Simple question, via Salon.com...why are there no libertarian countries?
My answer has always been this: the same reason why socialist fantasies never work in reality is the same reason why libertarian fantasies never work in reality...people. They really suck. If the state planned everything, they'd have too much power and corrupt people would be naturally drawn to it. If the state planned nothing and let the free market just sort everything out, the corrupt people would get away with everything they wanted.
Michael Lind, the writer of the piece, makes a few interesting points on this subject.
When you ask libertarians if they can point to a libertarian country, you are likely to get a baffled look, followed, in a few moments, by something like this reply: While there is no purely libertarian country, there are countries which have pursued policies of which libertarians would approve: Chile, with its experiment in privatized Social Security, for example, and Sweden, a big-government nation which, however, gives a role to vouchers in schooling.
But this isn’t an adequate response.
Libertarian theorists have the luxury of mixing and matching policies to create an imaginary utopia. A real country must function simultaneously in different realms—defense and the economy, law enforcement and some kind of system of support for the poor. Being able to point to one truly libertarian country would provide at least some evidence that libertarianism can work in the real world.
Yet they can't do it. It's been my experience that these same people are often "based in science and logic" and require "hard evidence" before they can justify something. Thus, it's quite odd that they continually perpetuate this myth that a libertarian society would be the best. Where is the proof?
While the liberal welfare-state left, with its Scandinavian role models, remains a vital force in world politics, the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of the Marxist-Leninist countries it held up as imperfect but genuine models. Libertarians have often proclaimed that the economic failure of Marxism-Leninism discredits not only all forms of socialism but also moderate social-democratic liberalism.
But think about this for a moment. If socialism is discredited by the failure of communist regimes in the real world, why isn’t libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarian regimes in the real world? Communism was tried and failed. Libertarianism has never even been tried on the scale of a modern nation-state, even a small one, anywhere in the world.
Exactly right and there's a reason for that perfectly summed up in one word: anarchy.
10 comments:
Prior to 1787 could anyone point to a country based on such values as ours in founded upon?
Socialist countries and socialist methods are discredited? And yet there are still socialist countries, and some getting more so rather than less. Fascism discredited? And yet there are still fascist countries.
Just because there haven't yet been any libertarian countries doesn't mean a single blessed thing except that it hasn't been tried yet.
Question: how old an idea is libertarianism? Could that have anything to do with why there haven't been any libertarian countries yet? Isn't this whole post a bit like asking in 1000 why there aren't any nations that have abolished slavery or serfdom, and isn't that proof that free societies/nations are untenable in real life?
While interesting, the Salon article is based on an incorrect premise. Most governments before the advent of modern democracy were in fact libertarian: there was no central authority, so the strongest ruled. We happen to call them feudal monarchies.
The lack of a sufficiently strong central authority, the hallmark of a so-called "libertarian" government, means that something else will eventually grow strong enough to fill the power vacuum.
Thus, almost by definition, a true libertarian government is impossible: in order to meet the threat of a takeover from corporations, or religions, or communists, or monarchists, or outside forces, a libertarian government would have to become the opposite of the thing it was defending itself against. Dislodging the government that just successfully resisted a revolution would be almost impossible, because it would have just proved itself necessary.
The other false assumption is that there is such a thing as "libertarian" governments. Libertarian describes a system of beliefs, not a governmental structure and organization.
Thus, we can have a liberal democracy, or a conservative republic, or a liberal constitutional monarchy, or a conservative theocracy. We can't have a democratic liberocracy or a republican conservatocracy. Thus, we could have a libertarian democracy, a libertarian oligarchy, or a libertarian republic, or a libertarian theocracy.
Basically, libertarian is an adjective and has no noun form in and of itself. Except, as Mark notes, the ultimate end-state of any government that takes its libertarianism too far: anarchy.
Figures you'd be lapping Lind up.
Here is a terrific fisking of such a typical piece of Salon garbage.
One can imagine a bewigged intellectual ancestor of Lind discussing politics in a London coffeehouse, perhaps after enjoying a new performance of Wycherley’s bawdy comedy The Country Wife. This 17th-century Lind would inveigh against the presumptuous Earl of Shaftesbury for his “A Letter from a Person of Quality” opposing the divine right of kings to absolute rule. “Thank God that good King Charles II has been restored to the throne!” he would say. “Look across the world. History manifestly teaches that there have been no truly successful countries that were not ruled by absolute monarchs.”
So you have to totally ignore the U.S. after the Civil War and prior to the original Progressive Era. Instead we are to believe the Progressive dogma that whatever the govt does is okay and the Constitution doesn't matter. Speaking of which...
Even the NYT doesn't defend the budding police state.
The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.
I would say it must suck to be you, but you've been sucking so long and so hard it is just another day at the office, isn't it?
Holy shit, I just read N's 'comment'. You are even more fucking stupid than Lind. Well, I guess that shouldn't be a surprise since you don't write for Salon.
I find it amusing that the only criticism you have, generally speaking, is "You're stupid." What age group employs that same tactic?
Pining for the old days, are we? Like when Hamilton and Washington ignored the Constitution and started a national bank? Or when they decided to tax farmers to help pay for the war?
IS that really what I said, Markadelphia? If you truly think so, then I just feel sorry for you and a whole hell of a lot sorrier for your putative students.
I find it amusing that the only criticism you have
What? I am supposed to humor the dull witted child?
Childish and dishonest - yep, that really does say so much.
The excise tax on whiskey wasn't unconstitutional. Unfair in some aspects of the way it was written, but an excise tax on alcohol was most certainly Constitutional. Claiming that it was is, umm, stupid.
As is the way you've variously confused or conflated libertarianism with anarchism, conservativism, Republicanism, or even fascism depending on whatever bug you've got up your butt at the moment. That's pretty fucking stupid and/or dishonest, too. Especially considering the number of times you've been called on it and corrected. And sometimes even acknowledged it, only to promptly forget it.
As Bugs Bunny would've put it, "What a maroon!" And that goes for Nikto, too. He's got you beat in the Spittle-Flecked Rants department, but you've got the advantage in the Overweening Smug of Self-Righteous Unwavering Certainty.
Larry, I also like how M has given up the pretense of defending his positions. Nope, he just posts 'em, maybe comments once or twice and never actually engages with people.
He is a real killer of strawmen though, you have to give him that.
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