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 Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Alex Epstein on Market Neutral

By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM

In this 35 minute "Market Neutral" podcast, Chip Hanlon interviews ARI's Alex Epstein. The description reads: "Ayn Rand Institute analyst, Alex Epstein, discusses government's proper role in 'fixing' the subprime mess. He also weighs in on Libertarians, with remarks that may surprise given the recent euphoria surrounding long-shot presidential candidate, Ron Paul." (Via Mike)

I was able to listen to this podcast in early January. It was definitely interesting, particularly the comments on Ron Paul and libertarianism. I'm not sure that I agree with Alex's analysis of libertarianism, but it was good food for thought.

Update: I recalled what in particular I disagreed with in Alex's analysis of libertarianism. It's posted in the comments.

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 Comments

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 9:50:53 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: PMB

Hi Diana,

I recall listening to that podcast when it was first posted and being impressed with Alex's analysis of libertarianism. I'd be curious to know what about it you disagree with.

Thanks.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 17:37:39 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog

Unfortunately, I don't recall the specifics of Alex's analysis of libertarianism. So although Paul and I spoke about it at the time, I don't recall particularly what I disagreed with in it. (It wasn't HUGE or anything.) I don't imagine that I'll have time to listen to the podcast again, but if I do, I'll try to blog on it.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 10:39:13 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: johnnycwest
E-mail: johnnyca(at)shaw(dot)ca

I listened to the podcast and enjoyed it - thanks for the heads up. I am not sure your concern was the same as mine, but here goes. In the podcast Alex differentiates between libertarians and Libertarians. The former, the small "l" variety include those who support freedom along rational lines, but without a particularly strong philosophical defense. This includes the American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson. He is sympathetic to these people and largely in agreement with them and could support a political party founded along those lines.

Large "L" Libertarian's are entirely different because they support freedom in an irrational way. Many Libertarians support pacifism, criticize the United States as an aggressor, support our enemies such as Iran and accept child molestation all under the umbrella of "freedom". Alex rejects this political movement without qualification. Freedom as defined by large "L" Libertarians is an anti-concept.

I understand what Alex is saying, but that small matter of a capital versus small "L" seems to me to be too subtle to differentiate a largely reasonable political position with an evil and dangerous one - particularly when both types of Libertarianism are (incorrectly) associated with Ayn Rand and Objectivism. It could be a distinction without a difference in the minds of many, even though it may be obvious to us. I would suggest we need a new and better term to characterize the small "l" libertarians who are in many ways fellow travelers. They are the ones who are very likely to be sympathetic with Objectivism, learning more about it, and joining us in supporting Objectivist principles.

I am not sure if that is your concern Diana, but it struck me in the podcast.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 12:42:25 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2

I listened to the podcast, and Epstein was admirably clear on the philosophical issues. I do have a minor concern, although I have no way of knowing whether or not it is the same as Diana's. A person who will be perceived as a kind of authorized spokesman for Objectivism has a special responsibility to be factually and contextually accurate. Several of the particularly stupid positions that Epstein ascribes to "many or most" Libertarians are in fact the positions of minuscule minorities on the outer fringes of the Libertarian movement, or of people who try to promote their idiotic causes by associating those causes with upper-case-L Libertarianism but are not even considered "Libertarian" by most actual upper-L "Libertarians." This seemingly minor inaccuracy may cause listeners who are still "in" the upper-L Libertarian movement to tune out the rest of Alex Epstein's message, which will be heard as based on a contextual falsehood. Epstein's factually accurate philosophical evaluation of the upper-L Libertarian movement does explain _why_ some idiots are attracted to "Libertarianism," and it would have been more accurate, and effective, just to state that fact without hyperbole.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 12:49:16 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog

johnnycwest: Yes, that's what I objected to as well.

Here's my view:

The Big-L Libertarian versus little-l libertarian distinction is merely a matter of whether a person supports the Libertarian Party or is part of the broader libertarian movement. In fact, that's the standard usage, e.g. with Republican versus republican, Democrat versus democrat. It's also the common distinction amongst L/libertarians themselves.

The Libertarian Party is fundamentally subjectivist, and so is the broader libertarian movement. While many L/libertarians claim some particular philosophic foundation for liberty, they willingly ally themselves with anyone who claims to support liberty, whatever their grounds. That's wrong -- and destructive to the true case for liberty.

