> most libertarians I know today aren't so keen on things like pigovian taxes to correct differences between marginal social cost and marginal private cost.
Which is weird! I've never understood why libertarians seem to discount external costs so deeply.
I think there is a breed of libertarian that values them sanely, but that it's the less rabid sort that tends not to rant on the internet. I'd include Friedman and Megan McArdle in this group.
I don't agree about valuing happiness instead of freedom, though. It's shouldn't be the government's job to worry about how happy you are, it should be government's job to make sure you're free to pursue happiness should you so choose.
> I've never understood why libertarians seem to discount external costs
Most libertarians are aware that the Government meddles heavily in the economy, and everything bad about the economy that's blamed on capitalism wasn't a fair test b/c it wasn't actually laissez faire capitalism that was tested. There is no good reason to expect external cost problem to be worse under a genuinely free market than they are now. So libertarians needn't say much about the issue.
And anyway, what do you expect libertarians to say about it? Either one can say that Government is the answer, or isn't. Libertarians are exactly the people who have knowledge about why Government is bad at solving problems, so they are the last people you'd expect to want the Government trying to solve this one.
> And anyway, what do you expect libertarians to say about it? Either one can say that Government is the answer, or isn't.
Ah, we've pinpointed the nonsense! I'll leave you with some words from Milton Friedman on the New Deal:
> The other part of the new deal policy was relief and recovery … providing relief for the unemployed, providing jobs for the unemployed, and motivating the economy to expand … an expansive monetary policy. Those parts of the New Deal I did support. (…) Because it was a very exceptional circumstance. We'd gotten into an extraordinarily difficult situation, unprecedented in the nation's history. You had millions of people out of work. Something had to be done; it was intolerable. And it was a case in which, unlike most cases, the short run deserved to dominate.
With the point being, sometimes government is necessary and sometimes it's not. It's not an all-or-nothing endeavour.
Milton Friedman is not the only person to sometimes say unlibertarian things. To start with, you can add to your list David Friedman, Ayn Rand, and F A Hayek.
Next you can add me. I think libertarianism today is too isolationist regarding war and terrorism.
But we cannot find the truth by analyzing who said what. The important thing is which ideas are right, not who said them.
Capitalism and human nature tell us that lobbying and corruption will be a consequence of regulation. Libertarians simply realize that regulations are not just the "grand vision" that they are presented as... they create winners and losers, beneficiaries and those who are made worse off. As such libertarians constantly re-evaluate how effectively regulations accomplish the grand vision in the environment of the perverse incentives that are often created and grow over time.
At a very basic level this is simply a scientific, non-political world view. It's evidence-based. If you read through many of the threads on HN you can feel the deep sentimentality that people feel about things like Social Security, etc. It's an emotional, irrational, unscientific response.
Why are you critical of libertarianism? Do you support some special interest group that stands to lose simply from smaller government? Or are you sentimentally attached to the grand vision presented as the persuasive argument for some piece of historical regulation? Or are you a career burocrat :)
>Most libertarians are aware that the Government meddles
>heavily in the economy, and everything bad about the economy
>that's blamed on capitalism wasn't a fair test b/c it wasn't
>actually laissez faire capitalism that was tested.
Isn't that what the defenders of communism say about the USSR and China? (Stalinim and Maoism respectively, rather than pure Communism as Marx et al. intended)
The point being that 'pure' libertarianism is possibly just as realistic as pure communism, or perhaps even democracy (either in the sense of 'pure' (i.e. direct) democracy at a national level, or even, with representative systems, that the majority of the population is well informed regarding issues at hand and actively participates in the democratic process).
Which is weird! I've never understood why libertarians seem to discount external costs so deeply.
I think there is a breed of libertarian that values them sanely, but that it's the less rabid sort that tends not to rant on the internet. I'd include Friedman and Megan McArdle in this group.
I don't agree about valuing happiness instead of freedom, though. It's shouldn't be the government's job to worry about how happy you are, it should be government's job to make sure you're free to pursue happiness should you so choose.