The Hypocrisy of Conservative Ideology on Government Regulation
In keeping with the current zeitgeist of the forum, I thought I would take a swing at a political governance issue I've thought about for a long time. One thing I've learned from the recent political philosophy discussions here is that I don't have much patience with or facility for the more formal, historical approach to these issues. I keep wanting to simplify it back to one question - How can a government and society help create a decent life for its members. So my discussion will start out from a somewhat simplistic, seems-to-me perspective. Please feel free to formalize, broaden, and deepen it.
One of the foundations of conservative and libertarian political ideology is that the less regulation of commerce the better. On the other hand, the great majority of government regulation is put in place to benefit business and property owners. Large scale businesses such as banking, finance, communications, agriculture, and publishing could not exist without the Federal Reserve, SEC, FCC, FDA, and Copyright Office. And this doesn't include the most fundamental of all government regulations - property rights.
Regulation only seems to be a problem when it benefits the people who actually use the products and services of these industries and who have to face the consequences of their ineptitude, negligence, and malfeasance. Worker safety, environmental, and consumer protection regulations cost money and reduce profits so they are considered unreasonable, too restrictive.
One of the foundations of conservative and libertarian political ideology is that the less regulation of commerce the better. On the other hand, the great majority of government regulation is put in place to benefit business and property owners. Large scale businesses such as banking, finance, communications, agriculture, and publishing could not exist without the Federal Reserve, SEC, FCC, FDA, and Copyright Office. And this doesn't include the most fundamental of all government regulations - property rights.
Regulation only seems to be a problem when it benefits the people who actually use the products and services of these industries and who have to face the consequences of their ineptitude, negligence, and malfeasance. Worker safety, environmental, and consumer protection regulations cost money and reduce profits so they are considered unreasonable, too restrictive.
Comments (62)
Youre right, save for the conflation of conservatives and libertarians. I understand the close relation of the two in the United States, but they ought to be distinguished.
Conservatives are not unlike progressives in their application of government intervention into the lives of others. Arguably the first welfare state was a conservative invention, for instance, but also militarism, subsidizing, and taxation comes to mind.
One of the arguments in libertarian literature is that conservatives cannot offer an alternative direction to the one that we are heading, that is, to the enlargement of the state and the ever-growing positive encroachments into the lives of others.
See Hayeks Why I am not a Consevative as an example.
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf
As you say, regulation becomes a problem only when it protects consumers from irresponsibility and outright predation.
Trump/Musk's rip-snorting chainsaw attacks on government agencies (USAID, Education, CDC, etc.) are an example of the kind of dis-regulation desired by ideologues. They want to disable services to the undeserving, like third-world people with tiresome diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, and so on. In their view, students will conform to the locally run school or be damned. They find the third word of Center for Disease CONTROL offensive.
The way in which AIDS and other diseases came to the first world from the third world is a warning about how dis-regulation is a really stupid blunder. Disabling the IRS at least makes ideological sense -- the fewer agents available to audit the returns of wealthy tax evaders,, the better.
In all, the ideological urge against regulation is cynical. it's like the attacks on universities masquerading as a suppression of antisemitism. It's bullshit.
I read the first five pages of the article you linked and then skimmed the rest. I liked the way Hayek clarified the liberal/conservative/radical/socialist/libertarian mixups, although I don't share his obvious disdain for socialism. As I said in the OP, what really matters to me is the impact of government actions on the people who live within a society. In that regard, this jumped out at me:
I've bolded the parts that I found most significant. There is no mention of the impacts of change on the people who will be most affected by it. If misery is the result, it seems like that's ok as long as there is the proper balance "between demand and supply, between exports and imports."
Agreed. It seems obvious, but looking at the justifications libertarians/liberals give for their positions, they look a lot like anarchists. Somehow the world will self-organize if we just don't mess with the market.
Quoting BC
I'm not sure about that. For a lot of them I think it's sincere - a case of ideology overcoming self-interest.
In a free market, where demand is not great enough no supply will be, uh... supplied.
Large businesses have always used their lobbying power to gain special privileges, which is one of the primary mechanisms through which market regulation tends to favor them.
This is why market regulation often misses its mark: the big businesses it is meant to target have ways to circumvent, bend and change the rules, while the small businesses that are instrumental in counteracting the power of large businesses are disadvantaged.
Not only is this why regulation generally fails to curb the power of big businesses, but one of the reasons why big businesses themselves may promote market regulation; to heighten the bar for new competition.
Without fault, you will find the areas of the market with the most regulations to be the most monopolistic, and most broken.
Do note that it takes a powerful government to hold any power worth lobbying for in the first place.
I agree with everything you've written, but what's the alternative? I would be more sympathetic to the libertarian view if there were any acknowledgement of a societal obligation to create a society where people can live decent, secure lives. Fact is, I don't think it ever crossed most of their minds. They don't really care. Do you?