Today, almost anyone can be called a libertarian, including advocates of pedophilia, environmental regulations, anarchism, animal rights, killing government officials, pacifism, gun control, eliminating intellectual property, and so on. The only thing that unites these libertarianism is their subjectivism. It's their essence.

Although I'm no expert, I do not believe any of that aptly characterizes the Founding Fathers. The Founders were most definitely not acting on any such subjectivist premise, despite their often-serious differences. They didn't welcome "Tories for True Freedom under George" in their ranks, as many of today's libertarians would do.

That doesn't mean that the Founders didn't make some problematic alliances. To the extent that defenders of slavery were regarded as genuine ideological allies, as opposed to merely ad hoc allies for the purpose of freeing the colonies from Britain, that was a serious mistake that eventually cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet the ultimate implications of that alliance weren't obvious: the defenders of slavery at the time of the Founding were not like those at the time of the Civil War. The Founders certainly couldn't have known that new life would be breathed into slavery with the development of textile manufacture in the Industrial Revolution, such that slavery would be regarded as a positive good to be spread across America. At the time of the Founding, it was reasonable to hope that slavery would be allowed to die a natural -- and so peaceful -- death. They were mistaken in that, but not due to any subjectivism.

Finally, notice the very great difference in the philosophic position of today's libertarians versus that of the Founding Fathers. Today's libertarians have a well-developed philosophic defense of liberty at their disposal, yet they reject that in order to be "inclusive." The Founding Fathers had only the rudiments of a proper defense of liberty in Locke -- and they were faced with a major immediate crisis. To lump them together by calling them all libertarians -- rather than using the standard and proper term "classical liberal" for the Founders (and the like) -- is to integrate by inessentials. It also does a disservice to the Founders.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 12:59:37 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2

And also, a certain anachronism in Alex Epstein's terminology. Lower-case libertarians are characterized as "classical Liberals," when in fact they are what the rest of the world (outside the United States) calls "neo-Liberals," meaning adherents of classical liberalism also influenced by twentieth-century American individualists, especially Milton Friedman and, yes, Ayn Rand. The term "neo-Liberalism" is now more accurate, and it is high time we Americans started using it too.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 13:36:22 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: PMB

Thanks for your analysis Diana. I didn't take Alex to be distinguishing between the Libertarian Party and the broader libertarian movement. Rather, he was distinguishing between the libertarians movement that was spawned in the 60s from what might better be referred to as classical liberalism (Locke, the Founders, Adam Smith, Mises, etc.).

His point was that Objectivism's harsh (but accurate) evaluation of libertarianism doesn't apply to the latter group: they *did* value freedom, even though they were inconsistent. The libertarians don't.

Of course, if that didn't come through in his comments, it should have been presented better.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 15:03:49 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: johnnycwest
E-mail: johnnyca(at)shaw(dot)ca

Good discussion - thanks for the points one and all. Adam, I agree that Alex discussed extreme positions taken by some Libertarians and Diana expanded on those. Clearly most Libertarians do not engage or even support the extreme activities discussed. But they likely accept them and certainly rub shoulders with practitioners in the huge and wacky Libertarian tent. And more fundamentally, as Diana so lucidly pointed out, the subjectivist defense of liberty inevitably allows everything under the banner of "freedom". Most Libertarians may be personally uncomfortable with pedophilia and such, but they cannot defend why the state should make the practice illegal. When pushed, I believe most Libertarians allow themselves to be painted into the corner of anarchism, because it is consistent with their absolute worship of freedom. I do not believe it is misleading to discuss the extreme positions of Libertarianism as Alex and Diana did, because all of those Libertarian roads lead there.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 at 15:12:54 mst
Comment ID: #9
Name: Sascha Settegast
E-mail: sascha.settegast(at)gmx.de
URL: http://heroicdreams.wordpress.com

