Category Archives: Libertarianism

Funny but true: recently on Facebook, a "friend" tried to insult me by calling me a libertarian and a Randian--a follower of bad novelist Ayn Rand. While I don't mind being labeled with the former since it's somewhat true, I laughed at the latter. We trash Rand and her followers--the creepiest cultists this side of Scientology, although the chicks tend to be hotter--as much as possible here, especially the Irvine-based Ayn Rand Institute, which considers her and her writings their version of Jesus despite Rand's hatred of organized religion other than the sycophants around her.

While there are some similarities between libertarianism and Randians, the Randians (or, as they call themselves, Objectivists) hate the freewheeling libs. And if you don't believe me, then check out what Ayn Rand Institute founder Leonard Peikoff and current president Yaron Brooks had to say on a recent podcast. Brooks seems to have a problem that modern-day libertarianism is so damn hippy-dippy in its love of no war, no empire, and no drug war. "Even though it [libertarianism] might have initially been adopted innocently by certain people who were advocates of free markets, it was very quickly, in the 1960's and 70's co-opted by the anarchists and by the complete philosophic subjectivists," Brooks told Peikoff on the podcast. "And they dominated the movements throughout that period of time. Even though I believe that today the libertarian movement is fragmented, it's disintegrating."

"Disintegrating"? Libertarianism is more popular and accepted now than at any point in this nation's history, with more young people than I care to know labeling themselves as such to justify their love of free markets, drugs, and cursing. Objectivism, on the other hand, is crashing and burning--and if you don't believe me, check out the box-office numbers for the execrable film adaptation of the execrable novel, Atlas Shrugged.

(Quick aside: I remember trying to read this book back at Anaheim High, because Randians love to distribute Rand's works en masse to kiddies under the faade of a scholarship. Even then, her writing bored me to death--and I'm someone who could read Finnegan's Wake in two days and get what the fuck Joyce was trying to communicate).

Libertarians ain't taking the insults of Peikoff and Brooks lightly. LewRockwell.com has already posted its retort, and more should come. This sordid episode just further proves my experience: that Objectivists are the most conceited people on Earth, and about as rational as having an ice-cube machine in the Arctic.

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Ayn Rand Institute Bigwigs Piss on Libertarianism, Libertarians Fight Back!

A few months ago during the primaries, there was a lot of talk about Ron Paul and the Libertarian ideology. It seemed that it had finally made its way to the table and was being talked about more especially on college campuses.

Libertarianism started to be seen as a fresh ideology and many young voters welcomed it as new and revolutionary. However, it has historical roots and has played historical roles, especially in Europe. Many people seemed surprised because the mini-wave of Libertarianism had just come.

Though having common ground with both parties may seem like an advantage to gain momentum for their movement, it could actually be a double-edged sword. I think it was very bold to think that Libertarianism could take the lead in American politics because of this.

Some voters and commentators even began to speculate whether the Libertarians have started to gain traction in becoming a mainstream party in opposition to the two major parties, and some have even theorized that eventually there will be a slight Libertarian shift in the Republican platform.

Though the Libertarians have some views branded as radical, much of the modern Libertarian ideology is actually simply just a mix between the ideologies of American conservatives and liberals as well.

Libertarians distance themselves on some key issues, but the core beliefs explain this blend and why it has not seemed to gain serious traction as a strong third party in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans, who many seem to think are the only two parties that exist.

Jon Stewart may be more of a comedian than a reporter, but I think that he hit the nail right on the head when he said on his program that the Libertarians seem to be the friendship bracelet of the two major parties in Washington.

When the Libertarians insist that privatization of public programs and institutions are the best way to run them, they gain praise from the conservatives. They also gain praise from conservatives when they support states rights and smaller government. Liberals like the social and foreign policy views of Libertarians. Many left-leaning minds find many of the Libertarian anti-war and anti-interventionism beliefs to be favorable and also find many Libertarians views of gay marriage and the war on drugs favorable. The Libertarian views tend to lean to the left both of these social matters.

But conservatives dont like what the conservatives like about the Libertarians and vice-versa. Who knows? Politics is like the weather. But it is unlikely in my opinion that Libertarianism will start to gain serious momentum as a juggernaut political party in the U.S. anytime soon.

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Libertarianism not likely to yield third party

[Libertarian Papers (2010)]

The essence of libertarianism is its nonaggression principle. In order to determine whether some act or concept or institution is compatible with this philosophy, one may use this as a sort of litmus test. If you initiate violence against someone, you must pay the penalty for so doing, and are presumptively acting outside of libertarian law.

