03/12/07
Jonah Goldberg makes too much of the culture shift in libertarianism towards an alleged positive liberty.
As usual, I find myself deeply unimpressed by Goldberg:
Libertarianism was once primarily concerned with negative liberty — i.e. delineating a zone free of government intrusion. Meyer's libertarianism was primarily concerned with the ability of the individual to find the virtuous path within "an objective moral order based on ontological foundations" best expressed in Western civilization. As such, fusionism was less a coalitional doctrine than a metaphysical imperative. But these days, phrases like "objective moral order" will get you knocked off Cato's Kwanzaa-card list. Liberty's virtue is no longer that it supports the virtuous. Rather, according to today's leading libertarians, economic freedom's virtue lies in its ability to provide everybody the custom-made lifestyle of his choice.
. . .This emphasis on the liberating power of technology and wealth — i.e., materialism and positive liberty — represents an enormous philosophical transformation within libertarianism that echoes, albeit faintly, elements of the economic liberalism of John Dewey and FDR. [emphases removed]
This is all so amazingly old hat that I can point out the worn felt and sweat rings.
What we are witnessing here is not a new commitment to positive liberty, but merely a tweak on the old Better Bathtub rhetoric of libertarian argument. With liberty you get better consumer goods, a better life, as paradigmatically represented by that Better Bathtub. The new versions of this argument, as provided by folks at Cato and Reason and elsewhere, are merely less crass than the old materialistic
rap, now emphasizing the spiritual value
of better things.
I've no problem with it.
Further, it doesn't explain the topic Jonah G. gleefully gee-whizzes about (to deflate) up front: the several attempts to reforge alliances with the left, or at least the Democratic Party. Indeed, the reason for that rapprochement is that, in the wake of the disastrous and deceitful reign of George Bush the Younger, aligning oneself with people who seem more than open to constitutional limits on Imperial Presidents and the tyrants thundering on the right could be a good way to . . . shore up negative liberty! Yes, it is for their favoring of personal liberties — good, old-fashioned negative freedom! — and opposition to imperialism that the left seems open to dialogue and influence. The right, as typified by GOP partisans like Jonah G., has been too open to the tyranny that the Bush administration has both boldly and timidly worked towards.
I have many friends and allies who admire Jonah Goldberg. I do not. To me he seems just another near-witless conservative pundit and GOP rah-rah shill. And that word, kerfuffle
; I've tried it once or twice, I think. And found it ugly and stupid , too suggestive of a low IQ . . . or else low taste. Probably both. The conservative pundit and blogger class uses it over and over again. Do these folk think it makes them sound Menckenian? (Stick to brummagem,
people!)
It makes them sound moronic. That is, more moronic than they are by argument alone.
As for Tyler Cowen's comment, quoted by Jonah G., it deserves better commentary than Jonah G. can provide:
Those developments have brought us much greater wealth and much greater liberty, at least in the positive sense of greater life opportunities. They’ve also brought much bigger government. The more wealth we have, the more government we can afford. Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will demand. That is the fundamental paradox of libertarianism. Many initial victories bring later defeats.
I am not so worried about this paradox of libertarianism. Overall libertarians should embrace these developments. We should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don’t have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal.
I don't consider what I call the Luxury Theorem of Government Growth a paradox,
for starters. Libertarianism provides a normative agenda, not a theory of social evolution. To note that government tends to grow in a democratic republic, in part because increased wealth brings a lower marginal utility to the wealth forgone by government extraction, is hardly earth-shaking. It is a very old notion. And it fits well with other notions, such as explored by Public Choice economists; you know: the problem of diffuse costs and concentrated benefits.
It's just something those who argue for liberty have always had to deal with. That is, if they were smart.
Those who foolishly played the prediction game, resting their prophetic stance not on critique but on hope for revolution, had troubles. But I discount them. This is Rothbard's legacy at its worst. Smart libertarians reject such nonsense. Liberty's value does not increase because of a coming cultural evolution towards less government, or because of a government collapse as a result of liberty's spurning. Liberty remains the ideal, and retains salience even when the tide turns against it.
It's worth noting that savvy economists were discussing this a century ago and more. And most lost their bearings (though Molinari and Clark did not, it is worth remembering).
Also worth noting is this: The Luxury Theorem of Government Growth is closely related to the Laffer Curve (a very old principle, really). Governments can extract more at a lower rate, often. Similarly, the more the wealth in society the more that society can support higher rates as well as more extractions in total. It's part of the same principle set.
I don't see how this changes the case for establishing negative liberty.
I also disagree with Tyler Cowen regarding this: the older story of
big government crushes liberty
is being superseded by advances in liberty bring bigger government.
There is a dialectical, two-way relationship here that he's looking at in an alarmingly one-dimensional way. This astounds me, actually, since Tyler C. usually strikes me as one of the smartest cookies in the jar of contemporary libertarian economics.
Oh, well. No one is right all the time. Cowen himself may even express second thoughts, now that Jonah G. has trotted out his arguments to prove a remarkably silly point.
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