thatll do.

May he rest in peace.

See the original post here:
The Evolving Libertarianism of Neil Peart - National Review

Heres some of a conversation that happened in my comboxes recently, illustrating what I believe to be one of the core failings of Libertarianism: its essential narcissism.

Reader 1: Why not vote Libertarian? They dont have a clear position on abortion, but wont fund PP, and also oppose the death penalty.

Reader 2: Libertarians tend to be amoral, which is better than immoral, and favor the powerful which can lead to dehumanizing the vulnerable.

Reader 1: I understand your concerns, and this America Magazine writer can answer them here.

Reader 2: The author suggests that Libertarians can learn from and be checked by good will adherence to CST, which I believe is true for all political systems. The problem is that subsidiarity, while always necessary in practice, is always woefully inadequate beyond a very small community. Those I call casserole Christians believe their small and subjective acts of charity, however noble and well intended, will resolve the massive social inequalities and cycles of poverty we face in the US. Subsidiarity can work well in tandem with larger governmental systems of care that should be focused on the common good, but cant replace them. One example in Massachusetts, church-sponsored Take and Eat ministries work in tandem with state/federally funded Meals on Wheels programs to provide weekend meals for the elderly and those with disabilities. Wonderful concept and practice as a supplemental effort, but beyond that is inadequate. And my parish struggles even to find the funding and volunteers to fulfill our once every 6 week commitment.

The notion that a combination of libertarian neutrality and voluntary neighborliness will inspire our consciences to provide for the poor died with the wild west.

Any reasonable assessment of the real world would have to conclude that Reader 2 is simply right about this. Before Social Security, 50% of seniors were poor. Blue states do vastly better economically than red ones do and, what is more, blue states, by their contributions to the federal budget, keep afloat the social programs upon which the poor in red states depend to keep body and soul together. Cultures full of the agitprop about how money will trickle down and spontaneously generous Libertarians will supply what the state need not supply have a name: poverty-stricken.

But Libertarianism is founded on a couple of crippling lies. One of the greatest of these is that property rights trump the right to live. In some extreme cases such as Murray Rothbard, the insanity is so deep that even the claim of a child to deserve care of its parents is denied since the child cannot pay for these goods and services. But even if a Libertarian is not quite that demented, Libertarianism insists that all help given somebody outside the immediate circle of family is charity. That is the other and core falsehood. Why?

Because much of the help we are expected to give, according to the Churchs teaching, is not charity, but justice.

The rich man was not damned because he did not give Lazarus charity, but because he denied him justice. The priest and the Levite were not condemned, nor the Good Samaritan commended, because they did not and the Samaritan did give the beaten man charity, but because they did not (and the Samaritan did) give him justice.

Justice pertains to what is owed. We owe our neighbor his life if he needs saving and we have the power to do it. You arent giving charity when you find somebody lying in a pool of blood and call 911 or find him hungry and give him something to eat. You are giving them simple justice. If you walk past them and do nothing, you are not denying them charity that you didnt owe them. You are being a sinner in grave danger of the fires of hellbecause you selfishly denied what you owed them in justice. And if the best way to get that person help involves food and shelter paid for by the state, somebody who cares about the person in need cares about them getting food and shelter, not about getting the credit for helping them. But Libertarianism has a very different agenda. To wit:

Reader 1: Libertarians dont necessarily believe that government has no place in anything, but rather than its involved in much more than it needs to be. The states duty is to protect the weak from the strong. That does not include mandating a minimum wage that could kill businesses who cant afford it, nor does it include forcing people to pay income tax on the threat of jail. I dont know if youve heard of Andrew Yang, but he actually has better alternatives to these things.

Translation: Im theoretically for the weak and vulnerable being protected against the the strong and powerful, but I dont want to actually pay for it, or do anything about it, or think about it.

Libertarianism is the teenage fantasy that I will be so super-generous that the state will wither awayone of the whimsical notions that Libertarian fantasists share with Communist fantasists. In reality, Libertarianism is the ideology committed to the use of the state against the weak by the strong. It doesnt really want the state to wither away. It wants it to protect the rich from the poor and the powerful from the weak. But that is not the function of the state. The function of the state is to ensure justice. And since justice means treating equals equally and unequals unequally, it is perfectly right and fitting for the state to obey the preferential option for the poor since they have no defender while the rich and powerful have tons of money and armies of lawyers.