However, in the view of some commentators who really should know better, intolerance, not creating an uninvited border crossing, is the be-all and end-all of libertarianism. In this view, tolerance, while it may not be sufficient, is certainly a necessary condition. If you are not tolerant, you cannot be a libertarian. States Milton Friedman (1991, p. 17, material in brackets inserted by present author. See also Friedman and Friedman, 1998, p. 161) in this regard,

I regard the basic human value that underlies my own [political] beliefs as tolerance, based on humility. I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I am right and he is wrong. Why do I regard tolerance as the foundation of my belief in freedom? How do we justify not initiating coercion? If I asked you what is the basic philosophy of a libertarian, I believe that most of you would say that a libertarian philosophy is based on the premise that you should not initiate force, that you may not initiate coercion. Why not? If we see someone doing something wrong, someone starting to sin [to use a theological term] let alone just make a simple mistake, how do we justify not initiating coercion? Are we not sinning if we don't stop him? How do I justify letting him sin? I believe that the answer is, can I be sure he's sinning? Can I be sure that I am right and he is wrong? That I know what sin is?

This relativistic, know-nothingism of Friedman's has been subjected to a withering rebuke by Kinsella (2009):

He was in favor of liberty and tolerance of differing views and behavior because we cannot know that the behavior we want to outlaw is really bad. In other words, the reason we should not censor dissenting ideas is not the standard libertarian idea that holding or speaking is not aggression, but because we can't be sure the ideas are wrong. This implies that if we could know for sure what is right and wrong, it might be okay to legislate morality, to outlaw immoral or "bad" actions.

And states Hoppe (1997, 23),

To maintain that no such thing as a rational ethic exists does not imply "tolerance" and "pluralism," as champions of positivism such as Milton Friedman falsely claim, and moral absolutism does not imply "intolerance" and "dictatorship." To the contrary, without absolute values "tolerance" and "pluralism" are just other arbitrary ideologies, and there is no reason to accept them rather than any others such as cannibalism and slavery. Only if absolute values, such as a human right of self-ownership exist, that is, only if "pluralism" or "tolerance" are not merely among a multitude of tolerable values, can pluralism and tolerance in fact be safeguarded.

Precisely. The strong implication, here, would appear to be that if we were vouchsafed such knowledge, then we would be justified in imposing our values on others. But this is hardly in keeping with the libertarian ethos.

Further, Friedman is guilty of tolerance, and humility with a vengeance. So much so it amounts to a stultifying skepticism. If it is reminiscent of anything, it is that of multiculturalism's claim that no society can possibly be better than any other. If no one can really know anything about anything, and are as humble as Milton Friedman claims to be, how can we even engage in political philosophy? Yet if there is anyone associated at least in the public mind with taking strong stances on issues, a host of them as it happens, it is Professor Friedman.

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Friedman on Intolerance: A Critique

Freedom is rarely absolute. Yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre, expressing your religion by killing people - everything has a limit. I'm generally a fan of anonymity online. I like that anyone can be anyone, it's often hilarious, and it encourages conversation free of pretence. The freedom to remain anonymous has a limit, however: when you post a bomb threat or creepy photos of women without telling them.

You might have heard about this controversy over the past few days. Basically, Gawker threatened (and followed through) uncovering the real identity of a notorious Reddit troll, and some Redditors threatened to release the real names of /r/creepshots mods. Creepshots was a forum for posting covert sexual pictures of women unaware that they were being photographed.

Many on Reddit got pretty mad - Gawker was banned from the site for a time. Creepshots was voluntarily banned, the mods scared off by the possibility of their real-life details being released. You see, revealing personal details is against the rules of Reddit - who take being a neutral platform/freedom of speech very seriously. The backlash from many in the Reddit community has been strong - anonymity is important to many - and the fear is that exposing users' details will now become the norm with any conflict. I understand this fear - but I think it is unfounded.

A lot of people have posted stuff anonymously that they would be horrified to have released to the public. That is totally fine. There is a line that we should all be able to understand here. Ninety-nine per cent of anonymous discussion deserves to remain that way - weird fetishes, fringe political views, gossip - but creepshots of other people is over the line. We all accept that child porn is over the line, so we are obviously fine with not being absolutists. Creepshots aren't just something that people find icky - think MLP porn or libertarianism - it directly victimises people.