Yes, most government regulation benefits the property owner, business, corporations. What institution other than government can protect regular people living and working in the society from business, corporations, oligarchs, and, yes, government itself? Worker safety and environmental regulations have made a vast difference in the quality of life of most of us. Social Security reduced the poverty rate of people over 65 from about 50% to about 10%. Who else but government can fill this role. The libertarian answer is charity, voluntary associations, and the courts. Even they know that's baloney.
Quoting Tzeentch
Do you have some representative examples of heavily regulated industries that are monopolistic and lightly regulated industries that are not?
Government protection and services for the average - non-rich - citizen cost public money and therefore rely on taxation.
But the rich don't like paying taxes and can finds ways to avoid paying them. The non-rich can't. Owners can jack up rents and prices, cut salaries or the work force to keep profits up; the unrich have no recourse without government intervention. Corporations can move their industries and/or head offices to countries with less overhead and oversight - the workers and customers can't follow. They can finance political campaigns and lobbies to turn legislatures in their own favour - the have-nots can't, unless very large numbers of them agree on enough policy points. And since there is greater diversity of interest among the millions of ordinary citizens than among the handful of billionnaires, the pro-business party will always have more money for elections and more mass media support than their opponents.
Also, of course, governments are in control of major infrastructure, law enforcement, the mint, transportation, foreign trade, diplomacy and defence, all of which are needed by business, commerce and the financial sector. All of these things cost public money, which has to be collected in the form of taxes and user fees. Whereas the ultra rich are able to evade the bulk of taxation, the middle class is burdened with it - but the owner class benefits directly in the form of lucrative government contracts, while the salaries of executives and shop foremen, tradesmen and researchers are not raised along with the profits.
Without adequate regulation, more and more wealth gravitates upward to the least productive members of society, who increasingly grow richer through venture capital and speculation rather than through customer service and quality product. This imbalance continues to keep tipping in the same direction, until the whole edifice collapses in a depression. At this point, the conservative factions withdraw from the political arena to begin healing, while the liberal ones are left to repair the damage. This latter being a long and difficult endeavour commensurate with the extent of the damage, it gives the conservative faction sufficient time to recruit new allies: nationalists, religious blocs, interest groups that have some axe to grind against some portion of their fellow citizens.
Once the owner class is firmly back in the saddle, they begin deregulating industry, dismantling measures that protect the consumer, knocking over trade unions, militarizing police forces, giving themselves subsidies and tax breaks....
Where is this much-vaunted "free market"?
Demand can be artificially created. See junk food + diet programs, carcinogenic consumer goods + opioids, planned obsolescence + home appliances, addictive products + false scientific reporting.
The alternative is to do it ourselves. Even the most limited, night-watchman state, does not preclude our obligations to our fellow man and to our communities.
I would argue that delegating those duties and responsibilities to a bureaucracy or voting for a political party is the very least one could do in that regard, so much so thats its tantamount to doing nothing, save that it allows us to signal our bonafides and allegiances. I dont think that any of this crosses the statist mind.
There's a lot of truth in what you've written, although it's a bit of a caricature. You've also broadened it beyond the scope of my OP, which is fine with me. I look at it from the point of view of the regulations I have dealt with personally and think are especially important - occupational safety and health, environmental protection, consumer protection. These agencies are intended to protect the most vulnerable people in our society and they make a big difference.
In my experience, libertarians don't really have much interest in "our obligations to our fellow man and to our communities." Take environmental protection - a typical libertarian recommendation of what to do when Dupont dumps tetraethyldeath in the river where I get my drinking water is to take them to court. If you don't see how laughable that is, there's not much more I can say.
Most libertarians are not interested in the welfare of their fellow citizens. Many of them see themselves as rugged individualists who deserve all the credit for what they have accomplished. They don't recognize what has been given to them just by living in our society.
Libertarianism is just another name for anarchy. I'm not using that as an insult. I mean it as a description. This from the web - Anarchy - the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government. And it won't work, can't work, for any large modern society. It's pie in the sky.
They have done, and it was very good. The current state of American 'conservative' politics is far beyond caricature; it's a grotesque tragedy. The British, French and Canadian versions are about two decades behind - but only because we have not yet produced an extreme figurehead. Too many safeguards are still in place. But each consecutive 'conservative' administration knocks over a few more.
I have no quarrel with honest conservatism: the desire to preserve positive aspects of tradition and caution in the face of rapid technological and cultural change. Unfortunately, its influences were overwhelmingly European Christian, which simply doesn't work for an ethnically diverse modern society. What calls itself conservative now is not interested in conserving anything; it's openly regressive and predatory. The Conservative leader running in our present election wants to bring back single-use plastic. That's not a traditional value; that's catering to the oil industry and damn everybody and everything else.