Note the rhetorical feint to leftists such as yourself. Reader 2 has not used that term as a self-descriptor. Libertarian Reader 1 chose to do so in order to dismiss the Churchs teaching on the right to a living wage as leftism. Thats because, contrary to his claim, the real and only function of the state for Libertarians is to protect the rich and powerful from the cry of the poor for a just wage. Curiously, the refusal to pay workers a just wage is one of four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.

Reader 2 to Reader 1: I support a living wage because Im Catholic, kiddo. You can start lecturing me after you earn your first paycheck.

Reader 2 returns the leftist serve with a hard return volley that Libertarian Reader 1 is in no way prepared for, because Reader 1 gets his thinking, not from the teaching of the Magisterium, but from the bits and pieces cannibalized from it by Libertarians. The reply is simple: a living wage is not charity, it is justice. And it is the right and proper duty of the state to ensure justice.

But I digress. Here is where Libertarian Reader 1 gets down to the essential narcissism of the Libertarianand is rightly defeated in clean combat by Catholic Reader 2:

Reader 1 to Reader 2: And if you seriously think libertarians are that selfish, google libertarian disaster relief. Libertarianism isnt about being selfish, its about making sure government isnt your mother or babysitter.

You know, being this young, I should be as left-wing as you, but Im not. You cannot force people to be charitable. That is wrong. That is what government does.

Reader 2 to Reader 1:My point is that being young, you likely havent had the opportunity to experience the hardships people face. There is that no evidence that corporate America or even average citizens would band together to voluntarily provide sustainable systems of care for the working poor, the elderly, the disabled, and in fact much evidence to show that the United States under trump is motivated primarily by greed and self preservation.

No, you cant force charity, which is why basic human needs should not be dependent on charitable whims, but on equitable and just laws and systems of care.

You might benefit from watching this:

Note that the sole concern of Libertarian Reader 1 is not with those in need of help, but with himself. Hes not interested in the question of whether Libertarian charity actually provides sufficient help to those in need, only that Libertarians get the credit for being charitable. Does a family face a choice between living in a tent or getting treatment for their 4 year old with leukemia? The one and only thing that matters is not the family or their need being met, but whether Reader 1 gets the warm fuzzy feeling of being charitable for throwing five bucks in their GoFundMe set up to raise $300,000 (and currently standing at $230).

This is the essential evil of Libertarianism. Because it denies any claim of justice and insists that anything beyond helping ones own family and a small circle of friends is charity it teaches its adherents to take a completely narcissistic view of what we owe to others. Rather than allow a nickel to be taken from his paycheck by the state, the allegedly generous Libertarian would rather make a poor mans family starve to death or freeze in his car than have a system where the state insures universal health carebecause it is not the poor man but the power and vanity of the Libertarian that is all that matters. The Libertarian gets to decide life and death for the poor he deems deserving or undeserving. The Libertarians only real interest is in getting to take credit for his generosity, not in whether Lazarus gets the help he needs.

Libertarianism is essentially narcissistic. It offers nothing good that Catholic teaching does not already offer while it distorts and denies nearly all Catholic teaching about the Common Good and Solidarity. Skip it and stick with Catholic Social Teaching.

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A Conversation with a Libertarian Observed | Mark Shea - Patheos

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Libertarians just want to get along. They don't want you messing with them, and they won't mess with you. More than anything else, they don't want some suffocating government telling people what they can or cannot do.

That is the heart of the Libertarian Party pitch. Those ideas are neither some crazy everybody-hold-hands socialist dream or some wild-eyed, anarchist, down-with-the-feds manifesto. Libertarians just want everybody to enjoy the liberty to do what they want to do as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. And, again, they don't want anybody, especially the federal government, messing with that.

Of course, if life were only that simple.

In their crusade, many Libertarians like every other political party in America, Libertarians don't agree 100 percent on everything point to the 10th Amendment as the constitutional basis for their way of thinking. Added as part of the Bill of Rights in 1789, the 10th Amendment is somewhat striking in its simplicity. It goes like this:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Of course, if the Constitution were only that simple.

