In reply to silveroak (msg #122):

Cinton's revisions softened the regulations used by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the organization that provides oversight to housing lenders.  The SEC did in fact investigate Fannie and Freddie in 2006 and fined them for accounting problems to the tune of 400 million.  During that investigation the Democrats went after the regulators.  Here is a nice video if you wish to vomit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...ture=player_embedded

The SEC personnel involved in the porn scandal accounted for less than 1% of SEC employees.  Which, by the way, was more than five.  Once again you divert attention away from the root causes with some left-field statement that has nothing to do with the matter being discussed.  I find this defense for Democrats to be incredibly humorous considering what a Democrat President was doing in the Oval Office when he was supposed to be doing the business of a nation.  Cigar anyone?



And these derivatives and revisions of incentives were the result of what again?  Government interference in the market.  Throw out the whole fact that Democrats are neck deep in the housing market failure.  You have to admit, and I think you are close to that, that it was government interference that set up the market failures.

Rarely.  Soundbites almost by definition distill complicated issues down into simple phrases that are almost always inadequate to capture the whole situation.


Sorry, perhaps I should have said "objective" instead of "neutral."  Basically what I mean is that partisan slogans and soundbites don't really do much for anyone.  I imagine we've both heard most of them, and their not going to change anyone's minds, so lets skip them and aim for substance.  Also, I meant looking for, as best we can, a goal of determining what happened and why, rather than setting out to prove one side evil and the other side blameless.  I sort of get the impression you want me to defend the democrats while you attack them, but I'm not particularly interested in that role.

In other words, "I oppose Obama's policies X, Y, and Z because I think the harm the economy in manners A, B, and C" is fine, and can lead to good discussion.  "Obama declared war on prosperity," is just sloganeering, and isn't very useful.




Well, I guess I'm not seeing that revising the CRA matters all that much, if most of the problematic lending, in any period, was done by banks that weren't subject to it.  If you want me to say that the banks that were subject to CRA engaged in more and worse lending after Clinton's changes, I could probably agree with that.  But it doesn't really seem crucial if non-CRA banks were doing it even more so of their own accord.  Going back to my comment about a more neutral discussion, I'm looking more at whether or not CRA banks caused the problem, or were "just" a contributing factor.  You seem to be more interested on which politician to blame.  We might have different goals/expectations of the conversation which are making communication difficult.  I don't feel the need to defend Clinton's decision, because I can agree it wasn't a good one.  I just don't think it can be blamed for the whole crisis, if banks not subject to CRA were giving out more bad loans than those that were.  It sounds like you feel my lack of defending Clinton's decision is somehow underhanded or slippery, but at the same time don't feel the need to address my point that non-CRA banks did more bad lending than the CRA banks did.  Are we just looking for too different things from the discussion?


I apologize if you feel I didn't quote enough of your post, or if you feel that I didn't address your point.  I assure you it wasn't meant as a dirty trick.  Rather, I felt your point was sort of a non-issue with regards to mine.  But to be fair, if you look back at my post, and how much of your words it contains, and compare it to your post, and how many of mine it contains, I hope you'll agree I'm not the only one who "selectively" quoted.  I'd like to keep the discussion about the issues, rather than trying to insult each other, or seek out insult where none was meant.  Shall we give it a try?


I wasn't focusing on CRA's beginnings, and my intent wasn't to "avoid" talking about Clinton.  If you say Clinton's changes increased the loans, I can probably agree with that.  But only from the banks subject to CRA.  The banks and mortgage lenders that weren't subject to it were responsible for more of the subprime lending than those that were.  In that respect, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to blame it all on that revision, because that revision didn't change anything for the none CRA banks, as far as I'm aware at least.


Again, though, many banks are subject to CRA, and went along with the same practices, even though they weren't required to.  It seems odd to me to blame the change of CRA for their bad loans.  That's not a defense of CRA, its just pointing out that CRA doesn't seem to be the whole story.

But, to be clear, are you saying that the problem is that Clinton change regulations to allow a type of lending that wasn't allowed before, and that the proper alternative is to restrict that type of lending?  If so, I could quite possibly agree, though it seems at odds with the "the government should get out of the way and let companies grow as much as possible" idea you mentioned earlier.  Is this a case where you're saying the government was wrong to get out of the way?


Okay, again, this sounds like you're saying that Clinton removed obstacles and the banks took advantage of this.  Did Clinton's changes change what Bear Stearns was allowed to do?  Are you saying that Clinton relaxed regulations, and that this was a bad thing?  That might be something I could agree with, though I'd have to see more info on how the degree to which Bear Stearns was subject to CRA.


I can agree with most of it, but the trouble is "nearly half the mortgage market" isn't the same as "nearly half the bad loans."  I can agree that it held way more bad loans than it should have, and can agree this was a contributing factor, but if Fannie and Freddie held all the bad mortgages, then none of the other banks would have gotten into trouble.  So I can agree with your basic description of things, but the "thus..." part is where we seem to run into problems.


I can agree with this (though, again, many of the bad lenders weren't subject to the "rules" of CRA), but I don't think that changes things.  If the government changes the rules, and the market reacts in a way that leads to financial collapse, that indicates to me a problem in the market as well as in the government.  Or perhaps more accurately, the market+government combination.


Fair enough.  I tend to disagree, but its more a matter of opinion, I suppose.  To me, a bad decision made "within the rules" is still a bad decision.  But I'm less interested in who I can point my finger at, and more interested in what we can do to avoid it happening again.  So, blame whoever you like, as far as that's concerned.


