Re: Libertarian Party
Thomas wrote:I smell a fallacy. You appear to argue that if X isn't done by government, X doesn't get done.
I argue no such thing. But I'd add that it's no more a fallacy than believing that the operations of the free market can do everything that the government does now.
Thomas wrote:The reality is that there are quite a few watchdog organizations -- Consumer report, Amnesty International, and others -- who seem to do a reasonably good job. I don't see any good reasons why charity watchdogs have to be employed by the government to do their job. What, in your opinion, would be obviously inferior about a "Charity International" or a "Charity Report"?
One of the great problems in a free market is the hidden cost of information; one of the great benefits of government is that it can allocate those costs in a fair and efficient manner across society; and one of the great flaws with most libertarians is that they don't understand this.
Certainly, in a truly unregulated marketplace, independent watchdog groups could take over the functions that are currently the exclusive province of the government. In the area of regulation of charities, a "Charity Report" could oversee charities to make sure they were operating in an honest and ethical manner. But then who would bear the costs of the watchdog group, which are currently borne by the government?
Well, one could simply operate the watchdog organization as a charity. But then, of course, the average charitable giver would have no cause to repose more confidence in a charitable charity watchdog than in any other charity: if there is reason to suspect that ordinary charities are corrupt or dishonest, there would just as much reason to suspect the charity watchdog is likewise corrupt or dishonest.
Presumably, if the watchdog's imprimatur is perceived as a valuable mark of quality, the watchdog could charge the various charities that it oversees, in somewhat the same fashion that Underwriters Labs charges companies for the opportunity to get its seal of approval. But this kind of arrangement, where the watchdog is, in effect, in the pay of those it is obliged to oversee, obviously invites abuses, in much the same way that we would suspect the honesty and impartiality of a judge whose salary is paid by the litigants who bring their cases before him. Once again we must ask: who would watch the watchdogs?
Now, the doctrinaire libertarian would merely reply that the invisible hand of the free marketplace, which rewards the economically virtuous and strikes down the economically wicked, would eventually run the corrupt watchdog organizations out of business. But this vision of the efficient marketplace tends to ignore the hidden costs of information, which are currently borne by the government (through its ability to assess taxes on the general population) and shared freely with the public, but which would, in an unregulated marketplace, be unequally distributed throughout the populace.
As a consequence, the government now acts as both the watchdog and the watchdog of the watchdogs. And in its role as a reallocator of resources, the government acts to force down the costs of information. The libertarian, in contrast, proposes to replace the government's functions with the free interplay of capitalistic forces, where information costs are unequally borne by those who participate in the market. Those who have more money, then, will typically pay to have more information, while those with less money will be able to afford correspondingly less information.
Throughout the unregulated marketplace, information costs would be borne by those who choose to pay them. In the context of charitable organizations, the libertarian would, if pressed, acknowledge that people would either give their contributions without regard to the recipient's honesty (an inconceivable result given the basic libertarian premise of the rational economic actor) or would bear whatever information costs that are necessary to learn the recipient's true nature. Of course, these costs would be borne by each individual contributor for each contribution -- an inefficient allocation of resources that is, currently, avoided by the intervention of the state in its role as watchdog.
The doctrinaire libertarian, to be sure, typically ignores both the problem of information costs and the resulting inefficiencies involved in their unequal distribution. Indeed, libertarians tend to believe that, in the unregulated marketplace of which they dream, people will behave in much the same way as they do now in the regulated marketplace -- except that they'll all have more money. But it's naive to think changing the economic system will have no effect on economic behavior. And it's naive to think that people will, for instance, give as much money to charities in an unregulated market as they do now; indeed, there's a substantial reason to believe that they would give a good deal less.
Thomas wrote:I have no trouble with your earlier point that the LP is pretty far out. But if you widen your claim to be about libertarianism in general, I wonder if it isn't you who are naive about the ramifications of having the government run things. Of course, we would both need to get more specific to argue that out.
Feel free to get as specific as you like. I find libertarianism weirdly fascinating and I'm happy to discuss it with you,
Thomas.
