Hard line or Classical libertarianism

[Mikee]

By Richard Epstein: http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/167496

The title of this thread should be: "Why classical liberalism is superior to hard-core libertarianism."

[Peter]

What the author Richard Epstein calls classical liberalism sounds just like RINO or “Republicans in name only,” to me. I would never be a big L libertarian because their only need is to renounce the initiation of force. That leaves a whole bunch of left libertarians, and people like Rothbard who endorsed Communism over the United States system of freedom. I will claim small “l” libertarianism combined with Randian limited government as ideal.

Peter Taylor

Some chopped up excerpts from “My Rand Paul Problem” by Richard A. Epstein Why classical liberalism is superior to hard-core libertarianism.

Libertarians and Holdouts

Libertarians fall into two distinct groups: strict libertarians like Rand Paul and classical liberals such as myself. “Classical liberal” is not a term that rolls off of the tongue. Consequently, “libertarian” is the choice term in popular discourse when discussing policies that favor limited government. Libertarians of all stripes oppose President Obama’s endless attacks on market institutions and the rich. The umbrella term comfortably embraces both strands of libertarian theory vis-à-vis a common intellectual foe.

The renewed attention to Paul exposes the critical tension between hard-line libertarians and classical liberals. The latter are comfortable with a larger government than hard-core libertarians because they take into account three issues that libertarians like Paul tend to downplay: (1) coordination problems; (2) uncertainty; (3) and matters of institutional design. None of this is at all evident from Tanenhaus and Rutenberg’s unfair caricature of the “mixed inheritance” among the “libertarian faithful,” which to them includes, “antitax activists and war protestors, John Birch Society members, and a smatter of truthers who suspect the government’s hand in the 2001 terrorist attacks.”

Serious hard-line libertarian thinkers include Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess. Rothbard believes nonaggression is the sole requirement of a just social order. For Hess, “libertarianism is the view that each man is the absolute owner of his life, to use and dispose of as he sees fit.” There are large kernels of truth in both propositions.

Intellectual property

Hard-line libertarians are often harsh opponents of copyrights (which limit freedom of speech) and patents (which limit one’s use of one’s own resources). Classical liberals recognize that a world without intellectual property protection could lead to low levels of social innovation. They work to devise a suitable legal framework for IP protection consistent with the constitutional provision that allows for the creation of copyrights and patents for limited times. Ask how many companies would invest over a billion dollars to formulate and test a new drug if others could enter into competition with them by offering a product developed by others for a fraction of the original price. As before, no hard-line libertarian can help design a system of property rights that he doesn’t think should exist.

The Rand Paul Dilemma

As Tanenhaus and Rutenberg note, Rand Paul knows that he must move to the center to become a credible political candidate. If he embraces a classical liberal framework, he can meet the objections of his critics without abandoning the best elements of his own libertarian position.

and finance, and individual and corporate taxation.

Rothbard wrote in, “For a New Liberty”:

Taking the twentieth century as a whole, the single most warlike, most interventionist, most imperialistic government has been the United States . . . . Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks adopted the theory of “peaceful coexistence” as the basic foreign policy of a communist state. The idea was this: as the first successful communist movement, Soviet Russia would serve as a beacon for, and supporter of other communist parties throughout the world.

But the Soviet state qua state would devote itself to peaceful relations with all other countries, and would not attempt to export communism through interstate warfare . . . . Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own, the Soviets arrived early at what Libertarians consider the only proper and principled foreign policy . . . . Increasing conservatism under Stalin and his successors strengthened and reinforced the non-aggressive, “peaceful existence” policy.”

end quote

From: BBfromM@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: ayn rand quote

Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 17:40:36 EDT

George wrote:

<< I am convinced that Ayn Rand was essentially an anarchist in substance, if not in name. She was at most a nominal governmentalist. If the conventional meaning of a word is to count for anything at all (and it should), then Rand's ideal "government" is in fact no government at all, but is merely a sheep in wolf's clothing. >>

Since you were concerned, rightly, with Nathaniel's statement of the meaning of volition he intended, it is, by the same standard, incorrect to call Ayn Rand "an anarchist in substance." She was not for "nominal" government; she was for *minimal* government -- limited to police force, courts, and defense. Her ideal government IS a government; no anarchist would sanction a national/state police force, courts, and defense. **Ayn Rand said that she was NOT an anarchist.**

George wrote:

<<How can I make this outrageous claim? I base it on Rand's moral opposition to coercive taxation. >>

Ayn Rand was, indeed, against coercive taxation. But she argued that government should be financially supported by its citizens -- in the form, as an example, of a payment when a contract is signed, since government is required to enforce contracts should they be abrogated. Her idea was that to the extent that one uses the services of government, one should pay for those services.

George wrote:

<<Virtually every defender of government -- from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson to Ludwig von Mises -- has recognized coercive taxation to be an essential component of sovereignty, a power without which no true government can exist.>>

With all respect to Locke, Jefferson, and Mises -- So what? Ayn Rand did not agree with them that no true government can exist without coercive taxation, and she presented an alternative.

You wrote:

<< Perhaps when Rand wrote that, she was thinking of some other type of anarchist rather than an anarcho-capitalist or anarcho-libertarian.>>

No, she was not. She rejected *all* forms of anarchism, communist, socialist, anarcho-capitalist, and anarcho-libertarian, and any yet-to-be-imagined kind of anarchism.

Barbara