Libertarians, Need a Little Help

[LT for the Truth]

Basically, a poster from another thread challenged Ron Paul & his libertarian outlook. I'll admit, I don't know much about libertarianism but I agree with Ron more than any other candidate, by far. So, any help is appreciated as I attempt to sway more support for our causes

He said libertarianism is stupid, here's a clip.



In Libertopia government is the source of all problems and reducing it's scope improves everything magically.

Anti-Discrimination Laws? Unnecessary... "right of association" and "mutual consent" is all that matters... it's a private matter.

Minimum Wage? No.... the "market" will determine a fair living wage.

Civil Rights? Unnecessary.... we don't understand what systemic and institutional racism mean.

Intelligent Regulation? No... even though we've seen the effects of massive deregulation play out in the financial sector specifically over the last few years we abhor regulation as a matter of course.

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. How can intelligent people believe this bullshit?

My response

On minimum wage, How do you mandate a wage when you can not mandate productivity?

His rebuttal

This is actually a great starting point as it illustrates my chief grievance with Libertarianism, namely complete lack of realism and rooted-ness in reality.

We have a government and a social contract (and concomitant safety net) because "the market" is an amoral social construct. As it should be btw. You ask "how can you mandate a wage when you can not mandate productivity?" as though in the absence of a minimum living wage businesses would magically operate in an ethical fashion towards the achievement of perfect market equilibrium (as described in an econ 101 textbook). If this wide eyed optimism about markets held true we never would have needed a Fair Labor and Standards Act in the first place. This kind of thinking runs of afoul of common sense and historical reality. Business has a chief responsibility towards it's shareholders to create profit..... period. They are profit generation machines. In this pursuit legislation to mandate minimum wages, working hours, minimum age, limits on pollution etc etc... are necessary because without them business consistently tramples ethical boundaries underfoot.

The American Samoa example is largely meaningless and doesn't really make the case you suggest it does. For one thing, it illustrates the basic reality I refer to above. For another the tuna industry was undergoing competitive changes with Thailand offering labor at a fraction of Samoan wages. So it's a little disingenuous to insist that there's a clear line between increases in minimum wage and Chicken of the Sea's closure. It may have been the final nail in the coffin but the industry was already facing increased market pressure. You'll have to come up with a better defense for sweat shop wages.

[Acala]

Basically, a poster from another thread challenged Ron Paul & his libertarian outlook. I'll admit, I don't know much about libertarianism but I agree with Ron more than any other candidate, by far. So, any help is appreciated as I attempt to sway more support for our causes

He said libertarianism is stupid, here's a clip.



My response


His rebuttal

Ask him why, if what he says is true, ANYONE makes more than minimum wage? Then ask him why minimum wage shouldn't be set at $1million a year?

No serious economist, even those that otherwise suck, will defend minimum wage. It is indefensible.

[AlexAmore]

Acala is right. Minimum wage is probably my favorite thing to debate liberals with. Once you easily prove them wrong with it, it kind of sets a tone and helps build momentum for other things.

If minimum wage is set at $7/hour, what happens if someone with no skills and experience is worth only $3/hour? Well since there is competition for jobs (9% unemployment) they get screwed and don't receive a job. Most likely they are black and from the inner city. So this is a very racist law. If they could just get a job at $3/hour then they could get the skills and experience to work their way up. Instead they resort to selling drugs again and end up in a jail for which they are a huge majority....a lot, thanks to this law.

Apprenticeships are basically illegal now. If you want to learn a trade? Instead of working for someone for free or below minimum, you basically have to either turn it into a legitimate job or PAY to learn it lol. Idiot givernment.

If minimum wage does decrease poverty as they say, then as Acala says, if a little is good, a lot is better! Set it at $20/hour or better yet $100/hour! We'll fix this pronto!

[Xenophage]

Why do you think we no longer have full service gas stations? Because pumping someone's gas is an extremely low value service, and it isn't worth it to the gas company to pay minimum wage to hire an attendant. It might be a worthwhile competitive advantage for a gas station to hire someone at $2/hour to perform the service, but the gas station isn't a charity and has to value the cost of labor versus the benefit it will receive. The only places we have people pumping gas for you are places where State law mandates that you cannot pump your own gas! Those laws were enacted in reaction to the disappearance of gas pumping jobs, and *they* do harm as well: the lost revenue that goes to overpaying the gas station attendant at minimum wage gets passed on to the customer in the form of higher gas prices state-wide. Just an example of the feedback-loop of problems that government intervention in the marketplace creates. They create a problem, then they create more problems with the solution.