I was referring to instances where the free market fails to provide basic services to rural communities where demand isnt great enough to make a profit. In these instances the government has needed to step in to ensure that essential services like electricity, telecommunications, healthcare, and infrastructure are accessible to all citizens, regardless of location or economic viability.
I realize this has most likely already been covered or isnt relevant to regulations. I havent read much of the topic.
This is a very uncharitable view, and I think it is also false.
In my experience, libertarians and classical liberals (I consider myself the latter) care just as much about their fellow man as anyone else. They simply disagree on how that care should be expressed.
Turning charity and humanism into a state-mandated process is objectionable for various reasons. The most obvious one being that states are flawed institutions that simply aren't able to provide the solutions they promise. The other is that it replaces the personal process and turns it into an anonymous one - the giver no longer feels like they did a good thing, and the recipient no longer feels they were given anything other than what they were entitled to in the first place. If you force people to do 'the right thing', then they no longer get to choose out of their own volition and thus the moral act is devalued if there is any moral act left to speak of at all.
Quoting T Clark
The (extended) family has fulfilled this role throughout the ages, and I believe it should have a much bigger role in modern society.
In general, I believe people should be encouraged to create and maintain social networks that they can fall back on. Social bonds between people cannot be replaced by a government surrogate.
Quoting T Clark
I doubt you'll find a lightly-regulated industry that can in any way be said to be monopolistic.
As for heavily-regulated ones that are either monopolistic or completely broken: housing, energy, pharmaceuticals, airflight, insurance, foodstuffs, etc.
I could probably think of a couple more, but since I'm speaking from the perspective of my country (the Netherlands) and you of yours, I'm not sure how productive this will be for our discussion.
So first off this is just a beautiful post. For me personally, it's the genuine nature of it as if we were having an in-person conversation coupled with the almost fatherly level of insight.
Quoting Tzeentch
Not to derail, but what, if there is such a thing, is an example of a perfect institution? Who is it instituted by? Who or what ensures its perfection? Are they truly not able or is there rational, moral, and legal aspects that contribute to it's inherently or otherwise unavoidably flawed nature?
Quoting Tzeentch
Take safety for example. As a shopkeeper, I don't have to ensure there's a wet floor sign present after an employee has recently mopped the floor leaving it ready for an unsuspecting person to slip and fall. Now, in most countries this would open myself up to lawsuits so of course I would act to avoid such possibility. But that aside, sometimes "forcing someone to do the right thing" is a matter of social survival. Not a great point or angle but expanding some, many places do have laws that somewhat "force people to do the right thing" not for "rightness" sake but because without it, problems would occur, be they financial, emotional, moral, etc. This is probably a bit aside from your point but, sure you can't force someone who is wealthy who walks by a beggar who would, for all you know, might possibly die if you don't give him a bit of your change, change that as a wealthy man is beyond superfluous. But, we have social... shall we say "laws that aren't laws" norms, which would encourage you to do so. Perhaps a less fortunate person who witnesses you walk by without even a passing glance and verbally condemning you as "cheap" or "heartless". It's not that serious, but it does exist. And many people do abide. No one's forced, per se, at the barrel of a gun or end of a sword, but in a way, it's certainly coerced in some sense, is it not? :smile:
Those things are all true, and part of the reason government exists. But those services to rural communities are not really provided by the government, are they? They're provided by private enterprise subsidized by government out of tax revenues, so there is still a profit. There is more profit again in the arrival of raw materials and foodstuffs from those remote rural areas to the city manufacturers and distributors on government-financed roads built by private companies and subsidized railways, operated by private companies.
My basic objection was to the phrase 'free market'. It's a myth. The profit market isn't, and never was; it's always been propped up by government.
There is plenty anarchist and libertarian literature showing that the opposite is the case. Ill accept your experience in good faith but Im going to defer to my own experience.
They just have a little more faith in human nature and their fellow man, that if the government disappears tomorrow not everyone will go to war with one another. They believe people will largely cooperate, as they do already.
But most of all they are taking a moral stance. They refuse to rely on an instrument of exploitation and coercion to achieve cooperation with others. To do so, to me, is a sign of moral poverty. At any rate, its a sign that one doesnt have much else to offer but his fealty to some class of politicians.
Speaking of pie in the sky, the vain hope that we can elect a bunch of angels to run the government is an absurd one. But, I guess well keep trying anyways.
How does that statement square with your years of defending a particular politician?
As I see it, it's not a question of expressing concern for humanity, it's about taking responsibility for their welfare. To lighten that a bit, it's at least about not benefitting from their misery. As I see it, it is not possible to live in a modern society without doing that. Do libertarians pay wages adequate for their workers to live decent lives, or do they let the market have it's way? Do they provide for a safe workplace? Do they provide clean and secure housing for their tenants? Do they limit themselves to a reasonable return on investment to allow them to provide these benefits? It seems clear to me that most people with power over other's lives don't do that without government involvement, regulation, at a minimum.
