What drives people towards libertarianism?

Post Reply New Topic

What is it exactly that I don't understand? There's no way I can claim to accurately understand all the views of every libertarian in existence because like all ideologies there is some diversity within the general category. Therefore I go by arguments I typically hear on the internet from libertarians.

Your personal understanding of libertarianism seems to depend on your emotional state at the time you're writing; when you're calm you seem willing and able to acknowledge that libertarians are largely pursuing noble goals through means you happen to disagree with, but when you're mad we're all just a bunch of selfish a**holes who don't want to pay taxes. I'd have less of a problem if I thought you simply didn't know any better, but you do, so I have to go by my observations and peg your motives for these statements as emotionally driven maliciousness.

Other lefty types seem to like the straw-man approach, confusing us with anarchists, thinking we're all objectivists, shills for the "1%", secular conservatives, etc. Like I alluded to, the Haidt study confirms my opinion here.

How would you describe yourselves, then? Simply as guys who read newsletters and show up at rallies?

I never show up at rallies. They are mindless gatherings.

ruveyn

It's more like I sometimes have trouble sympathizing with their intentions when I see the obvious negative consequences for ordinary people when ordinary conservatives push their economic and social spending policies. If the majority of libertarians have a strong belief that personal charity would take up the slack for a reduced role of government in the economy I can sympathize. Likewise for libertarians who genuinely believe free market policies alone will help lift the poor (though I do get frustrated when it appears these people are oblivious to a lot of evidence to the contrary in the real world).

I have a much bigger problem with libertarians that have the view that even if the poor do indeed get poorer, class inequality increases, and many more people suffer due to the implementation of laissez-faire economic policies, they will never ever change their views because their own personal autonomy and "right" to not to be bothered should trump all else. I can understand that someone can have that view but I will never be able to sympathize with it or find it anything less than repugnant. I find it selfish when I see it is primary people who have "made it" economically and aren't personally struggling hold this view.


The problem is there are a lot of extremists (Murry Rothbard style anarcho-capitalists) on the internet and they tend to have the loudest voice. The extremists also seem to be the most persistent and argumentative and thus stick out more in terms of what centrist and left-leaning people see.

As for the "shills for the 1%" thing, from the left perspective it seems rather unfair that the libertarian movement has a heck of a lot more funding and glossy backing than any similar movement on the left. It makes it so that money gives the libertarian movement a disproportionately loud voice. The fact that the libertarian movement seems to have closer ties to the Republican Party (which openly caters to the wealthy) also creates suspicion in terms of what motivates the movement.

Well, then, you're no true Libertarian.

It isn't enough just to read the newsletters. You also have to show up at rallies.

You're silly. Libertarians don't have rallies. Rallies are a collectivist activity.

Technically, he's right. But you're right in the sense that interpersonal utility is very relevant for normative economics, and that use of economic concepts like diminishing marginal utility is valuable for understanding things from a normative economics perspective. I mean, economics isn't "unscientific" without interpersonal comparison, but it is pretty damned useless without the concept, as nobody really will ever care about Pareto optimality and ESPECIALLY not Kaldor-Hicks optimality without an interpersonal utility comparison.

Also, hfwang18 didn't do anything wrong to mention diminishing marginal utility. That in conjunction with a few additional(and plausible) assumptions can achieve the desired point.

The reason the Libertarian Party receives more funding than the Green or Socialist Party is because it's MORE POPULAR! You make it sound like political parties all run on funds. Well, they also have to have strength in numbers to justify those funds, something that the fringe left parties don't have.

I will say this;
I am a Libertarian and my values are as follows;

Minimal Government Involvement-Less Government in my life the better.
Less/Lower Taxes- Money is tight, I disagree with about %90 of the taxes.
Increased Privacy- The Government has no right to spy on me without my consent.
Increased Governement Accountability- If a Senator screws up, it's his problem, not mine. Punishments should be more harsh. Termination should be quicker.
Gun Control- Require every citizen to purchase a gun for self-defense or personal use.
Military- Withdraw all troops from active war-zones and remove all military influence from the world. Cut military spending in half.