You might think it's horrible that someone only makes $2/hour, but that person probably doesn't think it's so horrible! It's better than NO job, isn't it? Minimum wage creates poverty and unemployment, and it doesn't increase anybody's wages. It simply eliminates jobs that don't make economic sense at higher pay.

Then, because you've destroyed the poor people's jobs, you've got to find some way to take care of them. You expand the welfare state, which harms the people who still have jobs, and pushes a few of them into poverty as well.

[sailingaway]

Don't link Ron to being libertarian, just defend who he is. Some may or may not consider him libertarian, and who cares? We don't need to take on every preconception about libertarianism on TOP of the preconceptions about Ron Paul.

[Xenophage]

Don't link Ron to being libertarian, just defend who he is. Some may or may not consider him libertarian, and who cares? We don't need to take on every preconception about libertarianism on TOP of the preconceptions about Ron Paul.

I think he's considered a libertarian by just about everyone. Well, he IS a libertarian. If you're going to defend Ron Paul you're going to defend libertarianism, whether or you mention the *word* or not, and why would you run from that? Libertarianism is easy to defend. There are many flavors of libertarianism, but in general it is a political theory that rests upon the notion that the initiation of coercive force against any individual or group of individuals is always immoral. The political positions are all consequences of attempting to consistently apply that moral principle.

But there is also good reason that the moral principle is one to practice: because it is practical. At the deepest, most fundamental level, you could say (as Ayn Rand did): Man's survival and prosperity is linked to his reason and creativity, and a rational mind cannot prosper at the point of a gun. On a more easily understandable level, however, it can be shown through logic and historical analysis that any attempt rule people by force ultimately leads to the destruction (or at least the misery) of both the rulers and the ruled. It's incompatible with human nature, and if you don't understand human nature you can't understand anything about politics. As a corollary, all progress and prosperity is the result of individual human beings pursuing their own prosperity to the best of their abilities (creating, inventing, and trading), and getting along with each other while they do it - which means, using persuasion, not force, in a dispute.

Libertarians are not Utopian - we're cognizant that mere politics cannot solve all of society's woes. There will still be unhappiness, disagreements, violence, and scarcity of resources in a purely libertarian society. We are, however, realists. We want to work toward mitigating those problems through social change as much as possible, and it starts by understanding why the initiation of coercive force is never an option.

Edit: feel free to quote that shit if you want. It's a rather heady, philosophical explanation of libertarianism that won't make sense or sit right with everyone, and not the most well written description, but I hope it makes it clear where most of us are coming from.

[LT for the Truth]

very insightful, & thanks for all the comments.

[TCE]

Since everyone has taken on the Minimum Wage Laws, I'll try for everything else as succinctly as possible:

Anti-Discrimination Laws: There is a difference between banning discrimination on public property - which libertarians are for (even though they don't like private property, but that's another discussion for another day), and making it illegal to keep someone out of a private establishment. With the latter case, your property is no longer your property. If the government can decide that you have to house people on your property/business that you don't like, what else can they do? Also, let's say one business bans African-Americans. The smart businessman will realize that money is money and allow everyone inside. Additionally, before, everyone knew who the racists banning minorities were, now, because of the government, we have no idea. I would prefer to boycott those establishments myself, but I can't now because I have no idea who they are.

Civil Rights: Again, it's a private property debate in part, but also a philosophical one. Libertarians believe people already have rights and they don't come from the government, whereas statists believe rights come from the government. We believe all people are born having certain rights and all the government can do is protect them or take them away. Naturally, there is no need for a Civil Rights Law because in a libertarian society, these rights would come from being human, not the government.