Yep, you're right on that.  If I had said he felt it was a success, I'd be wrong.


Yep.  And he was saying this from the start, and predicting that the stimulus that did get passed would lead to a weak recovery, but not put a big dent in unemployment, and that this weak recovery would make it harder to do more because the sense of urgency would be lost compared to when everyone was talking about a second great depression.  On that prediction he seems to have been pretty accurate, as far as I can see.


Yeah, bad idea on that one.  Though, in his defense, he was looking at ways to address one problem, which the housing bubble did.  The downside of the bubble was way worse than what he was trying to solve, we see now.  So it was less that he was factually wrong, and more that he supported a bad idea.  And that he didn't see how bad the bursting of the housing bubble would be, but I think that's a crime 99.99% of the world was also guilty of, so I'm not going to be too harsh on him for it (feel free to do so yourself, though--like i said, I'm less worried about whom to point fingers at than figuring out how to avoid similar problems from happening again).

But do you have an alternative economist who you feel has a much better record?  If you have a better suggestion, I'm happy to look at their views.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:35, Fri 18 Feb 2011.

I will address this since this is the whole point and I don't have that much time: the government should not have gotten involved in the mortgage business in the first place.  The reason for redlining was not based on race but rather on financial ability to pay back loans.  That is where it started.

Then Clinton came along and allowed for finanical institutions to securitize that risk.  So yes, that is where government once again messes with the market and makes it even worse than its first attempt at meddling.

In no way did the government "get out of the way" at any time.  It modified this meddlesome ways and nothing more.  Banks were complying with government dictates and the financial crisis is what came of it.

That being said, even though this is the government's fault, they also had no right to bail those institutions out.  The banks made profit and they should suffer the losses.  Lots of banks didn't go the subprime route and are financially secure.  They would be in a lot better shape if the government had allowed the giants to fall.

It should now be pretty clear what my stance is.

I can perhaps agree to that.  Or at least don't disagree strongly enough to argue the point.

[emphasis added]
This is where your view seems to odd to me.  If Clinton "allowed" for something, that seems to imply regulations were relaxed.  The rules were changed to let the banks do more than the could under the old rules.  That seems like deregulation to me.  Not interference, but the removal of interference.  I can probably agree that it wasn't a good idea, but it doesn't sound like "government meddling" to me, but rather the undoing of previous meddling.  What you're describing sounds like giving the banks more options, more freedom, less restriction.  To me, that's "getting out of the way."  Its coming off as though you're trying to spin a deregulation as "government meddling," because you're for the former but against the latter.  But I suppose that's neither here nor there.  Would you say the proper solution is to go back to the old system, where banks weren't allowed to "securitize that risk?"  Is the answer to put in new regulations that prevent the banks from bundling loans this way?


This seems to be our sticking point.  I just don't see how allowing banks to do something is forcing them to comply with government dictates.  The way you're describing what happened doesn't seem to match up with the words you use to condemn those who were involved.


I could maybe agree here.  Bailing out the banks that failed was bad.  The question is whether it would have been worse to have let them go under at the time.  Honestly, I don't know the answer to that.  At the time, everyone seemed convinced the banks failing would lead to huge, huge problems in the economy, another great depression, etc.  As bad as things are now, they don't seem to be near as bad as many people were predicting things would be if the banks had been allowed to collapse.  Were they overreacting?  Scaremongering?  I don't know.  Probably some were doing both.  Probably some really believed it.  I really don't have any reliable way of knowing if they were right or not.  Definitely bailing out the banks was a bad thing, I'm just not sure if it was worse than the alternative.  I can totally respect someone who is convinced that it was the wrong choice, but if they can say that without considering what the effects of letting the banks go under would have been, I think they're taking too simplistic a look at it.  It was a big, complicated problem, with lots of uncertainty involved, and lots of issues to weigh up and consider, and none of the options were at all pleasant.  I don't know if they got it right or not, but I certainly don't envy anyone who had to make that kind of call.

You missed the point.

It is not the removal of restrictions to allow new behaviour that was started by the government in the first place.  If the government did not force financial institutions to lend to people who couldn't afford in the first place it couldn't have revised the those lending rules to allow for the spreading and integration of that huge risk into the market at large.

You see?  The government promoted giving bad loans and then provided a way to spread the risk into the market at large.  Then, when that risk exploded, they stepped in a saddled the tax payer with the cost of its own meddling instead of allowing the market to purge itself of that bad risk.

The point is that the revision, which was disasterous, would not have occured if the government had not stuck its nose into the housing market in the first place.

If the market had been allowed to purge that risk what we would have are a bunch of institutions that didn't engage in that risk and/or were good enough to weather the problems caused by taking that risk.

That is why I, and quite a few others, point to the CRA as the root of the problem.  This is another case of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions.

Okay, I think I'm getting closer to seeing what you're saying.


So, was the removal of the restrictions good or bad?  Should we put the restrictions back?


Okay, but again, most of the subprime lending was by banks not forced to do it by the government.  This is where the story still doesn't add up to me.  Other banks that didn't have to also engaged in subprime lending, even more so than did the banks that were forced to do it.  So I'm still not seeing how CRA should be blamed for that.

