March, 2007

Liberty May Make Us Wealthy, but Liberty Is Not Wealth

by Tom G. Palmer

March 29th, 2007

I’ll start where my colleagues have ended, and congratulate Brian for his accomplishment in writing such a fine work and encourage everyone to go out and buy a copy. I’ve expressed my reservations about the book, but they’re quite minor. Radicals for Capitalism is a serious accomplishment and a genuinely good book.
I [...]

Read: Liberty May Make Us Wealthy, but Liberty Is Not Wealth

Virginia Postrel: Recorded Live!

Virginia Postrel takes the Cato Unbound conversation to an audio device near you with a chat about “The Cultural Tradition of Libertarianism” [.mp3] in today’s Cato Daily Podcast.

Read: Virginia Postrel: Recorded Live!

Post-Apocalyptic Libertarianism

by Brink Lindsey

March 29th, 2007

Much of the current confusion about libertarianism’s future, and many of the deepest conflicts within libertarian circles today, can be chalked up to this fact: the world didn’t come to an end.
As Brian’s wonderful book makes vividly clear, the modern libertarian movement emerged as a prophecy of doom. Libertarians held vital knowledge about [...]

Read: Post-Apocalyptic Libertarianism

What Was Wrong With Socialism?

by Virginia Postrel

March 28th, 2007

Reflecting on our exchanges, I’m struck by the lingering division over what was wrong with socialism, and with socialists. Libertarians agree that socialism was wrong. We disagree on exactly why. So in part what we’ve been calling a division between the empiricist and deductivist strands of libertarianism also reflects different diagnoses of the nature of [...]

Read: What Was Wrong With Socialism?

Principles, the Welfare State, and Libertarian Cultural Traditions

by Virginia Postrel

March 28th, 2007

Like Tom Palmer, I am “not a pure instrumentalist. I think that being free is a constituent part of a happy life, which is something desirable for its own sake and not for the sake of something else.” Unlike Tom, I’m not a philosopher, so perhaps my language suggested baggage I did not mean to [...]

Read: Principles, the Welfare State, and Libertarian Cultural Traditions

Quick Hits

by Tyler Cowen

March 27th, 2007

Many issues have been raised, let me offer a few comments:
1. In response to Tom, I am a pluralist and I also value (libertarian) freedom for its own sake. But in most settings I value “positive freedom,” or capabilities, a good deal more. Positive freedom or positive liberty are common philosophical concepts, and [...]

Read: Quick Hits

Oddballs vs. Scholars, For Negative Liberty, Against the Welfare State

by Tom G. Palmer

March 25th, 2007

There are so many threads crossing one another that it’s hard to know where to start. So I’ll just pick on Brian, our author (of a terrific book) and then go on to disagree with my other commentators.
For Brian: I do think that Armen Alchian has had a big influence on libertarians, [...]

Read: Oddballs vs. Scholars, For Negative Liberty, Against the Welfare State

Cato Unbound: Now in Living Audio!

Put voices to words as Tyler Cowen and Tom G. Palmer continue the Cato Unbound conversation as Cato Daily Podcasts, and lead essayist Brian Doherty goes further in depth about his new book, Radicals for Capitalism.
» Tyler Cowen, “Are Libertarians in Intellectual Crisis,” [.mp3] March 20, 2007.
» Tom G. Palmer, “In Defense of Negative [...]

Read: Cato Unbound: Now in Living Audio!

Liberaltarians, the Non-Inevitable Welfare State, the Value of Libertarian Kooks, and the Limits of Consequentialism

by Brian Doherty

March 23rd, 2007

Here are some scattered reactions to the first round of thoughtful comments, which I hope are the beginning and not the end of the conversation.
Brink Lindsey: I recognize the factual reasons for the pessimism he expressed; I share the optimism he expresses. I think it likely that the (short term) strategy he proposes toward the [...]

Read: Liberaltarians, the Non-Inevitable Welfare State, the Value of Libertarian Kooks, and the Limits of Consequentialism

Collectivism Isn’t in Our Genes

by Brink Lindsey

March 22nd, 2007

Brian has been on a manic schedule of traveling and speaking this week (including a fine talk today at Cato), and as a result he’s been delayed in responding to the reaction essays. He should be weighing in tomorrow, but in the meantime I’ll invoke editor’s privilege and get the discussion started. In particular, let [...]

Read: Collectivism Isn’t in Our Genes

Best of the Blogs: Somin on Libertarian Despair

George Mason law professor and Volokh Conspirator Ilya Somin argues that counsels of libertarian despair and semi-capitulation (he has Tyler Cowen and Brink Lindsey in mind) are “heavily influenced by two important fallacies that lead many libertarians to be more pessimistic than is warranted.” And the fallacies are . . .

Read: Best of the Blogs: Somin on Libertarian Despair

Best of the Blogs: Jason Kuznicki on Libertarians’ Unfinished Revolution

At Positive Liberty, Cato’s own Jason Kuznicki–a Johns Hopkins-trained intellectual historian–offers an illuminating meditation on the the place of libertarianism in modern life in response to Brian Doherty’s lead essay. “The general ignorance, and dismissal, of the libertarian movement among mainstream Americans is one of the great paradoxes of our time,” Kuznicki writes. “From roughly the mid-twentieth century up to the present, something remarkable has happened. A way of thinking about social and political questions, a disposition of mind that lay dormant for decades, has reasserted itself. Quietly, it has influenced even those who have nothing but scorn for libertarians and their ideals.” Kuznicki explains how. . . .

