A Slight Definition

By Robert Fischer | Published: December 18, 2005

Okay, when I say “Neocon”, I mean “Neoconservative”, which Republican drones have taken to calling “Big Government Conservatives” now that the libertarian conservative branch has all but completely defected. The revelation that Bush personally turned the military espionage agency against American people in blatant and thorough violation of due process, the Bush administration refusal to compromise on the most abhorrent parts of the Patriot Act, and the Bush nominees for Supreme Court have all driven that wedge deeper and deeper between Republicans and the libertarian “paleocons”.

BTW, the phrase “Republican drones” is not to imply that I don’t believe in Democratic drones…I’m just not talking about them right now.

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  • TheHawk

    I think the Libertarian’s may be offended by you lumping them in with the Paleocons, but I see your point.

  • http://enfranchisedmind.com Candide

    You’re right, there’s a difference — Libertarians are idealistic while paleocons are practical. Paleocons (for whatever reason) support strengthening the state governments at the expense of the federal government, and beating on the drum of efficiency. Libertarians, on the other hand, oppose government involvement at any level on principle.

  • TheHawk

    That’s a rather large generalization. There are some large philosophical differences betweeen the two as well. Paleoconservatism is much less about individual freedom as it is about localism. The paleocons are much more in favor of an us vs. them attitude which tends to lead towards certain self-serving ideals. For example, paleoconservatism is strongly opposed to free trade, as it endangers american products and workers. Libertarianism on the other hand, strongly supports free trade.

    And to say that Libertarians oppose government involvement at any level is not exactly true. Libertarians oppose most government involvement, except such as to prevent fraud or coercion. Everyone has the right to the freedom of personal choice, which cannot be properly executed if the person’s decisions are unduly influenced by someone else. For example, with the Enron situation, libertarianism supports govermental prevention of the fraud and misinformation used to persuade investors.

  • bhurt-aw

    Once you start accepting that the free market isn’t perfect, that it has failure modes, you very rapidly stop being a text book libertarian (who believes that any intervention in the free market in the free market is wrong), and rather rapidly slide over into being a liberal Democrat- who beleives that the federal goverment needs to interevene in the free market in order to prevent or help those instances where the free market is failing.

    For example- once you accept that monopolies exist (like Standard Oil or Microsoft), that they harm society as a whole, and that the free market is incapable of dealing with them, then you see the need for anti-monopoly laws (and their enforcement), and for the close regulation of natural monopolies (such as power and phone service). Wether splitting up Microsoft is the best way to handle it’s monopoly is up for debate- but not that some for of govermental intervention is necessary.

    Once you accept externalized costs, such as pollution or worker health, is a cost to the society as a whole- and that since this cost isn’t reflected in the purchase cost of the object or service, the natural workings of the market will tend to choose those means of production with maximized externalized cost, to the detriment of society as a whole, you recognize the need for environmental and worker health & safety regulation. Wether the EPA and OSHA is the best way to re-internalize those externalized costs is open to debate, but again, some form of govermental intervention is necessary.

    The standard Libertarian line on this is that if these issues really were important to the market, the market would react. My response is to posit the market did react- it invented goverment.

    Note that the goverment has to be as large as the market it is governing- otherwise you get these failure modes. This is why the EU formed- they realized they needed a goverment for the market they already had. This has been historically the advantage the US had- up until recently, it was the largest free market on the planet. But we need a Federal goverment to manage the Federal market. And we’re begining to see the need for a global goverment to go with the global market- to address issues like copyright and patent protection, workers rights, environmental issues, and so on.

  • http://enfranchisedmind.com Candide

    > And to say that Libertarians oppose government involvement
    > at any level is not exactly true. Libertarians oppose most
    > government involvement, except such as to prevent fraud or
    > coercion. Everyone has the right to the freedom of personal
    > choice, which cannot be properly executed if the person’s
    > decisions are unduly influenced by someone else. For example,
    > with the Enron situation, libertarianism supports govermental
    > prevention of the fraud and misinformation used to persuade
    > investors.
    >
    Can you find me a recognizable “mainstream libertarian” that came out in favor of the government’s involvement with Enron? I note that what Enron could easilly be construed not as fraud, but simply as Enron leveraging the accounting structures that government had created for them, and therefore the problem was government’s involvement in the free market. They’re creative use of shell companies wasn’t even expressly illegal up until they had done it, and it’s not far off from a legitimate use of child companies (i.e.: limiting repercussions from high-risk opportunities).

    And now you’ve got a new problem — at what point are a business’s actions “unduly” influencing the decision of people, and at what point are they simply doing what’s in their best interest? You throw out the word “fraud” or “coercion” — what does that mean? If a company fails to announce health side-effects of a product, is that fraud or simply putting their best foot forward? What does “announce” or “health side-effects” mean in that sentence, particularly with regards to fast-food companies who have predominantly high-fat products? And for coercion — are the addictive qualities of cigarettes, chocolate, and caffeinated soda coercive? What discourages a profit-based company from being coercive when offering a limited-range service (e.g.: roads, IP addresses)? Is it even possible for them to not be coercive in a free-ish market when there is a natural monopoly?