Quoting Tzeentch
This rings a resounding hollowness. If government is not the solution, tell me what is. Either that or acknowledge that you don't see it as your problem, however sympathetic you are to your fellows. As for "...they no longer get to choose out of their own volition and thus the moral act is devalued if there is any moral act left to speak of at all," - that is an outrageously lame virtue signal.
Quoting Tzeentch
Do you really think these institutions are capable of meeting the needs of people with no decent healthcare, housing, education, nutrition, etc. Not "throughout the ages" but now in a crowded, interconnected world where workers do not have primary control over their economic lives. I don't.
I'm not talking about literature, I'm talking about real life. Can you give some examples of large complex societies where non-governmental institutions provide conditions for a decent life? Or, as I just described in my post to @Tzeentch, at least prevent people from benefitting from the misery of others. Do we trust in the market? Has that ever worked? Do we count on the people with control of economic conditions? Has that ever worked?
Quoting NOS4A2
When given the opportunity, powerful people will enslave others. Will use violence to prevent organizing. Will pay less than livable wages to people with limited choices. Will allow their employees to work in life-threatening conditions. Same as it ever was. To the extent that it isn't, it's because of government and labor unions.
Quoting NOS4A2
Your moral purity is maintained based on the lives and misery of millions of people.
Quoting NOS4A2
We don't need angels, we need Democrats. Well... even I don't believe that. I don't expect perfection, but it should be better than it is.
In my OP I tried to be clear - I'm not here to rail against the evils of conservatism, capitalism and corporativism. I'm just talking about the hypocrisy of fighting against using regulation to protect the great majority of people against the predatory actions of those who have economic power when the foundation of capitalism is built on government involvement.
Quoting Outlander
I think institutions are inherently flawed, because they are ran by humans who are inherently flawed.
As a general rule of thumb, the bigger institutions become, the more flawed they become, because there is more distance between the institution, the people it's supposed to help and the problems it's supposed to solve. They also tend to grow more bureaucratic and less transparent.
Yet many people look at governments the exact opposite way: the bigger they are, the more power they have and thus the more problems they can supposedly solve.
Personally, I am a fan of decentralized institutions, thus putting more power in the hands of local governments.
Unfortunately, power tends to consolidate and move in the opposite direction - towards centralization and control.
Quoting Outlander
I agree, and there are many situations imaginable where forcing people to behave in certain ways is necessary.
But the main point I'm trying to make is that this comes at a cost as well. Contrary to what argues, I believe that forcing people to behave in certain ways takes away their individual responsibility and moral agency.
Too much of this and you end up with a 'nanny state' which tries to micromanage every facet of individual life - a category which I think European countries, including my own, are getting dangerously close to.
With every law that is implemented the question should be asked whether the solution really is to put more power in the hands of the government. The government, after all, is not comprised of superior moral beings, but the same normal, fallible people as those who would forego placing 'slippery when wet' signs.
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Quoting T Clark
In my opinion, arguing for more taxes and expecting the government to fix things isn't taking responsibility.
Taxes have to come from somewhere - and that includes the lower income strata. The idea that there is a huge pile of money lying around that governments can freely dip into without it being missed, is magical thinking.
In the Netherlands, normal people end up paying like 50% of our income in taxes, and still there is poverty, homelessness, misery, still our social programs are shitty, etc.
Money doesn't grow on trees, and governments are rarely able to create real solutions to human problems.
Quoting T Clark
Individuals creating social bonds and taking individual responsibility.
Government cannot replace this, try as they might.
Quoting T Clark
Oh, definitely and without a doubt.
I would much rather rely on a friend or family member for any of those things. And they're much more likely to provide actual help, because it is based on a personal relationship.
In the Netherlands all of these things are closely managed by the government, and it fails to provide on all four counts, forcing people to fall back on their social networks anyway.
That's where shedding 50% of your income to the government gets you.
He has a point to some extent, but this misses the (now much more well-known) fact that dynamic systems can also hit tipping points and totally break down. Also, even if there is "equilibrium in the long run," as Keynes said, "in the long run we're all dead."
Anyhow, to the OP, of course there is great hypocrisy in corporate America (and often vis-á-vis where politicians and corporate interests intersect). Unfortunately, the system is sort of set up almost to ensure that.
I've read a few interviews with Big Tech CEOs on their path from 2008-2012 Obama supporters to 2024 Trump cheerleaders. Their grievance was that the new hires coming out of elite universities (which is where Big Tech hires) after the Great Recession (and Great Awokening) were actively hostile to their companies. The work climate became hostile. At the same time, the political climate became hostile. They are of course, real people and were (I think quite plausibly) really left leaning, but they were also operating in a system of furious competition where "responsibility" means watching short term profits and share prices. At the same time, they were watching their own "tribe" turn them into public enemies even as everything they had learned about corporate ethics in their professional training urged action in another direction.
