Why libertarianism is a load of crap.

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The response to this is so predictable that I'll just go ahead and say it. According to the libertarian the worker has voluntarily chosen to work for such a boss. If the worker wants better pay he/she can "shop around" for a better boss.

Hahaha... Sadly you're right, Marshall.

Well, it is arguably quite true that the degree of competition in governments and the degree of competition in jobs are significantly different. It is a lot easier to find a new job than it is to find a new government, and this can be taken as extreme enough that an employee is not in a coercive agreement while a person in a nation is.

Now, of course, the lines I am drawing are kind of questionable, however, market failure does to some degree occur, as do unequal bargaining positions, but the libertarian position often is that government failure as a threat to individual freedom is larger than market failure. (some of the simpler ones don't recognize all of the diverse threats, but then again, it is hard to blame an individual for failing on some of these complexities)

I would not trust private sector corporations to do the same, as to pad the bottom line they too would do something half the quality at twice the price.

I would like to be proven otherwise, but as of now I see both private and public as the same - both willing to take and not willing to give to the common good.

The exploitation of the proletariat.

Or even (gasp!) accumulate capital and start his own business.

ruveyn

I don't know if that was supposed to be a joke or not. Did you just pwned your own position?

But a in a representative democracy the people should theoretically be able to change their government in order to better suit the needs of all interests. The idea that all socialist governments are going to be totalitarian socialist governments is the number one libertarian fallacy I see.


The market for unskilled workers is usually dominated by unequal bargaining as there's rarely a shortage of unskilled workers. Therefore without things like government mandated minimum wages there is a general tendency towards bare subsistence wages with no hope for accumulation of capitol or upward advancement. Also, there is little hope for becoming skilled in a technologically advanced society where becoming skilled requires an significant amount of wealth that can't be accumulated on subsistence wages. The ultimate result is a whole class of people who feel permanently disenfranchised.

No, why should they theoretically be able to change their government in order to suit the needs of all interests?
1) We have no reason to believe that all people will really know their interests. People are often ignorant of the best way for political bodies to interact with society and intervene to improve it.
2) We have no reason to believe that the people are the only relevant force in changing society, but rather major interest groups are often more interested than the average person. In fact, interest groups are usually more interested than the average person.
3) "the people" is an abstraction. Rather, there are individual persons, and each individual person may have different and even opposing interests. This means that "better suit needs of all interests", can still be questionable, and the individuals in question can still have low individual power.

As for "socialism failing", this is actually very common among economists, not just libertarians, depending on how one defines "socialism". By socialism in this case, I mean a more classic definition, which is a system of public control of all of the means of production, as opposed to a system with some private control of the means of production, and redistributionary practices by government. The former won't work due to complexities of economic organization, a point that I think is generally agreed upon due to the problems of the USSR, the computational complexities of an economy, and a large number of other issues.

Honestly, minimum wages are hardly necessary. Most jobs are higher than the minimum wage, even if they are not high skill jobs(a finding that seems to disagree with your intuitive economics, as we should see all low skill jobs just at the minimum wage if there is just a general tendency towards subsistence wages). Most recipients of the minimum wage aren't poor, but rather around 70% have household incomes that are 150% of the poverty line or more. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/lwlm99/turner.htm#t1 Even further, there is other research that does suggest that the poor really don't improve their outcomes even with a minimum wage. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1295049071.html

As for skills, I doubt this is a matter of "no hope", but rather difficulty. As it stands, many high schools currently teach basic computer skills. Even further, jobs often do seek quality individuals, rather than just the skills section of a resume. This is not to say "people with only high school diplomas have it great", but rather, the fact is that most jobs have to be filled with people who lack higher education.

I wasn't trying to claim that the system is perfect, only that in a democratic system government can be held accountable to some degree. Without some higher regulatory body corporations and private companies can't really be held accountable for the damages they could cause. Boycotts aren't always feasible in every situation for many reasons that I don't really have the energy to go into.


I was talking about socialism in the more modern sense. I'm not sure what the official definitions are but I tend to use the words like "Marxist" or "communist" when talking about the classical type of socialism where all means of production is public. I agree that Marxist/communist systems tend to have insurmountable problems regulating supply and they also tend to be authoritarian/totalitarian as people generally don't like living under such a system. However, the more economically feasible "mixed" socialist governments can go either way. They can be democratic like Scandinavia or they can be decidedly un-democratic like China. It isn't just a case of "the freer the market the freer the people".

I might be wrong in saying that the tendency is universal. However, I don't see any reason why a company would ever decide to pay an unskilled worker more than they feel they have to. Corporations sure aren't reluctant about instigating mass layoffs and outsourcing jobs if it will improve their bottom line.

I also remember viewing a very real study which showed that, when measured in terms of "buying power", the income levels of unskilled workers tend to decrease during economic downturns. Then they don't go up as much during economic upturns. Instead what happens is the buying power increases at a much higher rate for those who already have relatively high incomes, and increases at a much lower rate for those who have low incomes (even though everyone's buying power is increasing). The net effect over many economic cycles is the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. It isn't just a liberal myth. The important result is that it's only during the upturns that everyone's income, including those at very bottom, goes up.