"Deregulation": People have written books on this topic, so it is impossible to cover completely, but here is a small taste. We are so far away from a libertarian ideal of deregulation that it's insane. The Federal Reserve creates inflation, sets interest rates, regulates the financial sector, and prints the money. How is that a free market? The government has a myriad of regulations from how much money I can take on a plane to which way my toilet is constructed. The financial sector specifically, was burdened by Fannie/Freddie, government-sponsored monopolies, in cahoots with the Federal Reserve who artificially kept interest rates too low, printed money, and inflated a huge housing bubble. The government sponsored unsustainable loans that had the support of government-supported ratings agencies. Not one of the thousands of regulators saw anything bad coming, yet the libertarians and Austrians did. Coincidence? Further, companies did all this knowing that if they went bankrupt, the Federal Reserve would bail them out, so why not take the risk? It's the equivalent of betting a Billion dollars on a roulette wheel knowing every time you lose, the casino will give you your money back until you win. May as well keep gambling to try and win, right?

Business Regulations: Right, because without the government, businesses would pay their workers $0.50 an hour for working in dangerous steel mills where workers would be dying every hour. All of us would be broke, worthless, and dumb without the government. People wouldn't work at a place for $0.50 an hour or less, period. Why? Because it makes no sense. Why would anyone work in a knowingly dangerous field where there is a strong possibility the work will kill them? This gentleman read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair a little too literally and thinks it somehow applies to America in 2011. Businesses don't have a desire to kill, hurt, or injure their workers. Why would they want to? They'd face lawsuits, public outcries, and a loss of sales. The decrease in workplace injuries is a result of advancements in technology, not government.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3hX_zBFUag

[The Free Hornet]

Another point:


Minimum Wage? No.... the "market" will determine a fair living wage.

It is a misconception that "the 'market'" is supposed to do these things or that it is its job. It is anthropomorphizing an abstraction. Determining "a fair wage" or "a fair living wage" ("living" is a superfluous adjective) is what BOTH employees and employers do. When agreement is reached, we call that a "job". Nobody cares if you and your family's expenses are $10,000 year or $1,000,000 year. What matters is how much someone values your contribution.

So when someone suggests that "the market" determines the wage. I would play stupid and be like "... no ... didn't YOU know the wage when you agreed to work there? Didn't YOU determine the wage by accepting that offer instead of another one?".

Another thing. If we base the minimum wage on what it takes to support a family, that means that most people without skills and without families will be unable to work! You can't keep a family together for long - or it is damn hard - living in shelters or off of charity. Dispersion is the most likely outcome. So to say that a Wal*Mart cashier must be able to support a family of 4, is to say that someone living with their parents - and having far fewer needs - is unable to work. It's asinine.

From Wikipedia, "Arguments in favor of Minimum Wage Laws", if you look at the wiki page, you see pros and cons, Supporters of the minimum wage claim it has these effects: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage#Debate_over_consequences):

1 Increases the standard of living for the poorest and most vulnerable class in society and raises average.[1]
2 Motivates and encourages employees to work harder[32]
3 Stimulates consumption, by putting more money in the hands of low-income people who spend their entire paychecks.[1]
4 Increases the work ethic of those who earn very little, as employers demand more return from the higher cost of hiring these employees.[1]
5 Decreases the cost of government social welfare programs by increasing incomes for the lowest-paid.[1]
6 Encourages people to join the workforce rather than pursuing money through illegal means, e.g., selling illegal drugs [33][34]
7 Encourages efficiency and automation of industry.[35]

To reply:

1 False: The poorest will be out of work. Those not as poor are the ones who still have a job (assuming it remains full time and their hours are not cut down to shit).

2 Maybe True - but was that the point?

3 False: The people who lost their jobs and have productivity less thant the minimum wage (time a multiplier for other costs employers have) will spend zero.

4 Maybe True - but was that the point?

5 False, the unemployed will demand far more than someone working and needing to make supplementary trips to a food bank or a need to get food stamps or other subsidies (which ought not to exist as gubblemint handouts).

6 False - as has been proven, 95% of pushers make below minimum wage! (http://freemarketmojo.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/95-of-drug-dealers-earn-below-minimum-wage/) Jesus Effing Christ, these people want to work but they can't because their labor has been priced out of the market. So we will spend $30-$40,000 per year to jail them. Fuck!

7 Maybe True - but was that the point?

[Xenophage]

Excellent rebuttals all around. I would say however that arguments 2, 4 and 7 are pure conjecture and probably also false.