There was a polemical documentary on how corporations meet the psychiatric definition of "psychopath" many years back, e.g., a tendency towards short term thinking and a total disregard for the welfare of others. It verged on propaganda, but there is a grain of truth there. The system is set up in such a way that it undermines principled leadership and promotes hypocrisy, and the pressure cooker education elites tend to receive, which focuses so heavily on "success" and method just feeds into this.
This has been a useful discussion - it's helped me get my head together on what I really see as the issue. Both you and @NOS4A2 have forced me to look a bit deeper into my beliefs. Earlier in this thread I wrote that, at base, this does not need to be about taking responsibility for other's lives, it can just be about not benefitting from the suffering of others. I had never thought of it explicitly in those terms before. This issue has not been addressed in previous responses. I'd like to hear what both of you have to say.
Quoting Tzeentch
Here's my simplistic understanding of history. In the US Constitution, the government was set up restrict the power of large institutions which control social and economic life - the church and the government itself. Since then, I guess as a result of the industrial revolution, another institutional player has entered the field - business and especially corporations. That very powerful institution has a vast amount of power over our lives which our society is not set up to limit. That kind of limit is needed. Where can that come from if not government?
Quoting Tzeentch
Is that the answer? I don't have to pay a living wage because I can count on families to fill in the gaps. That's incredibly cynical. Not cynical, corrupt. I'm a pretty affluent American and when my wife and I were just getting started, we received financial help from our families to buy a house and to allow my wife to take care of our children rather than work full time. I try to give that same kind of help to my children. Most people don't have the benefit of that kind of help.
My wife and I contribute somewhere between five and ten percent of our incomes to charities. I've been working on increasing that amount. I have volunteered extensively in my town - I was a member of the volunteer fire department for 25 years and I volunteered on town committees and in cub scouts. All of that together is not enough.
That's a fact, although you disagree, anarchy and libertarianism/liberalism won't work to provide a decent society.
Especially the so-called "conservatism" in the US could be described more accurately to be simply lobbying efforts for the super rich disguised in an traditional political movement that has it's ideological roots in conservatism.
Yet not every country is like the US. Many countries do have strong trade unions and the left has been in power, usually that left being the Social Democrats. (The socialism of Marxism-Leninism is totally different and in the realm of authoritarian/totalitarian and anti-democratic regimes.)
Conservatism differs a lot in these countries, especially in those where Social Democracy has enjoyed an upper hand in politics and where administrations are made up by coalitions of parties. You can easily see this in the difference between US regulation and EU regulation. The above description of regulation simply doesn't cut it when you look at Nordic countries and many EU countries, even if they have right-wing governments.
I think it's simpler than dynamic systems devolving into chaos, although I certainly have seen enough of that over my economic lifetime. It's a matter of values - is it acceptable to build and maintain a society on the suffering of that society's members.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, and this is nothing new. And it's not uniquely associated with capitalism. Those with economic power will always use it to take advantage of those without. I guess it's human nature. I'm not asking for a golden age of charity and fairness. I'm not even necessarily asking for more progressive programs, although that would be good. In the context of this discussion, I'm only asking for recognition of the hypocracy.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I've watched this process take place several times in my work history - as companies I worked for became bigger, focus changed from one of client/customer service to one of financial management. In the most recent case, the wonderful moderate-sized engineering company I worked for expanded, got money from venture capitalists, and was purchased by a larger engineering company which then went public. Managers and project managers jobs changed and required a much larger emphasis on cashflow, work backlog, employee utilization, and stock price rather than health and safety, worker well-being, and client service.
I think that's an over-simplification, although there is certainly truth in it.
Quoting ssu
Yes, this is the image I have of governance in western Europe. How does your view from Finland match up with @Tzeentch's from the Netherlands? Is it a difference between the two countries or a difference in political ideology? Do Europeans get better lives for their higher taxes?
Quoting ssu
Again, that's consistent with my somewhat naive understanding of European politics and economics.
Well, add to it the wooing the nativist/isolationist people in America who distrust the democratic institutions and opt for an authoritiarian leader to make things right. That's what the current so-called conservative party is that the Republican party under Trump is.
Because the rest of the "policies" are a collected assortment of brainfarts of an old vindictive populist to whom power has gone to his head.
Quoting T Clark
Of course the two countries have a totally different history among the other differences. First issue that comes up is that Netherlands is really multicultural and far more permissive compared to Finland. But what I agree with @Tzeentch is that "money doesn't grow on trees". Hence in order to have a welfare state, you have to have a functioning strong economy that can compete in global market to create that income that allows a welfare state to exist. Even if you would have the situation of "money growing in the trees" and a society that has abundant income from natural resources like oil, it also creates problems like the the Dutch Disease that the Dutch themselves could avoid, but the Venezuelans didn't.