I've never been a "witchhunt the pedos" kinda guy, but if this is what it took for them to shut down Creepshots then so be it. The ones threatening the release of names weren't chasing down a guy who hasn't offended in years, they were trying to stop something that was happening every day. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to distribute sexualised photos of strangers, but I think you could make a pretty good case for it covering the name of a creepshot mod. I can understand a variance of opinion with the release of names though; I just think Creepshots should have been shut down by Reddit itself months ago. I'm sure there is someone who works there whom most of the community could trust to draw a line between "distasteful" and "horrific".I wouldn't want everything I have ever posted in various anonymous places revealed at all, but there is a difference between stupid stuff I said when I was 15 and something like creepshots.What do y'all think?

Email Henry or follow him on Twitter.

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Anonymity and its limits: Reddit v Gawker

Among the mythologies of the pseudo-libertarian ideology fashionable among modern Republicans is the notion that any government regulation is an unconscionable assault on individual liberty and, if left alone, individuals will themselves make decisions that are ultimately good for the community.

There is no clearer proof that this is an asinine theory than the current debate regarding smoking bans in the Lowcountry, where the City of North Charleston recently decided against enacting a ban on smoking. After all, how long should the community wait for individuals to realize that their personal liberties are negatively affecting everyone else?

Smoking bans are nothing new. One of the earliest dates back to the middle of the 1500s when Mexico and some Spanish holdings in the Caribbean banned tobacco consumption inside churches (which is now such a common thing that it is hard to imagine that one could ever smoke in church). One wonders if such bans were as controversial back then as they are today. Regardless, I doubt smokers 500 years ago thought that the ability to smoke whenever and wherever they pleased was considered to be a right, as many do today.

Today's pro-smoking libertarian crowd is focused primarily on the perceived right of business owners to do what they want with their businesses, a point made moot by existing regulations detailing exactly what business owners may or may not do. The pro-puffers also like to proclaim that patrons are free to pick and choose businesses that either ban or allow smoking and then act as if this one "freedom" is the only benchmark of a free society.

Business owners, naturally, tend to view themselves as individuals who should have the right to allow or ban smoking as they see fit. This ignores the simple fact that there exists a communitarian aspect to any business that is open to the public and which employs individuals other than the proprietor. As a result, the government has the right to regulate and legislate these businesses. Safety standards, wage guarantees, and equal hiring policies are all part of this arrangement, as are restrictions even on hours of operation.

As for patrons, how their rights are affected one way or the other is unclear. After all, they truly are the ones with the most choice in the matter, and they are going to go somewhere no matter what bans or regulations are in place. Otherwise, most of the bars in places like New York City would have dried up years ago, as would most churches.

Ultimately, though, smoking bans most benefit those who are often least mentioned the workers who spend anywhere from four to 10 (or more) hours a day in smoke-filled bars and restaurants. When they are mentioned, it is usually with the most rational and reasoned of conservative mantras, "If you do not like where you work, you are free to go elsewhere." Of course, the individuals who spout this kind of nonsense ignore the fact that jobs aren't as plentiful as they used to be.

For people who claim to be interested in Constitutional government, it seems that ignoring the parts that disagree with their ideology is common. The Constitution in all its vaguely worded glory does contain references to both personal liberty and the general welfare. How a society balances those two concepts is as important as having either one of them individually, and it is this balancing act that few people readily accept in modern politics.

One accepted premise of individual rights is that mine end where yours begin. In other words a person should be free to do what she likes as long it does not infringe on another's freedom to do the same. Smoking in public places, even "private" businesses, is not an inviolate right. As Canadian conservative writer Rachel Marsden puts it, "Smoke anywhere you want, but do it with a plastic bag tied over your head, please. Then everyone is happy. Smokers lament the law becoming increasingly restrictive as to where they can light up in public, but it's only because enough of them have chosen to behave in a manner that restricted others' freedom not to smoke."

Ultimately, the inability to understand that personal behavior affects communities and that legislation is sometimes required to achieve a balance between individual freedom and the needs of the community is the fundamental failure of the pseudo-libertarian ideology. True libertarianism understands the difference between personal rights and infringing on the rights of others just to fulfill a selfish desire, and it is this libertarianism that informs the best public policy decisions. The City of North Charleston's vote against a smoking ban is not one of the best by a long shot.

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Libertarians are wrong about smoking bans

As the Conservative diaspora gathers in Birmingham, David Cameron finds himself bombarded with advice from fellow Tories about how to stop the rot. Tory modernisers want more moderate policies, the Tory Right wants a sharp dose of cuts in tax and spending, while Tory pollsters urge the party to reconnect with the striving classes of Middle England.