    To take it one more step, how do you make those decisions? As soon as you leave pure libertarianism (government involvement at any level of the free market is wrong), you end up needing a supplemental philosophy in order to fill in all the gaps. This reduces libertarianism’s decision process as being equivalent to the decisions made by the supplemental philosophy…and if that’s the case, why are you even calling yourself a libertarian?

  • http://enfranchisedmind.com Candide

    > And we’re begining to see the need for a global goverment to
    > go with the global market- to address issues like copyright and
    > patent protection, workers rights, environmental issues, and so on.
    >
    I see no reason why we need centralization to address those issues. In fact, the only side-effect of centralization is the ability to dangerously over-extend copyright/patent protection and similar issues, just as the federal government has over-extended those issues.

    Civil rights and environmental issues do need to get resolved, but they need to be resolved by actions of independent nations working in concert in recognition of their mutual importance — this is the fundamental idea behind the UN, and it’s a good one.

  • http://enfranchisedmind.com Candide

    Oh, and one more thing…back to TheHawk.

    > Paleoconservatism is much less about individual freedom as it is about
    > localism. The paleocons are much more in favor of an us vs. them
    > attitude which tends to lead towards certain self-serving ideals. For
    > example, paleoconservatism is strongly opposed to free trade, as it
    > endangers american products and workers.
    >
    Paleoconservatism is only opposed to free trade insofar as it endangers the American economy. In many cases, paleocons are in support of free trade, because there’s mutual benefit by allowing free-flow of trade — high tech industries are a good example of this. In general, there’s also the understanding in the paleocon community that governmental programs of any size cost money (particularly the time-value of money), and so any program needs to be weighed carefully against its cost-benefit.

  • bhurt-aw

    The goverment has to be large enough to effect the market, and large enough the members of the market can not escape the “intervention” of the goverment just by moving to a different part of the market. If it’s against the law to do something profitable here, move it to some place where it is legal (or at least not illegal)- South Carolina or China or Bermuda or where ever. Basically, the goverment needs to be as big as the entire market in order to be effective in fixing the problems of the market.

    Now, talking about a world goverment brings in other problems- like how do you make sure the goverment remains responsible/responsive. But it’s the difference between the goverment having (soluable) problems, and the goverment being completely ineffective.

  • http://enfranchisedmind.com Candide

    > The goverment has to be large enough to effect the market, and
    > large enough the members of the market can not escape the
    > “intervention” of the goverment just by moving to a different part
    > of the market. If it’s against the law to do something profitable here,
    > move it to some place where it is legal (or at least not illegal)- South
    > Carolina or China or Bermuda or where ever. Basically, the
    > goverment needs to be as big as the entire market in order to be
    > effective in fixing the problems of the market.
    >
    Yes, if you treat the market as one atomic entity, you’re right. But it’s not one atomic entity — it’s nearly infinitely subdivisable. If a state illegalizes the sale of a product (say, cigarettes), it’s certainly large enough to effect the market, when the market is topologically limited to the state. Sure, boundary people might be able to run to a different state to circumvent the requirement (c.f.: “blue laws”, “Wisconsin run”), and that needs to be recognized by the state, but the requirements are there.

  • bhurt-aw

    So what would happen if Minnesota outlawed monopolies, and specifically tried to break up Microsoft? Microsoft is incorporated in Delaware, IIRC, and has it’s headquarters in Seattle. Or would Microsoft simply laugh at them? Minnesota could then try to intervene in the relationship between Microsoft and Dell (a Texas company)- but again, it can’t really do much. But Microsoft’s monoply does effect Minnesota, quite deeply. Minnesota, by itself, simply isn’t big enough to deal with the issue.

    Let’s say there’s a company that wants to build a plant that’ll spit out a bunch of air pollution, and it wants to build it in the western part of the state. Minnesota says no- we don’t want the air pollution. So the company says OK- and builds the plant across the border in South Dakota. We still get all the pollution, but now we get none of the taxes, nor can we do anything about the pollution.

    And when it comes to things like greenhouse gasses, pollution released in China does have an effect on Minnesota. How do we tell China to reign in the pollution? How does China tell us to do the same?

    Worse yet, in this situation, attempts to correct the failures of the market are penalized. The US’s attempts to internalize previously externalized costs (such as pollution, and worker health and safety and economic justice) simply cause the jobs to get moved to places that aren’t trying. Which means the US doesn’t get the jobs, and gets all the problems it tried to avoid. The response is- logically enough- to repeal the environmental laws, wage minimums, worker safety laws, etc. If the costs are going to be externalized anyways, we might as well get the benefits (such as they are).

    Welcome to the new gilded age.

    The other alternative is to truely segment the market- to simply not allow stuff made in sufficiently different regulatory domains to be imported. In a word, protectionism. Except that anyone who has been paying attention knows that this doesn’t work.

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