Quoting T Clark
When I talked about this with Finns living in the US, the complexity of this came apparent. Naturally they liked living far larger homes and paying less taxes than in Finland. But then getting children educated or the what to do if you lose your job and get ill are problems that aren't such a financial disaster in Finland as in the US. The highest tax levels aren't so different, actually, what is the difference is that at far lower income you hit the highest tax bracket in the Nordic countries than the US.
The ugly reality is that when it comes to education and health care, the OECD-country example of having universal health care is far less costly than the system in the US. Hence I think that for the taxes paid the people in the Northern Europe usually get more services than what the Americans tax payer gets. For example, the Finnish universal health care costs well under 50% of what the US health care costs are per capita. Talk about a racket in the US case.
I hope it is merely irony to advocate for the regulation of everyones lives just in case powerful people were to enslave us. Maybe if the government appropriates enough from the fruits of my own labor it will help stop the powerful from taking my things.
Im curious, though, that if given the opportunity, would you enslave others? If not, why do you assume others will?
One thing is for certain, my morality is maintained based on my actions towards others, not on my political beliefs and voting patterns. Its clear to me, at least, that one is unable to judge anothers moral character from what he says about government regulation or what box he marks on a ballot.
Clearly there are many good people out there advocating and voting for higher wages for workers, for more protections and better conditions, and so on, but how many of those good people are out there providing them? Providing those things to workers can be moral, no doubt, but voting to force people to provide those things cannot be moral.
I think you have done that quite well. It needs no elaboration.
Quoting NOS4A2
Powerful people have been exploiting the less powerful for their own benefit forever. This is not news. There probably hasn't been any significant change in human nature for 200,000 years. It's what we do unless there's someone or something there to stop it.
Let's stop the obfuscation - what is your answer to my question? Do you as a libertarian/liberal have a responsibility not to benefit from the exploitation of others.
You needn't add 'undeserving'. The position doesn't consider deserts. Nor should it, imo. BUt my response still wouldn't be unilaterally removing support. The 'undeserving' aspect seems (and I wanted to broaden this to "us v them" discussions more generally, so read this as a vehicle for a wider, rather than a personal attack) to be added by the critic in order to morally condemn the position.
An example of how this could work would be: are the slaves of North African not deserving of our aid money? Our human resource? Our time? If so, why do Democrats think them undeserving of our aid?
Well, that's simply not what Democrats think, even when arguing for a denial of aid to those slaves. You can reverse this for most positions. That's why I, personally, require a decent discussion about goals before gettign into policy in a political discussion.
Yes. I'm in agreement with much of what you've said on this thread. Don't have anything much to add. Utopian thinkers, whether Left or Right forget that when you build a utopia, pretty soon you're going to need to build a small concentration camp.
Id be interested in hearing your response to the question Ive asked @Tzeentch and @NOS4A2. Do we have an obligation not to benefit from the exploitation of others?
It's a weird wording. Prima facie, no. We don't. I don't think exploitation is ipso facto bad, though. I would like to maximally exploit all the talented people around me, and hope i have skills that would lead to the vice verse. There are other rights violations that have my back in certain (though, typical) instances of exploitation.
I don't think we have an obligation to interrogate everything we do/consume for exploitation, though. Its a nice thing to do, of course.
I don't think that kind of benign exploitation is what he's talking about. More like, should I boycott products that involve child labor or people working in horrific conditions akin to modern day slavery or that result in environmental exploitation? We can even broaden it to animal exploitation. Do I have an obligation to not benefit from the horrific exploitation of animals? Yes, to all of that. I have a moral obligation to be vegan and live like a monk. But I don't wanna.
Absolutely.
Suppose there are two methods by which mans economic needs and desires can be satisfied, through production and exchange, or through the appropriation of the production and exchanges of others. One is diligence, the other exploitation. Government employs the second method.
Do you believe you have the same responsibility?
This tells me either you, or your moral system, is quite obviously defective. If you don't want to and that trumps all this suffering, that's on you. If you actually do want to, but find other things more enticing, perhaps the moral system is a bit bankrupt. Personally, my take is that you're obliged at all.
I agree with your premise, I'm just making the point (in the previous comment/s) that exploitation isn't the issue.
But what's the chances of that without a brain altering pandemic? Even cataclysmic world events haven't.
It's not a hypocrisy of political leanings. It's obfuscation by rhetoric. Government and business may change its shape but never its yearning for power, its vulnerability to corruption and the target on its back for the disaffected. And we all know it but it suits some of us to claim otherwise.
Just a suggestion.
smile
I think any reasonable person would, on some basic level, be against exploitation. I certainly am, and there is nothing in the classical liberal position that should suggest otherwise.
However, when one gets to the particulars of what constitutes exploitation and/or benefitting from the suffering of others, the subject often becomes a lot more murky. And in order to stage an effective government intervention, a general agreement that 'exploitation is bad' is not enough.