There is no doubt that David Cameron has had a terrible year. A double-dip recession, the collapse of confidence in Osbornes economic Plan A, a Budget that prioritised the privileged, and a catalogue of incompetence have all undermined the faith of the Tory faithful. But the roots of his annus horribilis run far deeper. The truth is that the crisis of the Conservative government stems from a crisis of values in the Conservative movement. Because over the last 30 years, the Tory Party has abandoned the tapestry of sympathies, principles and priorities that made it seem the natural representatives of middle class Britain for so long.

Many Conservatives like to think of their politics as pragmatic rather than based on a philosophy. But Conservative politics from the mid-19th century to the last quarter of the 20th century and articulated by practitioners and thinkers such as Benjamin Disraeli, Harold MacMillan, Quintin Hogg and Michael Oakeshott was based on a distinctive family of values. Conservatives believed in limited government, but obligations of the privileged towards those with less. Conservatives supported economic freedom, trade and wealth-creation, as well as a government that maintained the framework of markets and social solidarity. Conservatives were cautious and sceptical, Christian and civic. And Conservatives conserved. They protected institutions and ways of life that people held dear.

But something happened to Conservative thought from the late 1970s onwards. It got stripped down, reduced and mutated. It moved from a concern for how a healthy society should work to a charter for economic libertarianism. In modern Conservatism, the encouragement of economic freedoms has become a fundamentalist faith in the market, with a heroic assumption that free markets can on their own produce not just prosperity but also fairness. And the affection for limited but socially responsible government has turned into vilification of the public sector, and an obsession with reducing its size as the primary goal of politics.

The casualties of this libertarian fanaticism have been the other values that Tories cherished. Modern Conservatism has lost any conception of what holds our society together other than our participation in the market. We are united as contestants in a race, first and foremost. The responsibility of those with means to those with less has been marginalised. Paternalism offers the wrong incentives for the poor, and is bad for the economy. And instead of seeing institutions, practices and ways of life as things to be protected, modern Conservatism is more likely to view them as things to be challenged if they hold back efficiency.

It is this shift in values that is at the root of the choices David Cameron has made on issues ranging from the excessive pace and scope of spending cuts, to reducing income tax for the wealthiest as Britain re-entered recession, to attacking the principles of the NHS. Modern Conservatism in Britain has become a creed of the haves versus the have-nots, and has forgotten how and when to conserve.

British voters have spotted this change in values. Indeed the alarm bells should have been ringing for the Tories at the time of the election in 2010. The result was a terrible one for Labour, but it was a very bad one for the Tories too. 24.1 per cent of the electorate voted for Cameron in 2010, just 1.6 per cent more than their record defeat in 1997. David Camerons project to detoxify the Tory brand was always hamstrung by the fact that underneath the surface, the modern Conservative Party has become fundamentally economically libertarian in a country that is not.

Lord Ashcrofts polling shows that those who considered but did not end up voting Tory in 2010 feel the Party under-prioritises the NHS and education, and is too extreme on the pace and scale of cutting the size of the state and the deficit. And yesterday Ashcroft reminded the Tories that they are making a serious mistake to think that those who think of themselves as strivers have a ruggedly individualistic approach to life and simply want the government to get out of their way.

The signs are that Ashcrofts warnings will not be heeded. Currently the voices of the libertarian Right are baying at David Cameron the loudest, frustrated at a life of compromise inside the Coalition, and desperate for more and more market and less and less government. David Cameron finds himself besieged and weak, more concerned to use his Conference to manage his Partys right wingers than to address the hollowing-out of its underlying values.

But values matter. Ultimately, winning elections requires parties to have values that are shared by those that vote for them. In 1959 Quintin Hogg, then a Tory minister in MacMillans government, wrote in The Conservative Case that being Conservative is only another way of being British. I am sure that millions of Tory voters in that period of Conservative ascendancy thought what Hogg said was obvious. The fact that the same claim would be laughable to most voters now should be the thing that concerns David Cameron the most.

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Lord Wood of Anfield:the crisis of Conservative values

Glenn Beck. Photograph: Getty Images

In a bizarre story of unrequited love, American conservative political commentator Glenn Beck has written a heartfelt open letter to Muse frontman, Matt Bellamy.