Those are just a few but I can go on.

In any case, I think I can help with the issue:

1) There has been research on the psychological qualities that libertarians have relative to the rest of the population: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm? ... id=1665934

"We found that, compared to liberals and conservatives, libertarians show 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle and correspondingly weaker endorsement of other moral principles, 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional intellectual style, and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness."

So, there are psychological qualities that tend to drive someone to a libertarian morality.

2) There are intellectual authorities that support libertarianism. It is a relatively viable ideology with some competitive features, and some relatively strong intellectual credentials. So, libertarianism has roots going all the way back to classical liberalism, and it is a relatively extreme offshoot with precursors already seen in the 19th century, such as Frederic Bastiat and Herbert Spencer.

In the 20th century, the ideology has found alliance and sympathy with various intellectual movements like Austrian Economics, the Chicago School of Economics, various other pro-market economists, along with cultural/philosophical supporters like Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Robert Nozick, etc.

Libertarianism probably has stronger intellectual support for it than conservatism.

3) Libertarianism is simple and seems very logical. You can easily reduce down the libertarian message into a populist message. This makes conveying the idea much easier, and allows it to hijack various emotional responses to wrong-doings to its message. So, a complicated ethical system ends up being very cognitive, but a simpler one allows for better use of emotional shortcuts to solve problems.

Also, it seems very logical because libertarianism does provide a lot of solutions for problems. They may not be ideal solutions, but this leaves people without feeling lost.

4) Status. Libertarianism, by standing outside of the norm, allows for adherents to have a feeling of discovering some special code to beat the system. Other political ideologies end up being bogged down in the debates of their proponents, and also suffer from being mundane. Libertarians are not as mundane, even though they are gaining recognition. By being a libertarian, as opposed to a conservative, one is signaling how one is better in certain ways.

Also, libertarians do tend to get certain issues right that a lot of other people tend to get wrong. Libertarians are right that markets are powerful tools. They are right that many regulations and social regulations interfere with human freedom without good justification. And the list can go on, but getting things right is a real status boost.
-------------------

Does this help to answer your question? I understand some people here are going to also try to provide answers as well, but I do think that this can help you understand the issue a bit more, even if it is incomplete and arguably a bit unfair. (I never mentioned the Just World Phenomenon, but as I'm sure Marshall will point out, it definitely plays a role)

Libertarian types are self actualizers and they have worked their way high up on the Mazlow hierarchy.

And that is why the ultra pinko stinko liberals hates them preciousssssss...... Because these pesky folk of independent inclination will not permit themselves to live on the Government reservation. They don't need no steeeeeenking Government Nanny State to exist.

ruveynn

In my experience, libertarian ideologues are usually bright people who like to think carefully and logically, and to ask deep questions.

So, they ask the question: "What should government do?" and come up with the only "correct" answer - the minimalist one. They understand that any other answer would have to be vague and fuzzy around the edges, and would provide the beginning of many slippery slopes.

Their flaw is that they wrongly assume that all questions deserve a clear answer.

I've "made it" economically and I hold this view.

But I also held this view when I was skipping meals and sleeping in an empty room with no furniture. It's what made me take responsibility for myself and change it. It's what made me fight through the disadvantages of AS, getting outside my comfort zone and making things happen, rather than expecting other people to bail me out.

Taking responsibility for yourself and wanting to keep what you've earned is not selfish. What's selfish is when you get on your soapbox and try to get the government to take from the people who produce in order to support your desire to consume.

that however ignores the finite nature of resources and social factors,

it also ignores the fact that humans come in many variations and some of those varioations cause suffering in and of themselves, some of us can work through that others cant.
to punish peiople for not being able to work thorugh something like that is in my eyes inhumane, nothing less.

Fine. Let us not blame the losers for their loss. But let us not sacrifice our welfare for them out of sympathy.

ruveyn