"Neo-liberal" is not a good term. In fact it was created by people like Hayek, Eucken, Muller-Armack and Erhard and used in order to distinguish the "new" liberalism from the old laissez-faire-liberalism. Neo-liberalism, if one takes the origin of that word, means that which in Germany is known as "social market economy", i.e. a regulated market supplied by a welfare state, i.e. a mixed economy, with all its inherent problems and trends towards governmental totalitarization. It is true that the leftists later turned the concept around into a derogatory term by package-dealing the "social market economy" with laissez-faire-capitalism. By means of that they managed to discredit even the heavily government dominated "social market economy" as some sort of "predatory capitalism" by drawing on the negative sentiments and prejudices the people have against laissez-faire. The results can be seen today: Almost everyone in Germany, for instance, believes that Germany is dominated by an anti-social, aggressive "turbo-capitalism", especially since those tiny cosmetic corrections Gerhard Schroeder undertook concerning the welfare state. This has brought about a lot of success for the leftists: The successors of the former East German dictatorship party at present are establishing themselves in several state parliaments in West Germany with about 6-8% of the votes, and still hold 20-30% of the votes in the East German states. And the country itself is moving towards more government control at an accelerated speed.

I would therefore argue that, instead of accepting and applying the concept of "neo-liberalism", we should repudiate and demask it as that vicious package-deal that it is.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 7:14:14 mst
Comment ID: #10
Name: Grant Williams
E-mail: grant.d.williams at gmail

I know I'm being tounge in cheek, but I've always thought that the superficiality of the libertarians was betrayed in the very word "libertarian"; big L or small. I've tried to think of other words that end with the suffix "ian" and all I can come up with is: Octigenarian, contrarian, veteranarian, and Vegetarian. None of these seems very essential in defining the essence of an individual's character; why would a penchant for liberty be any more fundamental than being old, argumentative, at work, or dietarily sanctimonious?

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 7:22:44 mst
Comment ID: #11
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog

Grant -- Sorry, but that's dumb, even if tongue in cheek. Think: Christian. The problem is the concept, not the word used to symbolize it.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 7:25:55 mst
Comment ID: #12
Name: Diana Hsieh
E-mail: diana(at)dianahsieh.com
URL: http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog

Also, the problem isn't that respect for liberty can't be fundamental to a person's character. The problem is that libertarians don't have a clear and well-grounded notion of what liberty is -- and that's why they're willing to make common cause with people actually opposed to liberty.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 20:05:53 mst
Comment ID: #13
Name: Grant Williams
E-mail: grant.d.williams at gmail

I know it's dumb, that's what tounge in cheeck means. I know that it's an inadequate rebuttal of libertarianism, even if it, rhetorically, points out the superficiality of the ideology. Lighten up.

Also, semantics aside, I disagree that respect for liberty, or even belief in God can be fundamental to a person's character. Both are manifestations of a deeper premise. In the Christian's case it is usually fear or guilt - things that they would feel regardless of any later learned explanation/rationalization of it. I submit as evidence all the emotionally-charged, ex-religious, self-proclaimed "atheists" who merely fear the responsibility of standing for anything positive or who feel, by religious standards they still hold, morally worthless (and who proceed to demonstrate it).

In the libertarian's case it is the desire for "freedom", detached from values. Just like anarchists - the most consistent libertarians - they're not motivated by values and a recognition that freedom is necessary to gain or keep them, but by the desire to evade the "tyranny" of moral identity. Their neurosis is strong enough that they are willing to overlook that, in reality, only a few moments of "freedom" before actual tyranny fills the vaccum is what their theories, or their willingness to associate with loonies, will bring about.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 20:59:33 mst
Comment ID: #14
Name: Adam Reed
E-mail: adamreedatalumdotmitdotedu
URL: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2

Grant,

I disagree about that alleged "brief moment of freedom." Take away government, and tyranny - of the local street gang or lynch mob - will be the immediate consequence, without any "moment of freedom" in between.

Thursday, March 13, 2008 at 21:19:57 mst
Comment ID: #15
Name: Grant Williams
E-mail: grant.d.williams at gmail

Adam,

Is that that really an important thing to point out? Whether or not a brief moment of "freedom" (chaos) will actually occur doesn't change the fact that, even if just imagined, it's not a desireable or teneable state of affairs. If you're trying to further undercut the libertarian/anarchist ideology, I sympathize, but your comment does nothing to help the ongoing discussion of what motivates the various libertarians to hold it.

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