Chairman of Connecticut Libertarian Party responds

In response to the http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/06/chairman-of-connecticut-libertarian.html  Angry Bear invitation for Libertarians to converse on issues from their perspective, Dan Reale’s e-mail response  was posted in its entirety.  
 
I could respond on a number of levels whether on  a current policies level of the elections or more anecdotally in regards to my rights and my neighbors.  Dan Reale’s reply chose property rights as a focus, although the  National statement of Libertarian Party platform published by the  National Libertarian Party convention of May 2011   http://www.lp.org/platform  includes much to irritate and delight non libertarians. (hat tip sammy)  
 
To Dan Reale I ask:  
“With all due respect, this response avoids some hard questions, particularly those involving frictions between people.  What happens in a libertarian world if one resident of a very crowded apartment building is suicidal but also wants to fill his apartment to the brim with high explosives?  Is there a libertarian “solution” that does not involve waiting until the worst has happened?  And what about pollution?  As Mike Kimel noted a few weeks ago here at Angry Bear, most of us agree with libertarians that a person should be allowed to do as they please on their property, including polluting it to the point of making it unliveable.  But what remedy do libertarians propose when the polluter refuses to keep that pollution on their turf and allows to float (or actively pushes it) into someone else’s property?”

CoRev.

But the use of courts isn’t a solution in the two situations Dan mentions.  If some dude blows up an apartment building because a) he has the right to stockpile whatever he pleases and b) he’s suicidal, how are you going to use the courts afterwards?  And pollution?  If my son dies of exposure to some toxin, how will I know who emitted that toxin? 

Bear in mind that in a world of rights as defined by libertarians both events (i.e., extreme violence and massive externalities) are more likely.  See, discovery and pre-emption takes trampling on rights as defined by libertarians.  How can you know what your neighbor has stockpiled, or that he is a nutjob, in a libertarian world?  How can you determine what toxins are being emitted in a libertarian world?  The pre-emptive mechanisms that exist now are imperfect, but without them you end up with more events that either cannot be rectified and/or whose culprit cannot be found later.  

Which comes down to the flip side of rights.  Presumably I should have a right to know what someone is emitting if they aren’t keeping it on their property and instead are exporting it onto my property.  That is particularly true if that externality will kill my child.  Otherwise, there is no benefit to civilization, or perhaps there is no civilization whatsoever. 

As I noted in my post that Dan references, it is possible for  those whose behavior generates massive externalities to take actions to reduce those externalities.  It isn’t possible for everyone else to anticipate every possible massively harmful externality and defend against it.  That should put the onus on those generating massively harmful externalities, which, because there are no ex port remedies, should in trun allow for regulation of that sort of activity.  

Dan

Actually, I don’t think a person ought to be allowed to pollute his own property.That’s lile saying he ought to be allowed to kill his own kids.

I am all for the libertarian desire to be left alone, and believe that the rest of us, though our power as the government need to be very respectful of this.  Where we can be.

And that’s what it comes down to… a difference of opinion in each case about whether we are so harmed or endangered by someone else’s behavior that we must act to infringe what he may quite sincerely regard as his sacred rights.

From what I have heard here I would be a lot slower to take that action than Mike would be.  On the other hand, almost of the pious proclaiming of the Libertarian principle that I have heard has been ultimately about the “right” of the libertarian to harm his neighbors with impunity and to refuse to pay taxes because he doesn’t agree with his neighbors about the need for them.

CoRev

it’s also the elections.   I am the first to think our government is in the hands of lunatics and fools, but that may only be a reflection of the people who vote.  The trouble with government today is perhaps an excessive desire to regulate on the one hand, and a brain damaged claim to  be able to avoid all regulation on the other.  

In all societies the fundamental arbiter is the opinion of your peers.  In a simple enough society this works without any formal laws or courts,  as society becomes more complex and we need to get along with Samaritans and Jews we evolve means of doing so.  Those “contracts” that Libertarians are so fond of ARE the laws that people make under the “constitution” they… or their founding fathers… agreed to.  Sorry about that being born into a world you never made.  But it’s the common lot of all humanity.  of all life.

As for the big gun owners

I actually support the Second Amendment understanding that the people should be able to keep and bear arms without government permission.  But my support wavers a bit when my neighbors get out their big guns and spoil my Sundays with big booms and worries about just where the assholes are pointing those guns,  and the dying deer on my property don’t make me feel too good either.

So if it turned out that most of my neighbors agreed with me and we could pass a law that would restrict the recreational use of these guns, i think i would vote for it and be glad.   

