Liberty Alone

James Schneider points us at Mike Gravel and one of his videos.

He has many videos, that particular one is rather sane…

I like his wooing of Obama Girl:

He also covers the Beatles:

Free Tibet flags made in China.

This probably wouldn’t have happened if China didn’t suppress information of course (or perhaps it would have if the factory owner was opposed to the occupation).

There are vulgar Marxists, vulgar libertarians and I think there are vulgar liberals.

Liberalism at its heart is about allowing people to take control over their own lives. Many liberals advocate the state taking a role in ensuring this, something which is well within the liberal tradition, others consider the state to do more harm than good when it acts or see the acts to enable people as being attempts to reverse previous state actions which created the problem in the first place.
All these views, nuanced in innumerable different ways are part of the liberal school of thought.

The vulgar liberal takes state action as a matter of faith but goes even further and turns state enabling into state support. Rather than the state enabling you to be free, the state becomes your guardian, and state action becomes an end in itself.

Take the example of the welfare state - aspects can be supported by appeal to the state enabling people to take control over their lives, but for the vulgar liberal the welfare state is in itself an end.
This is also seen in local politics as a perversion of community politics. Rather than seeking to enable people and the communities they belong to to deal with their own problems, the vulgar liberal seeks to solve the problems for them.

This attitude easily leads to a paternalistic view, that the state must provide for people and then use its force to make people behave in a desirable way. This is always for the person’s own good, at least in the eyes of the vulgar liberal, something which makes the vulgar liberal all the more frustrating.

The liberal and vulgar liberal both agree that people should not be enslaved by poverty or ignorance. They will often both profess to believe that people should not be enslaved by conformity, although the vulgar liberal will often mean this only to be in the realm of culture (in the case of other areas of your life they will insist you conform to their standards, for your own good).
The liberal however will realise that just as the starving man is enslaved by his hunger and grinding poverty enslaves people, those who depend upon the state are enslaved by that dependency.

The vulgar liberal can be very frustrating for the liberal. They are so close, they value freedom, but they don’t see that their attachment to state action as an end in itself can enslave people (just as the vulgar libertarian doesn’t see that the constraints of the unfree situation restrain the freedom of many, especially the poor).

A new favourite blog of mine - aimed at seeking common ground between US liberals and libertarians - rather like Rothbard’s alliance with the New Left.
Certainly there’s ground to start with - libertarians tend to be against ventures like the Iraq War, as do many on the left. Both are often concerned with freedom and many libertarians are also deeply concerned with social injustice and the suffering of the poor.

The quality of much of the writing is very high and very informative, largely due to the involvement of Kevin Carson whose critique of vulgar libertarianism is often very hard hitting and well aimed. He is definitely well placed to try and bring together libertarians and US-style liberals given his left-wing and libertarian radicalism which can appeal to many on both sides.

From a LibDem point of view, this is interesting because in many ways we are in the hinterland between libertarianism and US liberalism. Some of us are definitely libertarian, others very close to US liberalism, most are somewhere in between the two.

Its well worth a read. I find the attacks on corporatism (state intervention on behalf of corporations) particularly interesting. Its an area missed by many on the right, but is responsible for much of the actions of the New Deal (which just wrapped them up in left-leaning rhetoric).
I’m sure there’ll be something for everyone.

Update: Corrected the URL…

From SpyBlog I see that the government is trying to pass its ‘abolition of parliament’ act again.

Given this allows a minister to alter any Act of Parliament without any debate.

Surely this is equivalent to the Enabling Act? It allows a minister to change any piece of legislation, a power which could be used to modify legislation to give the power to enact legislation without it passing through Parliament. It could even be used to remove the need for Royal Assent.

Whilst I doubt that the current government wishes to use the powers quite like that (preferring to alter things like detention without trial and the National Identity Database no doubt), such powers should never exists in anything close to a liberal constitution.

That’s a difficult question which provokes much debate, but there are some things it is not.

It is not defined by what the Liberal Party or its successors do. True, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats pursued many liberal aims, but to define liberalism with reference to one party is absurd. It would also mean that the Australian Liberal Party and Howard are liberal, something I think most would disagree with.
Something being proposed by a member of the Liberal Party certainly does not make it liberal - there have been many members of the Liberals and LibDems who have not been liberal, sometimes in positions of power.

It is also not using force to make people behave how you want. It is not banning things on environmental grounds (making polluters pay for the damage would be however). It is not removing choice and freedom. It is not enforcing monopoly. It most certainly is not forcing people to behave in a certain way because its for their own good.

Liberal aims can also be pursued by illiberal means. Something which seems to upset people. The aims do not make the means liberal, no matter how liberal the aims.