I'm also not seeing how the government couldn't have changed the lending rules to allow spreading of risk if it weren't for CRA.  What would have prevented it from doing so?  And, again, was the removal of that restriction on banks a bad thing in your opinion, and should it be replaced?


I can agree with the first part, and am willing to accept the second.  So, so far so good...


But here you seem to have skipped a step.  How does the majority of subprime lending, which wasn't forced by the CRA, fit into all this?  You still haven't addressed this.  (Also, by the way, the tax payers weren't really saddled with the cost of the bailout.  The government came out ahead on TARP, because the banks repaid the bailout, and the government earned dividends and interest.  That doesn't necessarily mean it was a good idea, just that the "cost to the taxpayer" isn't really the reason it was a bad idea, if if was one).


Okay, this is better, the revision was bad.  But, as I said before, it was a deregulation.  It allowed banks to do something which they weren't allowed to do before, no?  Would it have occurred if not for CRA?  Perhaps not, I'm not a position to argue otherwise.  But, if it was a bad thing (or a "disasterous" one), surely we should be able to say that deregulation contributed to the crises, and allowed the risk to spread throughout the market, no?  And wouldn't the proper thing to do now be to replace that restriction?


The market was always allowed to purge that risk.  No one was forced to buy up bundles of subprime loans, to my knowledge (if you know otherwise, please let me know).  They were allowed to do so.  When you say "if the market had been allowed to purge..." you actually seem to mean "if the market had been prevented from spreading..." no?  You keep framing it as if the government was forcing the big banks to buy up the toxic debt, but really what happened is that banks were given the option to do so, right?  It wasn't the government meddling, it was the government getting out of the way, saying "I know we didn't used to let you do this, but now we're letting you," right?  That's the impression I've gotten from what you've said about it, but you still seem opposed to saying it was a deregulation.  So I'm still a bit confused.

This issue is an intertwining, from my perspective, of several issues:

1) I do not believe any single entity or person is to blame. Incompetance knows no political boundries, and we all know where good intentions can lead.
2) The Republican party is headed in the wrong direction- it was the party of principles and and intellectualism is the 1960s and has degenerated and continues to degenerate into a party of ideologues, mantras, sound bites and dirty politics.
3) Regulation *or* deregulation can work, either way. Regulation requires more government competance (as they take on a greater burden), while deregulation requires more more market awareness (Caveat Emptor!). The worst case scenrio (which happened here) is when the government assumes that the market can handle itself and the market assumes it is protected by government regulation.

It's been a bit quiet here lately, so I figured I should throw out another bit of random thought from Tycho's brain.  I've been reading "The righteous mind" by Jonathan Haidt lately, and it's gotten me thinking a bit about the differences between being "liberal" and being "libertarian."  (I'm only part way through the book, but highly recommend it based on the 1/3 or so I've read so far).

Anyway, my line of thinking is this:  Both liberals and libertarians care about personal autonomy and individual freedoms.  Liberals seem to be more concerned about the government helping those in difficult situations than libertarians do (libertarian are fine with people helping if they want to, but don't like the idea of being forced to do so).  As a liberal, I tend to view it as a responsibility/duty of people in general to help out other human beings to one degree or another.  Most libertarians, I think, bristle at the idea of being held responsible for anyone else's situation.  They take more of a "it's MY money, I don't owe anyone else a thing!  I'll help WHO I want, WHEN I want to.  Forcing me to give money to help someone else is theft," position.

So question one, do you guys agree with that summary of things so far?  (those who consider themselves libertarians are especially encouraged to offer their two cents, as there's a bigger chance of me not accurately presenting their view, since I'm not one of them).

Next question:  Is responsibility the opposite of freedom?  I tended to think of them as two different issues, but the train of thought summarized above sort of led me to the position that the two things are opposites.  Responsibility is the idea that you're NOT free to not do X, Y, or Z.  You are obligated to do it whether you want to or not.  As we gain more responsibilities, we end up with less freedom (though some times gaining responsibility in one area comes with gaining new freedoms in another due to restrictions being reduced).

Okay, now the analogy.  I think we'd all agree, even the libertarians, that certain responsibilities aren't bad things.  For example, parents have an obligation to not leave a newborn baby outside in the cold on a freezing night.  That responsibility means they're not free to do that.  It's a restriction on them.  But what if someone out there doesn't agree with that?  What if there's a mother out there who says "What's that baby got to do with me?  If it wants to stay in a warm house, it should get a job and pay the rent!  I've already given it life, what more does it expect from me?  I don't owe it a thing.  I'm not killing it, but it's not my job to save it from freezing either.  That's entirely my choice, and any attempt to force my hand is an unreasonable reduction of my liberty."  Now, there's (fortunately!) not likely to be such a mother out there, so this is all hypothetical.  But in what way are they wrong?  If WE view her as having an obligation/duty/responsibility to bring the baby in from the freezing cold so it doesn't die (or at very least drop it off at an orphanage or the like), what does that mean?  Does it just mean "we think you should, but if you disagree, I guess it's your call?"  Does it mean "enough of us agree that this is the way things work, and we're going to punish you for not conforming if you don't act how we say?"  Does it mean "you don't get to decide if you owe this baby anything or not, we do?"

