I guess you aren’t familiar with ALS. Maybe you should educate yourself before making such bone-headed comments. Someday when you’re suffering, you will be singing a different tune as well.

Perhaps you should consider what is necessary for individual human survival, material production, and sustenance and then move onto organizations and groups of people. Remembering that civilization stems from the individual is vital to understanding any civilization. Civilization is a means of serving the individual, not the other way around and therefore to consider the individual “necessary” is in my opinion to miss the point.

If we could use this model to frame the discussion, I don’t think we will remain bound to the same old thing.

Tom

This is essentially what civilization does. I think it is an accurate generalization, but of course there is more that needs to be said.

The thing is, I wish the argument could proceed along these lines

Tom K

Partially true. While Hong Kong has been transferred to the communist government it has, in accordance with their deal with the British, retained it’s autonomy. As for fake good, don’t look now, but you are making a libertarian argument in favor of intellectual property rights.

“Free market capitalism at its best?”

Not at all. There is no ideal libertarian nation, nor has there ever been. The United States at our founding incorporated slavery for a large part of our history (as well as gov’t assisted monopolies such as Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and coming soon, GE), Singapore lacks jury trials and executes drug entrepreneurs, Hong Kong maintains an income tax and isn’t very good at copyright law (although most of what you refer to takes place in mainland China, not Hong Kong), etc.

“Or proof that communist China is libertarian because it tolerates illegal trade?”

I have noticed, that all of the critiques you have made all come from a libertarian premise. Every flaw with these societies you have pointed to has been a point in which they are inconsistent with libertarian philosophy.

“Monaco is a tiny state and a monarchy and it’s prosperous. So is Brunei.”

Indeed, another point of conflict with libertarian philosophy, although I think you would admit that a comparison between Monaco and Brunei is an unfair one as the moral disparities do not originate from the fact that they are both monarchies (although technically Monaco is a principality).

“Is it due to absence of government or due to thriving industries (gambling and oil) coupled with small population?”

A common misunderstanding of libertarian philosophy is that it strives for the absence of government. The absence of government is not what drives prosperity, but rather the protection of rights. Thriving industries exist when their right to keep what they produce and to sell it as they please within a framework of courts to settle disputes is protected. While natural resources can be valuable, without entrepreneurship the knowledge necessary to make use of those resources would not exist and there in the ground those resources would stay as they have stayed for the first 250,000 years of human existence.

As for a small population, I should point out that Monaco is the most densely populated nation in the world. Hong Kong is also densely populated, but with several million people, no natural resources, and it prospers plenty, despite its imperfections.

“US restricted imported goods for much of the 19th century to support its domestic industries. Free trade or government protectionism?”

I believe you will find with some research that free trade is what has brought prosperity. Indeed after every tariff that has been imposed costs have risen and monopoly has been aided with of course the most famous tariff (Smoot-Hawley) causing the Great Depression (along with the Fed reducing the quantity of money by a third over four years and several domestic tax increases and public works programs put forward by Hoover). Other tariffs, such as the Walker Tariff passed in 1846 (the same year the Scranton family began their steel industry which would be the first to challenge the British steel monopoly), reduced tariffs against foreign steel and was supported by the Scranton family. Why? For one, their prices were already competitive with the English so there was no need for a tariff. Two, with tariffs reduced they could buy their raw materials overseas for less and make their prices even lower at the same quality now that they could get more raw materials overseas. You will find free trade has been the greatest force not only for economic prosperity, but also for building bridges of peace with foreign nations as we become intertwined economically.

“Singapore…”

No, Singapore was nowhere remotely near libertarian philosophy. Here you are simply wrong in your history. There were free ports and no taxes in many cases with little regulation, but the protection of rights was not paramount. Courts and police were largely absent from this scene and the situation while having a great deal of liberty, it was actually much closer to anarchy (a philosophy as far away from libertarianism as communism). Slavery is the opposite of liberty, and so is prohibition of opium and prostitution. Prohibition is what makes the latter dangerous and a failure of police to stop slavery is even more dangerous.

“authoritarian government of Lee Kuan Yew.”

I do hope you are not advocating authoritarianism.

The issue is not bad government or good government, but proper government. Government which protects rights is proper, government which seeks to provide entitlements through violation of rights is improper and ultimately bad. The government must limit its role to protecting the right to life, liberty, and property: don’t kill me, don’t violate me, don’t rob me. One human being may not coerce another should be the code of government, that all interactions between citizens is voluntary. Government must limit its role to these rights because anything beyond that must, by definition, violate this code and violate the rights of others in order to provide anything material to anyone else. To give resources to one means taking it forcefully from another and thus breaking the code by which a civilization must live by.

First things first. Nobody has identified ever in the annals of human history a time when the concept of “voluntariansm” was used as a legitimate form of government. Remember the prime function of government and it’s component institutions is the “allocation of resources” which in fact cannot take place “fairly” in a libertarian society. Simple acknowledgement on “increasing returns theory” would seem to render libertarian society unachieveable. Because, before the society could ever become viable it would collapse under it’s own weight of people wanting to gain more power at the expense of others. With no control of the powerful how would a libertarian society ever come into existence in any meaningful way? My answer is it wouldn’t. Thus in my opinion libertarianism is only wishful thinking because it’s application is impossible.

Secondly, the science of the 21st century is complexity thoery. Of which you mention is several of your books by the way. Basic complexity theory would state that individual agents cannot know the extent of their actions on the group because their ability to gather and process all relevant information is limited. So, even though agent1 believes that her actions only impact her we know through complexity theory that individual actions can through emergence create a whole that is highly unlike the invidual actions that created it. Bottomline, individuals cannot know the imact of their actions on others due to human limitations. This type of problem can be witnessed in all sorts of challenges we face from climate change to the rapidly diminshing rain forest.

And finally, it has been proven over and over again most recently in Gladwell’s new book “Outliers” that success is in large part due to choice, chance, and circumstance. With a heavy emphsis on chance. Where you were born, when you were born, and to whom you were born are all very important to your life outcomes. It is no coencidence that libertarian thinking is primarily a result of western thinking which emphasizes the “Horatio Alger Myth” of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. When in fact this type of thinking has been proven to be faulty and an illusion of the western mind which places the individual at the center of everything including success.

My point here is get real. Libertariansm is childs play and has no role in the serious discussion of how people should live together in thriving communities. Provide some real alternatives to the left right debate. Maybe in fact using the lessons of complexity science with it’s subordinate sciences of network theory and evolutionary theory as a sarting point to develop a science based approach to human development.

I stumbled across your defense of Napoleon Chagnon this morning. No wonder. You are a Darwininian fundamentalist with the party line on Hobbes and a capitalist ideologue. You defending Chagnon is like Limbaugh defending Dubya.