No seems to be the answer:

Despite Fairtrade’s moral halo, there are other, more ethical forms of coffee available. Most Fairtrade coffee on sale in UK supermarkets and on the high street is roasted and packaged in Europe, principally in Belgium and Germany. This is unnecessary and retards development. Farmers working for Costa Rica’s Café Britt have been climbing the economic ladder by not just growing beans but by also doing all of the processing, roasting and packaging and branding themselves. Shipping unroasted green beans to Europe causes them to deteriorate, so not only is Café Britt doing far more to promote economic development than Fairtrade rivals, it is also creating better tasting coffee.

But Café Britt is not welcome on the Fairtrade scheme. Most of Café Britt’s farmers are self-employed small businesspeople who own the land they farm. This is wholly unacceptable to the rigid ideologues at FLO International, Fairtrade’s international certifiers, who will only accredit the farmers if they give up their small business status and join together into a co-operative. “It’s like outlawing private enterprise,” says Dan Cox, former head of the Speciality Coffee Association of America. Many African farmers, organised along tribal lines, are similarly excluded from the scheme. Other producers complain that accreditation is needlessly bureaucratic and costs five times as much as organic certifications.

I don’t have anything against cooperatives if people wish to form them, but by only supporting cooperatives and working against mechanisation the Fair Trade movement is inadvertently working to sustain poverty (in a large part due to its dominant position in the market).
People grow rich, not by just selling goods, but by increasing productivity. That means less people will be involved in growing coffee- but those people will be free to work on other things - such as processing the coffee, growing other crops, being merchants, making other goods which people desire.

We should really be boycotting Fair Trade and instead buying good quality coffee (and other produce) from independent producers and many of the other schemes which seek to aid development. I know Rainforest Alliance works to try and aid development and help save the rainforests of the world in a far more sensible manner and I’m sure there’s others.

If anyone is tempted to dismiss this article as the ravings of loony right-wingers: Alex Singleton’s work is firmly grounded in our liberal heritage, his biggest inspiration is Richard Cobden, one of the great heroes of British liberalism and radicalism. He’s travelled throughout the poorest areas of the world, talking and listening to the people who need help. He shares the desire of Fair Trade campaigners, the difference is he looks to see what people in the developing world actually want and what actually works.

I’m sure we all want a good deal for the poorest, but Fair Trade, unfortunately does not offer that. Its really in the business of selling political ideology to the poor and feel good conscience salves to the rich.

‘Liberals’ who advocate authoritarian policies. Especially when its ‘for their own good’ or the worst ‘because they’re stupid’.

Conservative ‘libertarians’ - just because you don’t like the actions of the state it doesn’t mean that people will choose your preferred situation if they’re free. And there was never some great age of liberalism and freedom. We have lost some freedoms, but we have gained others.

Wit and Wisdom has a pretty good post on Prince Charles and his ‘War on Climate Change’.

Whilst I disagree with a small part of the post, the main thrust is how I think we should approach environmental challenges (and combined with the party’s Green Taxes it makes even more sense).

The main thrust is that we shouldn’t be promoting hair shirts, but we should be promoting the advantages.
So, conserve energy and we save money. Use less oil and we save money and resources. Recycle and we save money and resources.

I’d add that we should be paying people to sort out their rubbish for recycling. That way we can tell if something is worth recycling (ie do its benefits outweigh its costs) and the only way to do this calculation is through the price mechanism.

For more subjective things, like seasonal produce being more interesting - that is not for the government to say, it is purely subjective, but non-governmental organisations can promote that if they wish. Not everyone will agree, but you can promote the idea and probably convert more people to the cause.

Which is worse for the evironment?

Which do you think takes a bigger toll on the environment, owning a dog, or owning an SUV? My bet would be on the dog. I’m thinking of all of the resources that go into dog food.

I agree, it probably is the dog.

The comments point out that a dog has many positive side effects, people enjoy having dogs. What they miss is that the SUV also has many of the same positive side effects, people like their SUVs and sports cars.

The argument that a dog extends human life - from a strict look at the environmental impact alone works against the dog. Increased life span leads to increased emissions. This is not the point though, we are primarily concerned with human well being (most people are, outside a few misanthropic hardcore greens).

This highlights two things, firstly, as we already know, a lot of environmentalism is romanticism and anti-technological puritanism.
Secondly, and more importantly for policy makers, everything involves a trade off. The externality which is some forms of pollution occurs because there are no property rights associated with some things (and I find it difficult to see how to assign them). If property rights could be assigned or a substitute (Pigouvian taxation usually) then people will make value judgments on these trade offs. Many will accept the ownership of an SUV even with the higher costs. Others will move to more fuel efficient vehicles. Some will give up keeping pets, others will keep them even with higher costs of food.

The liberal must accept these value judgments. They may not be the same as yours, but it is not the place of another to interfere in the value judgments of others.