I think we'd all feel fairly comfortable with the government enforcing the societal norm that you can't just leave your infant out on the doorstep to "fend for itself" on a freezing cold night.  It's a reduction of your freedom, yes, but it's one we're willing to allow because of the harm you'd be doing if you exercised that freedom.  Now extend the analogy a bit.  Now it's not the mother's baby, but say a baby she found on the road, thought she would like, then decided otherwise, so put out on the doorstep for anyone else to take if they wanted it.  Should she be free to do that?  What if it's not a baby, but a neighbor who's slipped and fallen on the sidewalk outside her house?  Does the person who's house the neighbor fell in front of have any obligation to do anything, or is their freedom to say "ain't my problem" more important?  As we decrease the link between the two people (from mother/baby to two complete strangers) people are likely to change their opinion about whether freedom or responsibility wins out.  But not everyone will agree on where that change happens.  So the question:  Is there any objective way to set that line, or is it entirely down to what society decides to enforce?  In the crazy mother case, she disagreed with the rest of us and felt that it wasn't her responsibility.  In a real world case, someone might feel its not their responsibility to pay their taxes to help poor people get health care.  If in both cases if society says "actually, we've decided that it IS your responsibility," what is the proper response from the person who disagrees?

To me it seems like it's a somewhat arbitrary application of societal values.  It's a balancing act, but it's not based on anything really objective, it's just based on what enough people feel strongly enough about to enforce it.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

When I was thinking about this, I was sort of imagining myself in a discussion with a hypothetical libertarian, trying to get them to understand how I feel when I hear them say "it's not my responsibility to help these people out!"  Do you guys think this analogy helps get that across?  Is it just insulting to them?

According to Haidt (he gives citations for this but I haven't looked into them) Libertarians tends to score lower on empathy tests than most people.  In other words, seeing others in pain/suffering doesn't have as strong a visceral effect on them as on others.  It's sort of like having a higher pain tolerance, say.  Just as someone with a higher pain tolerance might react differently to blisters on their feet, say, than someone without such a high tolerance, someone with lower empathy might react differently to seeing someone else in a pain.  So thinking about it that way, I tried to come up with a more extreme example of people neglecting their responsibilities in order to trigger a stronger response.  Like someone with a low pain tolerance saying to their friend with a high pain tolerance "okay, I know a slap on the back doesn't bother you much, but when you slap me on the back, it feels to me like you would feel if I hit you with a 2-by-4."  I assume the analogy of the crazy mother goes well beyond creating in them the same reaction that I get to their views (though the fact that mine is clearly a hypothetical situation while theirs is their real view might reduce that effect a bit), so it's not fair to say "that's how I feel."  But how does the analogy strike people?  Effective at putting someone in my shoes, or too absurd to be taken seriously?  Any other thoughts on the line of thinking?

I've been touring Europe, so I've been a bit busy :) But interesting post!



There's a few different takes here.

I think the traditional libertarian view is, you ARE responsible for the application of your freedoms. You may be 'free' to have sex with whomever you please, but you are responsible for the STDs and unwanted pregnancies that result from your choice. The mother in this example is responsible for her choice of getting pregnant (for your purposes, a better example would be a father or an older sibling, since there's less of the 'I voluntarily carried you for nine months' issue). The libertarian view does not espouse absolute freedom, since that's just not possible.

I've been talking with some anarchists who have an interesting take on this; the response of other people to your behavior is part of the consequences of your exercise of freedom. A mother who leaves her child out in the snow will likely be shunned by the entire community. Even if she is still 'free', none of us are obligated to sell her goods or spend time with her (because we're also free). This, in a way, becomes a tyranny of the majority; a perfect democracy. But I'd argue it is a form of libertarianism which addresses the issue without us requiring a government to tell us what to do.

Another common libertarian idea is that you should be given full freedom in action until it impacts another person's freedom. A great example of this Ron Paul brought up is that a factory owner should have the full freedom to produce goods and generate pollution, but as soon as that pollution impacts my freedom to enjoy my land, or to enjoy fresh air and water, we have a conflict of freedoms which requires remediation. In this case, the mother is limiting the baby's freedom. We all recognize the baby does not have the power to protect its freedom, so some degree of outside protection is necessary.




I think we've generally seen a few metrics to use; that of omission/commission, that of harm done, that of who holds responsibility for the individual/action/project, consent, and that of knowledge of the actor (to name a few).

To look at paying for health care, not paying for health care from the public funds means I, as an individual, am causing an unknown amount of harm, out of omission, to people who are responsible for themselves, with my consent and limited knowledge.



I pointed out my one comment, that a mother is responsible for her child because she chose the actions necessary to get pregnant (generally) and to continue the pregnancy. I think a good samaritan example would be better, although I'm at a loss as to how to make it as extreme as you did. Yes, very many people do say "that person is responsible for himself, so don't ask me to be responsible for him," but it's tough to think of regular examples where we are so very morally responsible for helping an individual whose situation we aren't also somehow responsible for.

Cool, where abouts?  If you're still over this way, and happen to be near edinburgh, let me know, and we can have a pint or two!


How much of this would say is a personal responsibility, as opposed to "you should be legally responsible?"  I know many libertarians have strong feelings of responsibility towards various things, but still bristle at the idea of being forced to do something about them by a government (or anyone else, I suppose).  I think for many libertarians it's less a "I don't want to!" position, and more of a "you can't make me!" one.  It might be something they'd do without prompting anyway, but once you say "you have to!" that bothers them.


True.  The analogy, though, was more to highlight the issue of what to do we do when someone doesn't feel a sense of responsibility that we all feel they do actually have.  No real-world libertarians may espouse such an extreme view as the bad mother in the analogy, but how society best reacts in that case might give us lessons for how society should react when real-world libertarians take more moderate positions that other people feel are still rejecting responsibility they actually have.