The Fox News pundit, famous for his sharp tongue, was responding to recent comments made by the singer in an interview with the Observer on Sunday, in which Bellamy revealed that the band had repeatedly denied the use of the track Uprising for American political campaigns, calling its popularity among the farright weird.

In the US, the conspiracy theory subculture has been hijacked by the right to try to take down people like Obama and put forward rightwing libertarianism, he said, before going on to describe himself as a leftleaning libertarian.

Muse and Glenn Beck have a history: Beck previously endorsed Muses 2009 album The Resistance on his radio show and even likened their lyrical content to his own brand of republicanism, prompting drummer Dom Howard to label Beck a crazy rightwinger.

As uncomfortable as it might be for you, I will still play your songs loudly, the letter reads. To me your songs are anthems that beg for choruses of unity and pose the fundamental question facing the world today can man rule himself?

Beck then goes on (and on) to suggest that Bellamys own ideology isnt far off his own principles: in the Venn Diagram of American politics, where the circles of crimson and blue overlap, theres a place where you and I meet.

The rest of the letter then protractedly explains why he believes in Libertarianism before puzzlingly quoting lyrics from their fourth album and wishing them the best of luck on their new record.

Experience the madness, in full, below:

Dear Matthew, I read your comments in the Guardian via Rolling Stone last week and feel like with a little work we could better understand each other.

Continue reading here:
Glenn Beck's extraordinary open letter to Muse

[This essay is based on a paper presented at the April 1979 national meeting of the Philadelphia Society in Chicago. The theme of the meeting was "Conservatism and Libertarianism."]

Libertarianism is the fastest growing political creed in America today. Before judging and evaluating libertarianism, it is vitally important to find out precisely what that doctrine is, and, more particularly, what it is not. It is especially important to clear up a number of misconceptions about libertarianism that are held by most people, and particularly by conservatives. In this essay I shall enumerate and critically analyze the most common myths that are held about libertarianism. When these are cleared away, people will then be able to discuss libertarianism free of egregious myths and misconceptions, and to deal with it as it should be on its very own merits or demerits.

This is a common charge, but a highly puzzling one. In a lifetime of reading libertarian and classical-liberal literature, I have not come across a single theorist or writer who holds anything like this position.

The only possible exception is the fanatical Max Stirner, a mid-19th-century German individualist who, however, has had minimal influence upon libertarianism in his time and since. Moreover, Stirner's explicit "might makes right" philosophy and his repudiation of all moral principles including individual rights as "spooks in the head," scarcely qualifies him as a libertarian in any sense. Apart from Stirner, however, there is no body of opinion even remotely resembling this common indictment.

Libertarians are methodological and political individualists, to be sure. They believe that only individuals think, value, act, and choose. They believe that each individual has the right to own his own body, free of coercive interference. But no individualist denies that people are influencing each other all the time in their goals, values, pursuits, and occupations.

As F.A. Hayek pointed out in his notable article, "The Non Sequitur of the 'Dependence Effect,'" John Kenneth Galbraith's assault upon free-market economics in his best-selling The Affluent Society rested on this proposition: economics assumes that every individual arrives at his scale of values totally on his own, without being subject to influence by anyone else. On the contrary, as Hayek replied, everyone knows that most people do not originate their own values, but are influenced to adopt them by other people.[1]

No individualist or libertarian denies that people influence each other all the time, and surely there is nothing wrong with this inevitable process. What libertarians are opposed to is not voluntary persuasion, but the coercive imposition of values by the use of force and police power. Libertarians are in no way opposed to the voluntary cooperation and collaboration between individuals: only to the compulsory pseudo-"cooperation" imposed by the state.

This myth has recently been propounded by Irving Kristol, who identifies the libertarian ethic with the "hedonistic" and asserts that libertarians "worship the Sears Roebuck catalogue and all the 'alternative life styles' that capitalist affluence permits the individual to choose from."[2]

The fact is that libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral or aesthetic theory; it is only a political theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life.

"What a person does with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism."

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Myth and Truth About Libertarianism

Jason Brennan, an outstanding libertarian political philosopher who teaches at Georgetown University, has written Libertarianism as an introductory guide, and much of the material in it will be familiar to readers of the Mises Daily; but it deserves careful study by anyone interested in its subject. Brennan has a talent for explaining libertarian views in striking and effective ways. The book consists of 105 questions about libertarianism and Brennan's responses to them.