Quoting T Clark
Corporations are state-authorized, public entities - they exist by virtue of the state. If we need the government to protect us from the power of corporations, they should probably just stop creating them.
That aside, government intervention should be a last resort, and first and foremost the market should be organized in such a way that it lowers the bar of entry.
Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the natural enemy of large businesses, because there is no way a gigantic multinational can compete with you buying eggs from your local neighbor. This is why natural monopolies are essentially impossible.
Rules and regulations (which governments love) are the natural enemy of SMEs, however. And that's where big business and government find each other. Big business wants to raise the bar of entry for the competition, and governments want more control and more tax revenue.
So to echo your question: if businesses and corporations accumulate undue power and privileges, where can that power come from if not from government?
Quoting T Clark
I don't see what's cynical about it.
In fact, if people have their families to fall back on, there's a much greater chance that they won't have to accept an unreasonably low salary in the first place. Their families and social networks may help them bridge the gap between finding jobs for reasonable pay, or help them find better ones.
Furthermore, it's not like the problem of low wages is easy for solve. If simply raising the minimum wage was the clear-cut solution, then I wouldn't complain. But again, that money has to come from somewhere, the market will react, and the final results will not be what one had hoped for.
This is how government intervention often fails: it cuts off one of the hydra's heads, and several more grow back. Government then, in its unyielding belief that more rules and more intervention has to be the solution, keeps cutting off heads until the market eventually becomes completely and utterly broken.
Quoting Tzeentch
Quoting NOS4A2
Thanks for the answers. This is a bit different from the direction I thought this thread would go when I wrote the OP, so I'm not adequately prepared to have this discussion right now. Maybe I'll start another thread later.
Thanks for the discussion.
I don't think that's a realistic scenario, but it does highlight a point I made earlier - business as it is currently practiced can not exist without government regulation.
Quoting Tzeentch
How would that work? Who would organize the market if not the government?
Quoting Tzeentch
This is something similar to what I wrote in the OP. I wasn't directly calling for more regulation, I was pointing out the hypocrisy of using regulation to aid business while resisting doing the same for workers, customers, and people in general.
Quoting Tzeentch
We disagree.
While we're all here, I'd like to bring up another specific instance of government support for business. I alluded to it earlier but did not follow up. As I understand it, one of the most important issues for libertarianism and other similar ideologies is protection of property rights. Establishment and protection of property rights is probably the most fundamental of all government regulatory practices. Ownership of all property is ultimately traceable back to government action - either grants, sales, leases, or legal recognition. Whether we like it or not, God does not establish property rights, governments do. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but the charters for property granted by British kings and queens here in the eastern US included specific obligations of the grantees to the Crown. Those obligations were passed on with the properties when they were transferred.
This struck me when I was thinking about the broadcast industry. Back in the 1920s, the US government created a completely new and lucrative property right and gave it to business by issuing permits for their operations. Those rights were protected by preventing others from infringing on the frequencies specified in those permits. Clearly, the broadcast industry could not exist as we know it without communications regulations.
Just wanted to hear your thoughts on this.
The state is the source of rights. I see nothing that could upend that bare statement.
Corporations aren't the only form of business.
A person selling their chicken's eggs to their neighbors is a business. No government interjection necessary.
Quoting T Clark
A state/government creates a basic framework of laws within which the market functions. It's not strictly necessary, but it's a modern reality.
Other than that, it should be left to the free market except when the free market clearly fails for reasons directly attributable to the free market, and assuming a government intervention is the most fitting solution.
Quoting T Clark
I don't think that's a matter of hypocrisy. It's a problem of the people have no lobbying power while big businesses do.
That will virtually always remain the case, which is why I would focus on reducing the government's ability to bestow privileges, thus making it senseless to lobby, and lowering the bar for SMEs - big businesses' natural enemy - to indirectly put the power back into the hands of the average Joe.
Quoting T Clark
If you're talking in a legal sense, that's rather obvious. Governments make the laws, which they then enforce through their monopoly on violence. (In that sense they are not so different from the feudal lords of old)
But a sense of property is a fundamental human trait that can already be observed in toddlers. No government necessary. Of course, governments can play a constructive role in resolving disputes.
What strikes me as rather odd is this distrust and underestimation of the average person, that apparently they need government supervision to do anything. I think it's typical of a state-centric view of mankind.
However, mankind throughout the ages got around just fine without governments micromanaging every facet of their lives. The 'nanny state' really is much more modern than people think. Even the Soviet Union didn't achieve the level of micromanagement that modern states do.