Yeah, the anarchist utopia always sounds nice, and like most ideal government visions, it works as long as everyone involved has the same ideas of right and wrong, and agrees to pull their weight for the team.  The trouble is that everyone doesn't have the same ideas about what is okay and what isn't, and also doesn't have the same idea about what types of punishment are acceptable and which aren't (e.g., you might just not sell her stuff, I might throw rocks through her windows, the guy down the street might kidnap her and torture her in his basement for months, someone else might go around killing everyone who didn't stop selling her stuff, etc.).  There's also the issue that if she's really rich, people are likely to be more hesitant to reject her custom than if she's just someone who buys the sunday paper every weekend.  Like most visions of a perfect system (whether government or economic system), it usually starts off with everyone being fairly close to equal, and sharing some basic assumptions about how things should be.  And one particular flaw of anarchism, in my view at least, is that it's indistiguishable from any system we currently have, once someone with enough clout decides they want that system.  For example, if I decide I have the best judgement of anyone in my anarchist society, and round up a few folks that agree with me, I can essentially apply enough coercion to get my way.  Any individual who says "no, that's not the way we do it here!  We each get to make up our own mind!" will be beaten up easily by my gang of followers.  And once people band together to oppose me, you've either got the end of the anarchist system (if you define it in such a way that no one can make groups to get their way) or you end up with the fact that we're already in an anarchist system (if you define it so that it allows people to form such groups), so it obviously can't be any better than what we're already in.  But that's all a complete tangent!  Look what you've gone and made me do! ;)


Yeah, that's sort of what I was trying to get at.  In this example we all (except the mother) recognize that the baby doesn't have the power to protect its freedom.  In more contentious examples only some of us recognize that the person/group in question doesn't have the power to protect its freedoms.


Okay, I agree with all that, though it sort of seems like it still comes down to a judgment call at the end.  Is there any real way to avoid that?  I can't see one, but that's probably not a huge problem.  The more pressing issue, I guess, is what is to be done about those who don't agree with the judgment?

Or, perhaps, another way to look at the question would be:  if we say at some point that society can/should step in and force someone to do something against their will because we feel they have more responsibility than they feel they have, is the only real limit on when we do that just when society decides to use it or not?  To couch it in more recent sound bite terms:  if society can force you not to leave your baby out in the snow, is there anything stopping them from making you eat broccoli?  There are plenty of good arguments a person could make against them doing so, but if society doesn't agree, are you just out of luck, like the mother in the story?

One way to protect against this is to pre-agree to a certain level of freedom (e.g., as with the constitution), but even that's not foolproof, because it only makes a difference if the majority of society feels it does (and to a degree, it's actually somewhat odd that we should feel bound to an agreement we were not party to in the first place).  But as long as enough people feel the agreement matters, that can hold off some level of mob rule.


This is true, but part the issue I'm trying to get at is the fact that we often disagree about whether or not someone is responsible for someone else or not.  This one was chosen precisely because everyone agrees the mother is responsible.  If she could actually make a good argument against her responsibility, the analogy probably wouldn't work, since some people might end up agreeing with her.  The question isn't really whether or not she has a case, but rather how we react to the fact that she firmly believes she does, even when we're 100% convinced she doesn't.  You and I can agree that she really is responsible (because she made choices, or took actions, or for whatever reasons we like), but that doesn't change her mind, and the tension between her freedom and our view of her responsibility still exists.

There's likely no real resolution to the problem.  I think some degree of society deciding what is right and wrong for people to do is unavoidable (and desirable, for that matter).  At some point our freedoms will bump up against what society decides our responsibilities are.  And most likely some people will disagree with how society makes that decision, and will view it as arbitrary or capricious, even if the rest of society thinks it makes perfect sense.  I think liberals are perhaps more likely to err in one direction (potentially given up too much freedom to protect those without power), while libertarians are more likely to err in the other (letting people get out of responsibilities to avoid limiting their freedom).  The bad mother example I gave puts the libertarians in the unusual position of siding with those who trying to force someone to live up to their responsibility, rather than their more natural role of defending the one who just wants the freedom to live their life as they see fit.  That, hopefully, gives them some insight in the feeling of being a liberal.  A different analogy could be made to do the opposite (give liberals the feeling of being in the libertarian's shoes), I'm sure, though I think that might not take such an extreme examples as this one.  That's because liberals also share the strong freedom/oppression gut instinct moral foundation that is the core of libertarianism (though it's not the main foundation for liberals, care/harm is).  It would probably take a similarly extreme example to put liberals or libertarians in the shoes of conservatives, since both tend to score very low on the sacredness/purity, loyalty to in group, and respect for authority foundations compared to conservatives.

Anyway, a lot of rambling on my part, mostly just putting some thoughts out to see what people thought.  Cheers for giving it some thought, katisara!

Netherlands and Paris to visit family. London was on the list, but got dropped due to some last minute changes :( Back now though, and wishing I could sleep.



You're right. Generally libertarians say the law should not force your hand, until your hand forces my hand. So committing suicide wouldn't be illegal in a libertarian society (nor would starving quietly on the street). But most people would agree murder, including infanticide, would be illegal, or at least offer some method of retribution by the aggrieved.