On the other hand I am keenly aware that if it was me that had the gun and they came and told me i couldn’t have a little target practice on “my own land’ (funny as hell that concept.  the land has been here a billion years and will be here a billion years after i am gone. so i have a right to ruin it for all future generations because i happen to have traded a few dollars for a piece of paper saying i “own” it… subject to a few taxes and government regulations, of course??)… i would be mightily upset.

But hell, I was mightily upset when I was two years old and “they” told me there was something I couldn’t do then… though i forget just what it was.

Dan Reale  
 
Actually, your whole concept of “property owner” is mistaken.  
 
You don’t understand what property owner means.  You gave someone money for his rights in the property which then became your rights. As he in his turn had given someone money for their rights… and so on.  But the original owner of the property was the “sovereign” and that owner never sold ALL of his rights to the property.  You only have Some rights, subject to the rights retained by the sovereign.  
 
This has ALWAYS  been the case.  If you want to “own” property in the sense you think you own it, you need to be the sovereign. You need to conquer it and hold it by force.  This is the way it has always been.  
 
IF you want to conquer your own land, good luck with that.  You might need some help. You’d probably have to make a contract with your helpers, giving them some rights that you would promise not to infringe.  Of course as times changed you might want to renege on that contract a bit, or maybe they would.  And then there’d be a tussle, more or less subtle or bloody depending on the needs and powers of the parties.  
 
Of course it would be fine to stand up and deliver high sounding sermons about “rights” and “liberties” and all that.  Might even gain you some helpers,  among the peasants who think you mean it.  or that it means something, anyway.

CoRev,

OK.  Forget the extremes.  There are plenty of studies that show even “routine” amounts of pollution affect people’s cognitive abilities.  In a libertarian world, emissions would be unregulated and the Cuyahoga River would still be on fire.  (In fact, a whole lot of other rivers would be on fire too.)  

Now, we all know that the reason the Cuyahoga River is not on fire and hasn’t been for the past twenty years has nothing to do with market forces or people suing the folks doing the polluting.  It was government action.  

Letting people put whatever they want into the Cuyahoga River means allowing people who want to put stuff into the Cuyahoga River to determine environmental conditions on the property of people that border that river.  

So let us say that we reduce the legislative power of the government to the minimum possible.  Now, what happens to the courts?  The business of regulating human interactions will shift neatly from the legislative branch to the judicial. Judges will have enormous power because they will the first and last arbiter of all questions. “Law” will be made by judicial precedent, reflecting the reigning “judicial philosophy”.
And what will our friends in the oil companies, banks and agricultural processors do? They’re not stupid. Instead of lobbying, the corrupting influence of the rich and powerful will focus on influencing the selection of judges, lawyering-up to crush opposition, perhaps even controlling access to the practice of law in order to keep out the “wrong” kinds of people (read: pro-bono practicing attorneys).   
I am no more ready to grant the disappearance of human nature with respect libertarianism than I am with regard to Socialism or Communism. Power abhors a vacuum and the ruthless will rush in to shape the environment to their liking.   Without a balance of powers, I fear that our country will be exposed to greater corruption than we see even today.

I guess a true libertarian would be opposed to traffic laws, then?

Mike, now you are making assumptions.  Let me make one.  If polluters knew that anyone down river of them could sue them out of business (that courts solutions), then they might be more careful of how they disposed of dangerous pollutants.

If anyone knew any of their neighbors could sue for dangerous actions carrying out side their property, then they might be more careful of how they act.  If most members of society cared of how they were acting towards others, then the may act accordingly better.

It’s that ole personal responsibility thing that conservatives and libertarians preach.  Government is not the solution, but in many instances may be the or exacerbating the problem.

Concerning pollution (and many other things), the fix should always be a firm law that if you break it , you pay for all of the damage – or go bankrupt trying. Had this been the case from the onset, the Exxon spill, the BP disaster (or Goldman Sachs, et al defrauding pensioners and mortgage borrowers) would either have not happened or been far less severe. But the fact is, I think as you agree, that there are two sets of rules – one for us and one for the too-big-to-fails.

But that’s what happens when we say “what if” and then hand the government obscene amounts of power. I think we can agree that there’s a trade-off, but on our current end of the spectrum, we’re sorely lacking in the ability to do much of anything to prevent the damage government does in the name of someone in the private sector not doing the same sort of damage.