I also don't think the fact that many unskilled jobs are above minimum wage necessarily means that they wouldn't be lower without a minimum wage. Further, subsistence level income in some areas might be above the minimum wage which would explain why the bottom wages are higher than the minimum in many areas.

To the best of my knowledge, they deny that such a scenario is even possible. Obviously there are no assymmetries in bargaining power between individual workers trying to feed their children and large corporations that might effectively control the economy of an entire town.

Ok, boycotts aren't feasible, but "the populace" always has a great ability to control their political leaders? Somehow I doubt this is the case, even further, a personal boycott actually has more effect than a simple withholding of votes, a point I make somewhat as a joke. (boycott at least denies some profit, while a single vote does absolutely nothing)


I really think that "socialism in a more modern sense", isn't meaningfully socialism, and I really refuse to even give people who use that kind of definition the time of day. It is just confusing and it is just stupid. It probably started off with a bunch of US republicans for goodness sake, or with a far-left propaganda campaign to revamp the word, and either way it is just stupid.

Actually, Scandinavia tends to do relatively well on the Heritage Economic Freedom index.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_e ... ic-freedom (older version)

http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking.aspx (newer version, lower but still not bad. It does horribly in some parts, and remains high because the freedom of businesses is still very high, outside of labor issues)


Well, ok? That does not really mean anything. It is already foreknown that businesses are trying to increase profits.

Even further, outsourcing jobs promotes the well-being of the 3rd world by allowing for them to begin trade and to accumulate capital, and also are just more efficient.

I removed your bit about relative wealth and economic health as I just didn't find this an overly large concern at this point in time. I don't know the relevance to the current question.
(EDIT: Ok, the only thing I can see here is a claim about income inequality, however, the inequality of growth in income is not something that you needed to go into business cycles to claim. Instead, there is ongoing debate on the cause of this change anyway, with many economists believing that these changes are skill-based due to technological shifts. I am still unsure of the relevance, as these changes are sometimes also believed to be the cause of higher European unemployment, which suggests that this is a difficult issue for which labor regulation mostly changes the expression, not the issue.)


Well, I actually do think that this is a good sign that the wouldn't be lower. If companies don't pay more than necessary, then why aren't all of these wages just the legal minimum? It is a real problem for your kind of model.(and one that I am fine with using)

Even further, why is subsistence necessary when I've already shown that the majority of minimum wage earners are well above the poverty line? Subsistence only makes sense when there is financial hardship among minimum wage earners, but most of them don't have that problem.

*Every* other ideology may be going a bit far.

Epicureanism and Utilitarianism work just fine, especially as the essence is purely prescriptive.

It does not work when the people who run things are armed.

ruveyn

I guess I just have to disagree with the libertarian notion which always see's "government" power in a negative light and thinks the "free market" will always do a better job at protecting from damages. Often times government is the only reasonable check on the power of destructive moneyed interests. Whether government can ever perfectly represent the "will of the people" is irrelevant and tangential to my argument.

Government is an imperfect vehicle of collective decision making through compromise between different interest groups. At least with democratic government there is an attempt at compromise and reconciliation between competing interest groups. With private entities there is not even an attempt to take into account outside interest groups and compromise with them. Instead everything is controlled from the top down.

I also think that having regulations in place, backed by government power, is the only real way to deal with potential damages from private sector entities. Sure, eventually these things may resolve themselves through the spontaneous formation of non-government collective entities (e.g. unions and consumer protection groups) which can negotiate through the threat of boycotts or strikes. The problem is that without the government these entities are extremely slow, clumsy, encumbering (I can't think of the best word) for all parties involved to the point where private companies would actually prefer to operate under government regulations.


This is a matter of language and semantics and not relevant to my point. I was just trying to make it clear what I was talking about. I don't really want to get into an argument over the correct terminology to use. I know what most American conservatives mean when they refer to "socialism" so I was adapting their own terminology in order to enter the debate. Otherwise the discussion gets clumsy.

I'll try to respond to the other parts of your post later.

But why would the government really be a check on moneyed interests though? They're the ones in the government. (Note, that's an oversimplification, however, these interests will have more interest in the laws and ability to be interested in the process of crafting them than "the people")

That being said, you're using "always" as a way of reframing the debate rhetorically. The problem is that a person who is generally negative towards government, and generally regards non-governmental agencies in a more positive light is going to also likely be in the ideological spectrum that could be labeled "libertarian", so I don't see the need for that framing.


It depends on the context. Some products do use "corporate social responsibility" as part of their strategy. Sometimes the external groups do not have a relevant interest. Some of these issues can just be legal rights-oriented. Even further, if there are competing interest groups, then why can't they bargain? One of the solutions to externally imposed costs is illustrated through Coase's theorem, in which parties do bargain.


I really don't know what you are exactly saying here/the grounds for your conclusion. If I cannot determine where your answer comes from, I do not know what I can or should criticize, other than express some degree of skepticism.


I still think the term use of that sort is rather silly. It confuses the issue worse because it pulls in the debate over economic processes, as opposed to modifications of a single process.