Right, and there's definitely a weird line here. Most people would agree a baby does not have responsibility for his health, and cannot care for it. However, is a homeless person responsible for his health? Can he care for it? A few years ago I was reading up on liberalism and I noted that a number of people push for it on the grounds that an individual who does not have access to job opportunities or other basics is indeed unable to exercise his freedom. I could see it being argued that taking $20,000 from the rich man to give to the poor one maximizes freedom for all investors.

Speaking personally, I'm comfortable with preventative medical care, limited equal employment opportunity laws, etc. even while I vote against most laws in general.

I think another major issue libertarians oftentimes miss is the relatively new balance of power between government, citizen, and corporation. A corporation has the capability of effectively creating and enforcing laws, oftentimes much more effectively than government does.



Ultimately you have to say 'how much is a human life worth? How much is control over my own resources worth?' etc. in order to be able to make comparisons. I've seen (poor) metrics done on the monetary value of a human life and their health. I've not seen anything done to describe the monetary value of freedom, though. So no, it's very hard to compare things without qualitative judgments outside of a very limited scope. Even something as simple as 'a $10 tax will permit the building of a new bridge that will bring in $20 of income per capita' has a significant variable.



Everything you do is going to result in a certain number of people pushing a certain amount of resources against it. Our current system kind of works like this, where lobbies and petitions can be used against unpopular legislation. No one is going to petition for permitting infanticide, but there would be major pushback against forced diets. Of course, we all know the flaws of this system.

Another solution I see in the US is that of just moving to a different state. My current state is pretty liberal. They offer nice public health programs, public transport, etc., but taxes are also a little steep. Our neighboring state is FAR more conservative. I've considered moving there several times (I'd just have to make do with a much smaller house, and poorly laid-out roads). In the US, if you really have an issue with government interference, you move to Montana. Is it inconvenient? Sure. But no one said it would be free.

This is also why I get so upset when things are legislated at the federal level rather than the state. The state is meant to be the place where the interests of the constituents are best represented. The federal government can't possibly address the concerns of my neighbor here and my friend in Montana, so they shouldn't try. If Montana wants to legalize machine guns and marijuana, that's totally up to them.

Not sure about opting out of the social contract. If you want to go become a hermit, sure. But if you're my neighbor and you opt out, even if you pay a fee for using the roads, you're still benefiting from a government that invests in infrastructure, crime control, etc. It's hard to quantify that. And if you're a business magnate, you're benefiting from a customer base which benefits from those things, so it still rolls down. Again, the only solution I see is to make Montana more free and offer people the opportunity to live there.

I think one of the major issues with the libertarian/liberal divide is that we've tried liberalism -- repeatedly. It does work, but we've seen its flaws. No one has really tried Libertarianism since WWI. It's hard to imagine in a modern context, so it's hard to argue for or against. More studies on that would also be a huge boon.

One issue I have is that "libertarian" does not have an exact definition.  There are many different types of libertarians, just as there are many types of socialist ideologies (from soft or European socialism to communist socialism).

In reply to Heath (msg #134):

This is true, but almost nothing has an exact definition that everyone agrees on.  Liberalism, conservativism, christianity, socialism, you name it, there's different views on what it means.  To some extent, to talk about any of these things we need to rely on generalities, and exceptions will always exist.

From the moral philosophy standpoint (or at least my understanding of it), disagreements between people who self-identify as libertarians are probably based on different reasonings/assumptions/etc., but they can probably discuss their disagreements and even if they disagree they'll at least get where the others are coming from.  On the other hand, disagreements between liberals and libertarians, say, or libertarians and conservatives, or liberals and conservatives, frequently have to do with more with which moral foundations they base their decisions on at a gut-level.  They're more likely to talk past each other, and not understand where the other side is coming from, because the kind of arguments one will make won't match up with what "sinks in" for the other.  A good example might be a conservative saying "we've been doing it this way for centuries!  You can't just go and change it!" to a liberal.  Conservatives put real weight to tradition, whereas liberals are usually somewhere between ambivalent and opposed to it.  So "we've done it for centuries!" is a good thing to a conservative, and either irrelevant or a bad thing to a liberal.  And I mean that at a pre-reasoning, gut reaction level.  According to Haidt, conservatives will probably be better at grasping liberal's positions than liberals will be at grasping conservative's, because conservatives weight the various foundations about equally, whereas liberals basically rely on 3 (and 2 of them in particular).  So certain moral arguments that conservatives make just don't make sense to liberals at a gut level (those about preserving/honoring traditions, those about keeping things pure/sacred, or those about respecting/deferring to authority).  They might be able to reason through an argument, and come to an agreement about it, but it just won't "move" them in the same way it would a conservative.  Somewhat ironically (to met at least), libertarians are even more limited in what moral foundations they rely on, and basically just have one (freedom from oppression) that use.  They tend to "side" with conservatives most often because the conservative views on freedom from oppression tends to match better with theirs (for each it's mostly about a gut-level reaction to anything that limit's their (or their in-groups) freedoms, whereas with liberals its more a gut level reaction to protect the weak/vulnerable); overlooking the conservatives other 5 moral foundations isn't any more difficult than overlooking the liberals other two, I suppose.

My point being that there are different types of libertarians, which could make either one of you right or wrong depending on which type you are holding in your head as your definition at any given time.  I consider myself a libertarian, but not necessarily in the broadest sense.