The 10th Amendment, even in those 28 short words, four clauses, three commas and single period, is open to a great deal of interpretation. But let's, for the moment, take it literally: If the Constitution doesn't spell out a certain power or powers to the federal government (the "United States"), those powers belong to the states or the people.

"They [the constitutional framers] didn't want the federal government to be huge," says Honor "Mimi" Robson, the chair of the Libertarian Party of California. "They didn't want the federal government to be involved in the citizens' day-to-day lives."

Some people, both in and out of the Libertarian Party, view the 10th Amendment very narrowly. They contend that many powers that the federal government now claims things represented by, for example, the U.S. Department of Education, or even Supreme Court decisions that allow for things like same-sex marriage throughout the U.S. should not be held by the feds. The U.S. government is infringing on the states' rights to decide how children are taught in their state, for example, or whether same-sex marriage should be allowed. That should be up to the states, they say. Those are states' rights.

Now, you might argue, government is government, whether it's at the state or federal level (or both). And multiple levels of government, some absolutely will argue, is bad.

But most out there understand the need for some government. And government at the state level, close to home, the argument goes, is better than edicts being flung from the feds in Washington. From the Tenth Amendment Center:

People arguably have more control and influence over smaller governmental units. Even if they don't, multiple small power centers make it possible to flee from particularly oppressive jurisdictions and create an environment of "competition" between governments.

Few would suggest that no federal government is needed, either. And, indeed, the Constitution enumerates certain powers solely to the U.S. government, including the ability to tax, to provide for the national defense, to regulate commerce (both within the states and internationally), and to determine who becomes a citizen.

But many Libertarians, and many others, argue that the U.S. government has vastly overstepped those powers enumerated to it and, in doing so, has trampled on the 10th Amendment. The disagreements, inside the Libertarian Party and out of it, are exactly where the line between federal rights and states' rights should be drawn.

"If you look at states' rights as allowing states to do bad things to people to take away their rights, that is absolutely not Libertarian," Robson says. She points to the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which held that a ban on interracial marriage by the state of Virginia violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. That case provided, in effect, a new enumerated power for the federal government; to protect individuals from states. "States shouldn't be able to say that people who love each other can't get married. Same thing with same-sex marriage.

"I don't believe that that was ever intended to allow states to do bad things to infringe on people's rights just because it's more of a local level," Robson says. "I think that's where some people get kind of confused, in my opinion."

For almost 200 years, the 10th Amendment and its apparently straightforward language was viewed very narrowly. According to the National Constitution Center, when legal questions were raised about the use of some federal power, they didn't center on whether the use of the power was violating someone's rights, but rather if the federal government had the right to use the power in the first place. Was it something granted to the government under the Constitution? If not, it's the states' and the people's.

That has changed, though, in the past several decades as the courts have granted more power to the federal government, powers that are often argued to be implied by the Constitution, if not enumerated. The 10th, now, is regularly rolled out as a defense against an overreaching U.S. government. Some used it as an argument against "Obamacare." Some are citing it as a reason to block President Donald Trump's move to stop a California law declaring it a "sanctuary state."

The struggle, in many ways, is exactly what the writers of the 10th Amendment saw coming. They tried to spell things out. But we're still trying to figure out what they really meant in those 28 simple words.

"I think what we all agree on is that we're looking for a society where there's no government infringement of personal rights. That's what we're looking for," Robson says. She's talking about Libertarians, though she could be speaking for many others. "We want freedom and we want no government coercion, and I believe states can be just as coercive as the federal government when it comes to individual liberties.

"It's the nuances that we aren't quite clear on. To use a train analogy, we're all on this train that's going from point A which is California right now, which is basically socialism to point B or C or X or Y or Z, which is complete non-government intervention, non-government. There's going to be people that get off the train at different places. I'm not going to be on the train all the way to the end, to pure anarchy. But you know what? Right now, we're up on blocks. We're nowhere close. We have to agree on what we agree on and move forward."

Excerpt from:
Why Libertarians Have a Love-hate Relationship With the 10th Amendment - HowStuffWorks