In defending libertarianism, Brennan stands resolutely against the consensus position of his fellow political philosophers. Today, books touting the virtues of deliberative democracy are ubiquitous; but Brennan dissents.[1] Libertarians

do not regard democratic participation and deliberation as the highest form of life. Many nonlibertarians have an almost religious reverence for democracy. They love democracy so much that they wish to see democracy in every aspect of life. They want democracy to be a way of living. They want everything open to democratic deliberation and decision making. Libertarians instead want to insulate people from political control. They do not want every decision to be subject to discussion. They believe one of the greatest freedoms of all is not having to justify yourself to others. If your entire life resembles a committee meeting, you are not free. (p. 69)

Brennan's objections would apply even to a democracy of the intelligent and informed; but in practice, democracy turns out to be rule by the incompetent. Brennan in his comments suggests a reborn Mencken:

Voters not only are systematically mistaken about basic economics, but they cannot figure out which candidates know more than they do in democracy incompetent leaders with false beliefs win. Libertarians say: If the candidates seem clueless, it is because the system works. (p. 72)

Brennan displays little respect for the chief icon of the American democratic tradition. He notes that

many Americans would rate Abraham Lincoln as the greatest president. Yet Lincoln fought the civil war not to free slaves, but to force the South to remain part of the United States. In the course of war, Lincoln suppressed habeas corpus, created the first national draft, suppressed free speech, censored and punished newspaper editors who criticized his war efforts, and was at least complicit in waging total war against innocent Southern civilians. By normal standards, this makes him a monster. (If I did these things, you would regard me as a vile and despicable person.)[2] (pp. 623)

If Brennan rejects democracy, what has he to put in its place? It will come as no surprise that his answer is libertarianism, but it is a different sort of libertarianism from that which the term will suggest to many of my readers. Followers of Murray Rothbard regard each person as a self-owner. Self-owners have the right to acquire property; and although the free market that results from implementing libertarian rights leads to greater prosperity than any alternative arrangement, the principal justification for these rights does not lie in their good consequences. To the contrary, they are natural rights.

To Brennan, this is not libertarianism sans phrase, but "hard libertarianism." It is but one of three forms of libertarianism, and not the one he prefers. Indeed, he says that in "some respects, it is an aberration inside classical liberal political thought" (p. 11).

What are the other forms? First is classical liberalism. Supporters of this position, though they favor the free market,

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What Is Neoclassical Liberalism?

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist who is in the process of moving to London. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

You can live in this illusion You can choose to believe You keep looking but you cant find the woods While youre hiding in the trees

Nine Inch Nails Right Where it Belongs

Many people that I meet who are vaguely interested in economics usually people in academia outside of the economics departments or working in lower tier sectors of banking and finance are enamoured with libertarianism and its economic doctrines. Meanwhile the Republican Vice Presidential nominee an Ayn Rand obsessive has channelled such ideas into a truly otherworldly budget proposal.

Libertarianism-lite has become the last refuge for the ideological conservative. The ideals of mainstream conservativism appear absurd in light of the 2008 crisis. It then became clear that the entire economic system was far from the meritocracy structured according to free entry and competition that many supposed, but instead one dominated by incestuous ties between quasi-government institutions and big corporations. And the ugly part was those collusive relationships arose as a direct result of deregulation. Less regulation allowed for large companies to exercise unbridled market power, and they channeled those profits into the political process, to further skew regulations in their favor.

However, rather than recognize that free market doctrines lead to concentrations of power, many responded to the aggressive promotion by business and economists of this ideology, leading them to move further to the right in the wake of the crisis, become antagonistic and even a little extremist toward the system as it actually exists and embrace radical aspects of the libertarian doctrine. Mainstream politicians then cherry-pick certain aspects of these doctrines and feed them back to their base.

This is, in a very real way, where we are today. No, libertarianism has not gone mainstream. But aspects of it have permeated the mainstream. And this makes some of its purer arguments interesting to consider.

Deflation and Nostalgia

The most popular aspect of the libertarian doctrine today is probably the idea that deflation is not such a bad thing indeed, it may even be a morally purifying cure. Uncomfortable like a cold shower but necessary to rid a gluttonous populace of its worst excesses.

The economic argument among actual libertarians for this view runs broadly that prices in a competitive economy should generally be tending downwards rather than upwards. The rational argument as is typical of extremist ideologies for the most part masks a more deeply embedded emotional appeal. Simply put, the argument plays to the hoarding impulse so prevalent among gold-bugs, who appear to overlap strongly with libertarians.

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Philip Pilkington: The 19th Century Long Depression: How it Fostered Oligopolistic Capitalism and Serves as a Model ...