The problem is that the word libertarian has such a general meaning that it is even less identifiable than "Republican" or "Democrat" these days.  Tea Party people are a form of libertarianism, for example, but you also have liberal libertarians who advocate abolishment of all laws that aren't based on the three goals of government.

In reply to Heath (msg #136):

Perhaps.  According to the book I read, people who self-identify as libertarian (when choosing between "liberal, conservative, or libertarian" I think--not sure if there was an "other" category available in the surveys) had significantly different scores on these moral-foundations tests in a statistical sense.  Yes, there's variation within all the groups, but the surveys seemed to indicate that you could probably identify someone who would consider "libertarian" to be the best description of their political views by the way they answered questions on these tests.  The important thing here is that that doesn't mean they would all agree about what to do in any situation.  But rather, it would mean they'd rely on similar styles of arguments to debate about it, and be swayed almost entirely by arguments about freedom or liberty (as opposed to, say, avoiding harm, or sacredness, or respect for authority figures).  So while there's a spread of political views among libertarians (just as there's a spread of political views among conservatives and among liberals), their emotional reasoning habits are fairly more similar to each other than the are to conservatives or liberals.

I think though I see at least two major camps within libertarianism; those who see freedom as an ends unto itself, and those who see freedom as a means to something else.

I'd categorize a lot of the current Tea Partiers in the former. When I hear someone saying "cut government spending! Cut taxes! Cut social programs! But don't you touch my social security!" I don't feel like this is someone who is actually looking to be free, he's just poor and wants to blame it on the government.

Admittedly, it's very hard to hold idealistic views when you're worried about your next year, and even my own political leaning shifts (a little!) with the condition of my bank account.

I recently saw an interview with David Brin on ReasonTV.  Brin, a libertarian, was denouncing ideological libertarians who have created an idolatry of private property and follow Rand and Rothbard into an extremist position.

It's a good video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCouYdxesKI

I think libertarianism is a response to things outside of our control.  The world is a complicated place, and I think people see ideologies as ways to control some of those complications.  Great economic and social upheaval during the Industrial Revolution brought us communism, an attempt to control that economic inequality.  A world where bureaucrats have broad powers to control many aspects of our lives is similarly bound to invite reaction.  Personally, I don't think getting rid of govt intervention is going to increase freedom any more than demolishing private property got rid of economic inequality or outlawing religion increased rational thought.

Like all ideologies, there are more and less pragmatic adherents.  But, as far as pragmatic libertarianism exists, I am a pragmatic libertarian, as are most people on the left.

From what the guy was saying in the book, libertarianism (and liberalism, and conservatism) is largely an issue of what pillars of morality speak to you at your gut level.  Humans have a basic set of moral pillars (the author identified 6 of them, but the field is young, so I'd guess more will be identified in time) that we all share.  But some of us (conservatives, typically) feel each of them more or less equally.  Others (liberals) are basically only moved by 3 of them (or feel three of them much more strongly than the other three).  Still others (libertarians) really only feel one of them strongly.  And that appears to be true across cultures, even when what one culture's view of "conservative" looks like another's view of "liberal."

So it's important to distinguish between the particular views that any given liberal/conservative/libertarian holds, or what a particular group of them hold, and what makes libertarians similar across individuals, groups, or cultures.  Not sure if I'm managing to get that distinction across.

Two libertarians might hold very different views.  Some might be "ideological" some might be "pragmatic" some might think X is true, another might think X is false.  One might look at the other and say "you're not a REAL libertarian!"  That all happens, and at the moment I'm not trying to focus on which particular libertarian group best exemplifies the idea, or which are hypocrites, or which have the best ideas.  Right now I'm more interested in what they all share.  And, at least according to the book I read, that's the fact that the moral foundation that really speaks to them at a gut level is the pillar of freedom/liberty.  And, in in the case of US libertarians, that seems to be the idea of "let me do as I want/don't tell me what to do, I'll make up my own mind/keep the government off the backs of my kind of people/etc."  (as I noted earlier, this is also one of the 3 pillars that liberals are moved by, but the liberal version of it is more along the lines of "protect the weak from the strong/stand up those who are too powerful/look out for the little guy/etc."  The reason libertarians tend to aline political with conservatives in the states seems to be that the conservative version of the liberty/freedom from oppression pillar is more similar to the libertarian version than is the liberal version).

The important thing is that people can justify their gut feelings in various ways.  Some are more eloquent in doing so, some are deeper thinkers, etc.  But usually we all decide with our gut what is right or wrong, and then afterwords let our brains come up with an explanation as to why.  We all can (but rarely do) let our brains overrule our guts.  We can change our views about fairly simple/trivial things, but it's pretty rare that we change our views about something we feel very strongly about, no matter how much more data we get about it.  If you want any hope of changing someone's mind, though, it's critical that you aim your argument at the pillars that move them.  For a libertarian, that means primarily making a case based on freedom.  For a liberal that means pointing out how doing such and such avoids harming someone.  For a conservative you can use any of the pillars, but you're better off using as many as you can apply.

I noticed this line and I think it brings up a major point; how are you factoring for self-interest? Ideally, a libertarian should be concerned about EVERYONE'S liberty, not just his own (of course, this is reduced to a degree because if say Tycho wanted more freedom, there are some basic steps that he can take on his own, before he should be asking for my assistance.) This is the same for liberals, even when they're acting out of compassion. People will naturally put THEIR preferred charity first, or the individual immediately present, rather than a charity or individual with no connection to us.