For example, look at what we did when we set up the Federal Reserve System. It was supposed to gaurantee reasonable access to credit, full employment and economic stability. And we handed over a phenomenal amount of power to prevent lack of credit access, a reasonable amount of employment and economic instability. So with its ability to counterfeit, it works to make sure that Wall Street has free money and will never have to incur a real loss. Meanwhile, we take the hit on the end of inflation (and in the case of QE2, rising commodity prices). So unless you’re the who’s who, it’s difficult to predict who will be worth what six months from now (in the real world, that is), when it’s safe to invest, ect. And price discovery isn’t allowed to happen. Oddly enough, we’re learning the same sort of thing again. We created the Fed in 1913 to prevent something like 1921 (which corrected on its own without intervention) and 1929. Of course, it was the Fed that made the Great Depression worse by dramatically contracting credit. In the last ten years, it was the Fed that made 2008’s collapse inevitable – you just can’t live on credit forever as a substitute for actual production.

And on the note of Wall Street, if you commit fraud or perjury, you should go to jail. So because we’ve handed off so much power to the government, and by proxy, the corporate interests who own it, you and I will still do hard time for robbing a package store. But if you steal hundreds of billions through fraud (or help) while knowingly violating feel good laws like Sarbanes Oxley, you get to be the Secretary of the Treasury. Check kiting was illegal way before this… so was lying to Congress under oath… so was murder through criminal negligence via taking us to war based on a lie… so was obstruction of justice.

The fact is that you and I are viewed as chattel in this overall scheme. It’s not unreasonable to say we ought to stop acting like chattel in the name of safety or security, especially when doing so voids the purpose.

And the apartment building is a poor analogy because it leaves out the owner of the apartment building while assuming that just because there’s a law, bad things won’t happen and the law will always be enforced. That said, a better one would be two adjacent property owners, the first with plans to build a nuclear reactor and the second living next door. Obviously, the noise, the traffic, waste disposal, ect. are going to infringe on the rights of the other property owner.

CoRev

we can already sue.  it’s a pretty damned expensive way to solve a problem, and your odds aren’t good when the guy you are suing has enough money to hire a hundred lawyers, and invite the judge to dinner.

writing a law and voting for it is the same as “suing” except on a mass production basis.

what your Libertarian wants is for each worker to approach him individually so he can say “take it or leave it.”  and have his goons beat him up if he causes too much trouble.

the only answer that people have for that is government.

“If most members of society cared of how they were acting towards others, then the may act accordingly better.  “

Agreed.  And in a less complex society, as coberly says, that would be greatly encouraged by peer pressure.  In our complex society, the courts provide a non-violent way to address wrongs.  Theoretically.

If that “guy” (or, now, corporate “person”) up the river is powerful, wealthy, and doesn’t care, on a personal level, what happens down river, those down river could go to court seeking relief.  After the fact.

In reality, seeking injunctive relief, by itself, would be costly.  Seeking compensation for damage already done is more expensive and could take years.  Individually, those down river might be unable to afford the courts.  Class action is now under attack. 

The polluter upstream is aware of all this.  He/she/it knows that some of those potential plaintiffs can be influenced, at relatively small expense, to avoid the courts, and lacking that, has the resources to delay judicial action or in some cases to outlast plaintiffs’ ability to continue . 

In a system where asymmetric power and resources have strong influence on the outcome, those at a disadvantage must be extremely committed to a long and difficult process and must find legal help willing to commit to same, sometimes for very little compensation.

So theoretically, courts can address conflicts of this sort.  They can provide injunctive relief, and if government intervenes in the interest of public safety, it’s more likely to happen in a reasonable amount of time.  However, lacking that personal responsibility upstream, all of that happens after someone is injured. 

The critical question, then, if one disagrees with the libertarian premise, is what types of situations present clear and present danger to others, severe enough to merit government regulation and intervention.  On this, disagreement is inevitable, and at any given time there will be people who seek government intrusion into areas of individual life where the rationale is shaky at best.  For example, is it reasonable for a city to get involved if the owner of one house on the block chooses to grow vegetables or xeriscape in their front yard?  The harm here isn’t physical.  It can be argued that the property values of grass growers might be affected, but how much of that argument is simple bias and personal taste?

LindaR, on thing, you are compatring today’s courst system with possible alternatives.  Courts in a libertarian world may very well be differently motivated.  Cease/desist suits also may be different, as each affected coule be a separate litigant.  The costs would then be on the defendant’s side and not on the filer.  And that could be many times over.

CoRev,

Point taken.  However, when evaluating how Libertarian changes might operate in our real world (absent a takeover, or the founding of a new nation somewhere now uninhabited), I go with what is pre-existing and consider what changes are likely.  Rather than expand on that, I’ll refer you to Scott F below.  There is assymetric power in this world, and it won’t go away by fiat in a Libertarian regime.