Read: Best of the Blogs: Jason Kuznicki on Libertarians’ Unfinished Revolution

Best of the Blogs: Kevin O’Reilly Riled

According to Kevin O’Reilly, Tyler Cowen is “is a brilliant, brilliant man and one of contemporary libertarianism’s brightest lights,” whose contribution to this issue was “shockingly, embarassingly bad.” He explains why he thinks so in this thoughtful post from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog. . .

Read: Best of the Blogs: Kevin O’Reilly Riled

An 18th-Century Brain in a 21st-Century Head

by Virginia Postrel

March 18th, 2007

Atlantic columnist and former Reason editor-in-chief Virgina Postrel argues: “Rather than defining ‘libertarian’ by appealing to deductive logic and so-called first principles, we can better understand the American libertarian movement as a sometimes uneasy amalgam of four distinctive yet complementary traditions, two cultural and two intellectual.” Intellectually, she points to “two seemingly incompatible intellectual traditions”: the modernist Rand-Rothbard quest for certainty “as rational and precise as a skyscraper, as ahistorical as Le Corbusier’s plans to remake Paris” and the empiricist Hayek-Friedman/Hume-Smith tradition, which “looks for understanding, for facts, and for solutions to specific problems.” Drawing on her book The Future and Its Enemies, Postrel warns against fighting the old fights between capitalism and socialism when the real battles is between “stasism” and “dynamism.” She plumps for the possibility of an alliance of libertarian and left dynamists against stasists of all stripes, but concludes with a challenge to the left: “We know we’re liberals. The question is, Are they?”

Read: An 18th-Century Brain in a 21st-Century Head

Best of the Blogs: EconLog vs. Cowen

EconLog co-bloggers, Cato Institute adjunct scholars, and Cato Unbound contributors Arnold Kling and Bryan Caplan play good cop/bad cop with Tyler Cowen in two critical posts on their home blog. Kling delivers a characteristically measured response, while Caplan pointedly asks of Cowen’s contribution: “The Worst Libertarian Advice Ever?”

Read: Best of the Blogs: EconLog vs. Cowen

Libertarianism or Liberty?

by Tom G. Palmer

March 14th, 2007

In his reply, Cato senior fellow Tom G. Palmer maintains that Brian Doherty is guilty of “a confusion of two related projects: the promotion of liberty and the promotion of libertarianism, i.e., the theory that liberty should be the primary (or overriding) goal of a political order.” It is possible to promote liberty without promoting libertarian philosophy. This distinction motivates Palmer to dissent from Doherty’s emphasis on education. No amount of libertarian education will make a difference, Palmer argues, unless someone acts to make change for liberty. “If I were to put it as a slogan, it might be: ‘Education doesn’t eliminate trade barriers, legislators do.’” Palmer also quibbles with Doherty’s focus in his book on zany libertarian characters and with his laissez faire approach to promoting liberty.

Read: Libertarianism or Liberty?

The Paradox of Libertarianism

by Tyler Cowen

March 11th, 2007

According to Marginal Revolution blogger and New York Times “Economic Scene” columnist Tyler Cowen, there have been a few truly great libertarian developments since the 1970s. However, he argues, they “also brought much bigger government. The more wealth we have, the more government we can afford. Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will demand. That is the fundamental paradox of libertarianism. Many initial victories bring later defeats.” Cowen argues libertarians accept this paradox, reconcile themselves to the welfare state, recognize positive liberty as more important than negative liberty, and restructure libertarianism around new threats to liberty such as global warming, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. Such a libertarianism, Cowen admits, would “run the risk of losing its intellectual and moral center. … Many people fear such a development, and I can understand why.”

Read: The Paradox of Libertarianism

Libertarians in an Unlibertarian World

by Brink Lindsey

March 8th, 2007

Things may look bleak for libertarians these days, but there are grounds for hope, says Cato’s vice president for research (and Cato Unbound editor) Brink Lindsey. Though few Americans self-identify as “libertarian,” there is nevertheless a deep libertarian streak in American culture and a large group of voters who say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal.” In the long term, Lindsey argues, the goal for libertarians is to multiply the number of libertarians, and he concurs with Doherty in saying “let a thousand flowers bloom.” However, Lindsey argues that in the short term “what needs to be developed is a set of ideas that can serve as the basis for a new political identity. Not a strictly libertarian identity – there simply aren’t enough strictly defined libertarians to base a mass political movement on. Rather, a genuinely liberal identity – one that brings together ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal’ voters from across the current left-right spectrum.”

Read: Libertarians in an Unlibertarian World

Libertarianism: Past and Prospects

by Brian Doherty

March 7th, 2007

Beginning with a riff on Brink Lindsey’s appeal to the “liberaltarian” left, and David Boaz and David Kirby’s analysis of the libertarian vote, Brian Doherty, author of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement, notes that “realistic talk of a “libertarian voting bloc” for major parties to fight over—the idea that a double-digit percentage of Americans can be assumed to be in line with libertarian ideas—is a major miracle in libertarian movement terms.” Back in the 1970s, Doherty reports, “the notion that an explicitly libertarian institution should even seriously think about effecting real-world political change was considered—well, it was not really considered at all…” What, then, does history tell us about the best strategy for creating a more libertarian future? “The very libertarian answer is: libertarian energies ought to go to wherever any given libertarian wants them to,” Doherty argues. “The division of labor, operating through free choice, is as valid here as in any other aspect of the economy.”

Read: Libertarianism: Past and Prospects