However, people aren't always our ideal. And since it seems that you're looking for motivations, it's important to account for that. The libertarian who wants you to cut taxes and regulations on him, but not his social security, probably won't care as much about your cutting regulations on a stranger.

In reply to katisara (msg #141):

Yes, definitely, self-interest plays a part in everyone's views.  According to the book, in the US, libertarians and conservatives tend to have more of a self-interest (or more accurately, an in-group-interest) slant on their gut-feelings of liberty/oppression than do the liberals.  For the libertarians and conservatives, is more of a "I need to stick up for my/our rights and freedoms," whereas US liberals have more of a power-based gut-reaction, tending to think the powerless need protection from the powerful.  Obviously everyone has their favored groups (consciously and unconsciously) which affects how they see situations.

In the case you mention, of a libertarian wanting to cut his own taxes but not being as worried about a stranger, that certainly happens, but it depends a whole lot on whether they view the stranger as "one of us" or "one of them."  Like I say, it's not just self-interest, but in-group-interest as well.

FYI, not sure if you're aware of this but most Tea Partiers want social security to be changed/abolished through a rolling process.

Social security is a little different, however.  It is a system you pay (invest?) into mandatorily by government fiat (because the government doesn't trust you to invest your own money, I guess).  That money you pay out of every paycheck is "your" money that you're supposed to get back when you qualify.  It was supposed to be a temporary program during the Depression, but like many government programs, it'll never go away.

So even saying not to touch my social security is consistent because it is a separate tax/investment that you have paid in and deserve to get back.

(I once did the calculation to determine how much money paying social security costs me over the course of my life, assuming average age of death.  Just using the general stock index plus the $6700 or whatever it is per year I pay into it, the amount I will NOT get back that I could have earned was astoundingly high from the time I was 26 and graduated law school until retirement.  Then you look at how much you'll get back between ages 65 and average death rate in your 70s and realize that you won't even get your capital interest returned, let alone any interest.  You have to live to be very, very old for it to pay off.  Anyway, sorry for the sidetrack...)

Not to be a stickler, but Social Security wasn't created to stop you from investing your own money.  It was created because people didn't invest their own money.  They just died in abject poverty for the most part.  Maybe those Tea Partiers recognize that while they like the idea of limiting govt involvement in various aspects of their lives, they don't want to suffer the likely outcome of not having Social Security?  Anyway, the way you wrote that per-supposed a rather nefarious agenda on the govt's part in creating Social Security.

You're not historically accurate there.  Social Security as we know it was developed as a number of programs to temporarily help during the Great Depression.  It was passed in 1935 by FDR, with the first payments being made in 1937.  It was based on massive unemployment, not lack of savings of people.  The goal was to immediately transfer a tax on workers to the elderly who were in need.  The money could be used instantly and then the fund would be funded again and again so that successive generations of retirees could partake in it.  The problem is that it was supposed to phase out over time, but people didn't want to pay into the system, only to have the money later disappear.

The system was amended and morphed over time, so if there is anything "nefarious" in my implications, it is what the system has morphed into, which is not what it was meant to be when it was created but has instead developed into an entitlement system.

(It was not developed because people didn't save for themselves.  Even had they saved, the market crash in 1929 would have emptied their savings.  But regardless, the government should not be playing a game of "we know better than you" and therefore take your money away from you.  If you don't save, that's your own fault.  It is really just a disguised redistribution system--many have compared it to a Ponzi scheme, which is not far from the truth.)

In reply to Heath (msg #145):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...in_the_United_States



http://www.nber.org/bah/summer04/w10466.html

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1863

http://blogs.reuters.com/reute...out-social-security/

http://www.urban.org/publications/412009.html

http://www.politifact.com/wisc...icare-75-fewer-seni/

Everything I have found suggests that it had to do specifically with poverty.  I've also never seen a reference to anything that suggests it was supposed to be temporary.  Do you have a source for that?

Lastly, as to what the govt should be doing.  Well, that's an opinion, isn't it?  I'd rather the govt makes people save than depending on my 401K manager to know when Goldman Sachs is lying to him about the value of an investment(or to know its a lie but put stock in it anyway because he knows he'll get a huge bonus even if my portfolio is wiped out).

I agree it has to do with poverty -- specifically the Great Depression.  What you said is that it was passed because people couldn't save for themselves.  That is inaccurate.  An event or series of events (like the stock market crash) created an untenable situation where people were put out on the streets and those who wanted to work (and save) actually could not do so.

This was a reactionary statute.  Your statement appears to put it in the light of a preventative program (to prevent people from being poor in the future because they don't know how to save for themselves).

I don't think what the government "should be" doing is so much opinion -- or at least, saying it's an "opinion" oversimplifies it.  We could say the government should revoke the 13th Amendment and allow slavery again too -- though that is "opinion" too.

This is a form of slavery because the government by force takes away the money that rightly belongs to you and will not let you get it until you are 65; and even then, you only get it in tiny disbursements until you die.  The purpose of this is to redistribute your contributions to those who are old now (who paid into the fund but had their money used for someone else).  This is why it is a giant Ponzi scheme, except we don't even have the choice about whether to join in on the Ponzi scheme because the government makes us.

My opinion on this has always been that social security should be an "opt in" basis, so those who don't want to participate will neither put money in or take it out.  In that case, you would be right that it is an "opinion."  Until then, it is a forced seizure of your property (without your consent and without due process) that punishes those who do not want to be a part of the scheme.