This is true, but they had other institutions to do what the state has increasingly become responsible for: collegia, guilds, churches, families, extended-family/clan networks, religious orders, much tighter-knit communities. For instance, if you look at natural disasters in 19th century America, there will be less of a role for insurance (requiring massive state regulation) or FEMA, because of things like neighbors rebuilding each other's homes. Aside from a loss in relevant institutions, market specialization has also made this sort of thing more difficult (e.g. home repair is no longer a default skill set). But even things like friends giving each other rides to the airport, or bringing each other food while sick have been taken over by on-demand services provided by anonymous contractors, supported by Big Tech apps, and eventually state regulation.
That's one of the ironies of the liberal state. In order to empower individuals to increasingly act as individuals, to "free" them from past institutions, the market or state must step in to fulfill the hole left by institutional erosion. The right/left divide is often about which should fulfill these gaps. Often the market moves in first, but then externalities, gross inequalities, systemic risk (e.g. insurance), etc. force a later movement by the state further into public life. Plus, the modern "market" now requires a vast administrative state wherever it expands.
Entertainment is an interesting example because both drama and musical performances long had been primarily religious events, and still retain something of this even in their commercialized forms.
In terms of self-determination (an important sort of liberty), I think it's worth noting that people often positively identify with the prior sorts of institution. They are a member of a parish, a military regiment, a guild, a family, a clan, a religious order (perhaps as a lay tertiary), etc This sort of positive identification of the self in the institution that Hegel sees as foundational for positive freedom is much more difficult with the anonymized market and mammoth welfare state. I think the thread on the NHS is a good example of this. People feel powerless, dependent on forces lying wholly outside the ambit of their personhood, whereas a man might be asked to risk his life for his regiment and feel quite empowered.
I dont believe government makes property rightsor any rightsbecause I believe in something like natural rights. State rights are merely the concessions of our collective servitude, in my view.
But Im still not a complete anarchist yet. If the government protected our natural rights and made justice costly and accessible, then went no further, I would voluntarily pay for such a service. It would be a government as illustrated in the Declaration of Independence, and Id be one of its biggest cheerleaders.
I own a house on land in Massachusetts. It was originally included in a grant from the King of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony then portioned out smaller grants to people who wanted to start communities. The leaders of those communities then granted properties to people who wanted to move into that town. Over the years, those granted properties were subdivided, sold, and developed until the real estate system we have today resulted. I don't see any "natural right" in this process. Governments took the property by fiat and created the property rights out of the air. Ownership was legitimized and documented by the government, which also enforces the laws that protect property rights.
Like it or not, God didn't give us our properties, the government did. It's a service it provides. I think protection of property rights is very important - the quality of my life depends on it - but it's a legal and not a moral responsibility.
That's a pretty naive way of looking at it. So, all I need to justify my ownership of my home is a "sense of property?" I just claim it's mine and, I guess, maintain possession of it against any who disagree with me, and that makes it so?
Quoting Tzeentch
Do you think there is any possibility that the nature of our economic system will change to allow small businesses and the average Joe to be in charge. Short of a total collapse of civilization. Given that it will never happen, it is reasonable to use government regulation to create a more balanced system.
I think he's saying that even toddlers have a sense of what is theirs. Not that they can willy nilly make claims to stufff. But This is a result of their parents behaviour, anyway. Not innate. So he's still wrong, if that's what he's getting at.
I never said any of that. I merely pointed out that people's sense of ownership is fundamentally human and far precedes government arbitration.
As I noted earlier, you grossly underestimate people's ability to get by without governments micromanaging their every transaction, while grossly overestimating governments' ability to provide fitting solutions to complex problems.
If you think that what you wrote sounds ridiculous, consider that that's exactly how governments operate. It has a sense of what belongs to whom, and uses a big stick to enforce that view.
Quoting T Clark
Sure. SMEs used to be the backbone of the Dutch economy, until the Dutch government got ever more involved, bestowed ever more privileges on large multinationals like Shell, ASML, Tata Steel, Philips, Unilever etc.
The Dutch economy used to punch far above its weight class, and that's how we used to finance our elaborate socialist policies.
Also, it should be clear from what I said that I am not categorically against government intervention. But I do recognize it as the double-edged sword that it is.
Thats not quite the case. Many puritans purchased land off the natives, in spite of the government fiat. Even Joh Winthrop said the natives had natural rights. Natural rights influenced much of the founding of the country, at least nominally.
Another New England example would be Rhode Island, purchased from the natives by Roger Williams. All the services of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, like religious persecution, compelled Williams to flee from that colony to found one of his own. The natives were not a part of any government, had no law and especially no government rights, but the just transfer of property between one holder and another occurred anyways.
I am against taxes for the same reason Im against theft, exploitation, and slavery. Taxes is on par with slavery because the tax man is taking the fruits of anothers labor. In other words, not only is a worker toiling for the tax man for free, but at a loss. Its theft or extortion because one is punished if one doesnt pay. Its exploitation because the tax man benefits himself and his beneficiaries from the work of others. So the values of your State appear to be slavery, theft, and exploitation.