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History and Libertarians
Apr. 20th, 2012 02:25 pmI've had many a run-in with libertarians online. There's a certain appeal to libertarian thought for the technical mind. Now, I like to think I also have a technical mind - I am a full-time IT professional. But I also know history.
So, I know that, during the Gilded Age and later, up to FDR's New Deal, libertarian modes of government led to things like The Ludlow Massacre, in which a private army with machine guns killed 15 women and children, dependents of striking mine workers. The event happened on this day in 1914, and led to an additional 10 days of fighting, ended only by Woodrow Wilson sending in the US Army.
In a separate discussion about libertarians, I stumbled across a lengthy but well-written post, called The non-libertarian FAQ. It's way too long to do justice to here, but well worth your reading. A few points from the FAQ:
1) Libertarians think that everything boils down to a battle between State and Individual. The FAQ author and I both reject that dichotomy.
2) Quote: "And yet over the past sixty years, unemployment has gone down under every Democratic president but one, and gone up under every Republican president but one (and the single exceptions were only very small, almost insignificant changes). The two greatest recessions of the last hundred years, the Great Depression and the current (as of 2009) recession, both happened after long periods of policies considered by historians to be unusually laissez-faire."
3) Even though Americans spend a lot of money on private charity, to compensate for the loss of safety-net spending, individual Americans would have to triple the amount they give to charity, while taxes would only go down about 12%.
4) Quote: ""The arguments that libertarianism will protect our values and not collapse into an oppressive plutocracy require certain assumptions about the marketplace: there are lots of competing companies, zero transaction costs, zero start-up costs, everyone has complete information, everyone has free choice whether or not to buy any particular good, everyone behaves rationally, et cetera."
Well worth reading.
So, I know that, during the Gilded Age and later, up to FDR's New Deal, libertarian modes of government led to things like The Ludlow Massacre, in which a private army with machine guns killed 15 women and children, dependents of striking mine workers. The event happened on this day in 1914, and led to an additional 10 days of fighting, ended only by Woodrow Wilson sending in the US Army.
In a separate discussion about libertarians, I stumbled across a lengthy but well-written post, called The non-libertarian FAQ. It's way too long to do justice to here, but well worth your reading. A few points from the FAQ:
1) Libertarians think that everything boils down to a battle between State and Individual. The FAQ author and I both reject that dichotomy.
2) Quote: "And yet over the past sixty years, unemployment has gone down under every Democratic president but one, and gone up under every Republican president but one (and the single exceptions were only very small, almost insignificant changes). The two greatest recessions of the last hundred years, the Great Depression and the current (as of 2009) recession, both happened after long periods of policies considered by historians to be unusually laissez-faire."
3) Even though Americans spend a lot of money on private charity, to compensate for the loss of safety-net spending, individual Americans would have to triple the amount they give to charity, while taxes would only go down about 12%.
4) Quote: ""The arguments that libertarianism will protect our values and not collapse into an oppressive plutocracy require certain assumptions about the marketplace: there are lots of competing companies, zero transaction costs, zero start-up costs, everyone has complete information, everyone has free choice whether or not to buy any particular good, everyone behaves rationally, et cetera."
Well worth reading.
