Archive for the ‘vulgar libertarianism’ Category

Poison As Food, Poison As Antidote

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

Those who see government power and corporate power as being in conflict, and those who seem them as being in cahoots, each have a point. The alliance between government and the corporate elite is like the partnership between church and state in the Middle Ages: each one wants to be the dominant partner, so there’s naturally some pushing and shoving from time to time; but on the other hand the two parties have a common interest in holding down the rest of us, and so the conflict rarely goes too far. The main difference between “left-wing” and “right-wing” versions of statism, as I see it, is that the former generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of the state (i.e., toward state-socialism) while the latter generally seek to shift the balance a bit farther in favour of corporatism and plutocracy. (In the U.S., the reigning versions of liberalism and conservatism are arguably both more corporatist than state-socialist; but the liberals are still a few notches farther toward state-socialism than the conservatives are.)

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Posted in Healthcare, Science fiction, corporate state, liberalism, vulgar libertarianism | 16 Comments »

When You See a Turtle Sitting on a Fencepost….

Monday, July 21st, 2008

…You know he had help getting up there.

Scott Adams, at Dilbert blog, says the main effect of Obama’s proposed tax policies will be to “to give my money to people who don’t work as hard as I do.”  He mentions the decidedly Type-A work habits by which he managed to get to his present condition…

The average work week is something like 35 hours. For most of my work life I worked about twice that much.

…and repeats that

as a generalization, Obama promises to take a large chunk of my hard-earned money and transfer it primarily to people who don’t work as hard. That’s just a fact.

And in yet another post, he equates the top marginal tax rate to the number of poor people which a given rich person is “subsidizing.”

First of all, just in passing, I never realized the primary purpose of the money the federal government spends on “defense,” on interest to T-bill holders, on highways, on prisons and the drug war, on schools to subsidize the training expenses of employers, on direct corporate welfare, and on the general operating expenses of government, all counted as support for “poor people.”  I thought spending on AFDC, food stamps, and Medicaid was a rather miniscule portion of the budget compared to direct and indirect welfare for the rich.

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Posted in corporate state, economics, vulgar libertarianism | 17 Comments »

Hatchet Job

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

The Bob Barr thread detoured into a discussion of the basis of property rights. Now, I won’t keep you in suspense. What we think of as “property rights” - fee-simple absolute individual tenure - was an innovation of states to aid in taxation. But John Locke had an origin myth that’s been smuggled into the bulk of “libertarian” property rights theory, locating a “natural right” in property provided one meets certain conditions:

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Posted in Crunchy Libertarianism, vulgar libertarianism | 6 Comments »

Women Around the World at Wonk

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

On reason magazine’s website, it’s Kerry Howley versus Michael C. Moynihan on Sexism versus Hillary Clinton. Howley gets much the better of the argument when she writes

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Posted in Democrats, feminism, libertarianism, vulgar libertarianism | 5 Comments »

Confused “Neo-libertarian” Site Gets Free Speech, Well, Confused

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

Poor Karl at the “neo-libertarian” blog Protein Wisdom waxes indignant — nay, verily scandalized — about Glenn Greenwald’s superb job documenting the many millions of dollars flowing from telecoms to lobby (and even personally benefit) members of both parties in the U.S. Congress. Greenwald addresses the (sarcasm alert!) coincidental relationship between said expenditures on the one hand, and on the other, a congresscritter’s support for telecom amnesty in the matter of the telecoms’ violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by joining with BushCo to secretly spy on Americans’ telephone and email communications without warrants.

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Posted in Glenn Greenwald, Republicans, free speech, neoconservatives, vulgar libertarianism | 21 Comments »

Publicly built highways are not an expression of the free market

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

My friend Alex Marshall, in his newest post up on Governing magazine, asks “What’s up with groups that argue for less government but see publicly built highways as an expression of the free market?” Alex is highly critical of right-wing libertarians whose policy preferences are a simple Rorschach test of their own personal biases - people who label their preferences with the language of freedom, individualism and happiness, whereas any policy they dislike is labeled “socialism” or “tyranny”. Thus, if these people like to drive big cars, then any government action that supports their ability to drive big cars is a bold stroke for glorious emancipation, whereas any policy that interferes with their ability to drive big cars is a form of Stalinism so black that even Stalin himself would have thought it excessive. I encourage you to read the whole post. This is how it starts: (more…)

Posted in big cars, free markets, libertarianism, transportation, vulgar libertarianism | 15 Comments »