“We believe that government’s only function is to protect individual rights. There are a variety of things that government does to accomplish that end, among these being a court system.”

Once you identify the necessity of the government relying on a court system you recognize the need for a legislative body.  Legislation precedes a court system otherwise the courts have no structure within which to carry out the ajudication of “issues.”  Once there is a legislative system set up to precede the court system you have to recognize the right of the legislative body, in our case the Congress, to define the rights and limitations on all its citizens.  No, Libertarians don’t get to make the laws as they go along.  A government protects the rights of all of its citizens, or it should at least.  it’s only a matter of defining a heirarchy of rights.  My right to be safe from harm trumps your right to drive while drunk.  That’s real simple.  The hard choices come when its my right to be protected from harm versus your right to carry a gun, and possibly use it in an irresponsible manner. 

The conclusion is that the Libertarian perspective is too simplistic to be applied to a modern and complex society.   

Interesting . . .  I guess no one has read John S. Mill and “On Liberty.” He had a sound view on the rights of the individual and what they can and can not do. He sums it up with this statement:

The Beginnig of Chater 4: “What then, is the rightful limit to the sovereignty of the individual over himself? Where does the authority of society begin? How much of human life should be assigned to individuality, and how much to society?

Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This conduct consists first, in not injuring the interests of one another; or rather certain interests, which, either by express legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be considered as rights; and secondly, in each person’s bearing his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the labours and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or its members from injury and molestation. These conditions society is justified in enforcing at all costs to those who endeavour to withhold fulfilment. Nor is this all that society may do. The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights. The offender may then be justly punished by opinion, though not by law. As soon as any part of a person’s conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no room for entertaining any such question when a person’s conduct affects the interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and social, to do the action and stand the consequences.

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one – if he had the power – would be justified in silencing mankind”

LindaR, are you trying to make the world and its populations symmetric? 

Also, saying this: “… when evaluating how Libertarian changes might operate in our real world (absent a takeover, or the founding of a new nation somewhere now uninhabited), I go with what is pre-existing and consider what changes are likely. …”  No, you didn’t consider change.  You compared a hypothetical Libertarian world with today’s courts system/structure.  Changing only one side of the equation misses the essence of the article.

“…too simplistic to be applied to a modern and complex society.” Yes, Jack, exactly. And, there’s always the problem of defining the difference between a “right” and a “preference.” To you, my right may be only a preference to be ignored if you can afford to pay for my inconvenience or you are judgement proof. Since the LP’s philosophy sees all rights as coming from the ownership of property, it follows that people with no property have no rights, isn’t it so? Seems like an unsurmountable argument against Libertarianism. NancyO

run

i am afraid i have almost as much trouble with Mill as i have with libertarians.  it’s not that i don’t agree with him. it’s that i don’t think his philosophy is very much help in sorting out the actual questions that arise.

The fundamental problem with libertarianism is that it is based on ideals or assumptions that relate very poorly to reality.

This sums it up pretty neatly:

If the action of the property owner (as in the person with the corresponding rights inherent to that ownership) would take action that would risk damage to property, infringe the rights of others or limit the rights of others, that person taking such action needs to obtain (or contract for) permission.

How do you contract for wine fraud?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/executive-lifestyle/french-wine-fraud-becomes-noir-drama/story-e6frg8jo-1225831444096
,or for lacing sweet Austrian wine with toxic ethylene glycol (1985)?
or lacing Hungarian paprika with red lead (1994)?
or melamine in Chinese baby formula (2008)?

Taking somebody to court after they killed your baby, your brother, or your self is not a particularly satisfying experience.   Or so I am assuming.

Alas,
JzB

Change the specifics, and you have the conditions of West Virginia coal miners, only a few decades ago.

Of course, you also have to include he right to get murdered by Pinkerton guards . . .

But, hey, that’s free enterprise, and it’s all good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUpTJg2EBpw

JzB

My take is that libertarians are, just like Marxists, utopian.  Libertarians take the flip side of the Marxist coin and subsitute absolute public ownership with absolute individual ownership.

There’s a good reason why the libertarian road is the one less traveled.

Libertarians might want to explore what minimal government and popular opinion with real teeth amounted to. One example of both conditions hunter-gatherer bands. These are, by and large, very tolerant of individual differences, but they are also rather definite in their judgements. Bushmen will let a killing done in anger go by, but repeat it and you get killed by the whole band. The result is a murder rate that makes New York look peaceful.

In reality, you *can* sue. Just try suing Monsanto for their pollution of your crops, for example.