The Real Vulgar Libertarians: The "Libertarian" Left

Economics Economics Questions
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(Disclaimer: the term “left libertarian” is very poorly defined( to some extent purposefully I believe, at least in regard to those LLs on these forums), as such I am limiting this post to address the “libertarians” of the Carson, Johnson and now Long variety. as opposed to cultural leftists or even those who are relatively egalitarian or whoever else classifies themself as a belonging to the LL.)

To begin with I’ll address Long’s comments regarding the “conflation conflict”. To begin with I will admit there is, to some extent, a conflation between non libertarian’s conservatives (used in the political, as opposed to cultural sense), who defend big corporations by adopting free market rhetoric, nonetheless, this has nothing to do with libertarianism and everything to do with corporatism. Perhaps, there are some libertarians who occasionally defend corporations with free market economics. This is relatively unimportant, since as Long himself pointed out, it makes no sense to say vulgar libertarians and makes far more sense to say “vulgar libertarianims”. My point here is simply that it the term vulgar libertarian is more a poorly defined term used in regard to anybody the “libertarian” left has a dislike for, or anybody who refuses to adopt the leftist anti rules/ anti egalitarian/ anti corporation ideology.

But so what? First of the term “vulgar” is somewhat amusing coming from the left, who in my opinion can’t make an argument without a few ad homs or routinely misrepresent right libertarians (e.g. those who accuse Hoppe of being a “monarchist”, when he’s said otherwise countless times). A better point is that this argument comes from those who defend thugs who smash up private property (why is it that libertarians oppose the state?). Defend unions who routinely engage in violence and wouldn’t exist without the state (especially in regards to Carson). And favour an alliance with socialists and the left in general. To me this is all just ad hoc nonsense, especially from Long who clearly isn’t as well acquinted with the literature as say, Klein is. Moreover, this seem to be a mirror image of Long’s cultural views and moreso just a chance to pander to the left.

In fact, the whole charge of vulgar libertarian seems silly to me, especially since they (as Kinsella pointed out) use state defined definitions of word and completely ignore the possibility of voluntary corporations. Indeed this whole thing seems to be guilt by association.

Moreover, Long’s example of “conflation” isn’t the only one, nor the most important. Long seems to use “big buisness”, or more appropriately “state favoured buisness” and “corporations” synonomously. Which makes no sense, as Hessen has pointed out buisnesses of all sizes can be incorporated.

Moreover, Long seems to ignore the point brought up that many big corporations didn’t start off as corporations and seem to ignore the economic reasons for becoming a corporation. From this confusion it seems Long goes on to attack the corporate form instead big buisness. I don’t deny that some buisnesses are too big to be sustainable in a free market, in fact, very few people have denied that throughout this debate. I merely have a problem with the way that from this Long etc. jump to the conclusion that other forms would predominate. This without any comparison between the corporation and say, the cooperative.

Moreover as I’ve seen mentioned by LS, there seems to be some arbitrary point at which a buisness is defined as “big” and then that all “big” buisness is propped up by statist intervention. Not only is this very unscientific, but it seems to be injected aesthetic preferences of the egalitarians into the debate. One cannot be sure that buisness would be smaller without the state without a systematic evaluation of each buisness instead there’s only been sweeping generalisations. Indeed there also seems to be ignorance in regards to the particular industry in question. Do Long etc. really believe that cooperative nuclear power plants or airlines for example would be possible? There seems to me to be a claim that certain buisnesses are big without comparing them to anything, this is seen in the fact that they tend to treat certain firms in all areas of the economic as equally too big.

Klein was completely correct when he accused Carson, Long and the other leftists of having commited the nirvana fallacy.

Perhaps another, aforementioned, conflation is that between “vulgar libertarians” and the libertarian right in general.

Now to some specific points:

Unions:

I can’t help but be amused by the leftists in this debate have routinely engaged in declaring the “Rothbardain” high ground and yet fail to remember Rothbard’s position regarding unions.

Now I’m not really going to go into this since I’ve not really seen any adequate defense of unions, which are essentially just cartels (which Long correclty points out are precarious in a free market). However, it seems to me that Carson’s defense of these are very stretched and fails to see that the people who are most vehemently asking for a bailout are the unions. That seems somewhat “vulgar” to me, especially since unions have routinely engaged in violence through their history.

The claim that it is common sense that the state would favour big buisness since “it is easier to control”:

To begin with this claim seems to be shifting the debate from scientific analysis to “common sense”. Which, in this case is extremely difficult to prove. Indeed, one could make an equally likely suggestion that the state will favour small buisness since it is easier to control, since there is far less rivalry for power. Of course, the objection may be raised that I’m creating a dichotomy between the state and buisness that doesn’t exist (a question that I won’t answer), however this objection as makes the original suggestion that the state prefers big buiness equally invalid.

The road problem:

The argument here presented by the left misses the point and ignores two extremely important points. The first is that there it is not necessarily true that small buisness don’t use the roads. That is false, they do use the roads, and indeed the cheaper access to roads that would be provided by the free market would benefit them far less than it would big buisness. Local buisnesses do use roads, everybody does.

The second objection to this argument by Long is that saying small buisnesses are damaged by state owned roads is that this ignores the division of labour. Indeed, it may well be the case that small buisnesses would be more prosperous in areas that large amounts of crops can be grown locally. But even here what about fertilizers and other equipments? And more important what about places where no crops can be grown at all, do you really think small buisness will thrive in these areas?

This attempt to slide in leftist preferences discretely isn’t merely seen here. In fact, Roderick Long’s article seems to me to be an attempt to slide in egalitarianism in other areas by claiming libertarianism to be egalitarian in the sense of “equality in liberty”, which Rothbard correctly dismissed as nonsense, since, two slaves are equally free.

I think the best answers in this debate came from Klein and Kinsella, Block and Hueberts first response was rather weak. Their second one was also of a far higher quality, Caplan’s responses were also relatively helpful.

Two more remarks:

The left often claims the high ground of voluntaryism and yet completely ignores the way in which corporations can indeed be very easily formed by voluntary association.The second remark is that members of the LL on these forums (most importantly BP) claim that the right holds tradition as too important and yet claims that we should go back to our “roots” on the left. Moreover, they seem to ignore that Mises, Rothbard and now Hoppe. Three of the most prominant Austro Libertarians were cultural conservatives.

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I’m not a big fan of labels, especially ones which can be construed in the pejorative, like “vulgar” or “Marxoid” or whatever. I’m an anarchist-without-adjectives.

The economic reason for becoming a corporation can be boiled down to state-granted privilege.

You’re absolutely right — we can’t be sure of what the organizational structure might look like without a State, but I think the folly is in presuming that the status quo is more-or-less representative of what a free market would choose. You have to, at the very least, accept the possibility that the entire landscape would be very different.

I can think of two forms of enterprise that would/could exist in a free market: a sole proprietorship, or a mutual (consisting of two or more principals). How these enterprises are structured internally (e.g., are they “co-operatives” or do they employ labor at a market wage?) is essentially beside the point.

The pro-union left would get behind worker-owned mutuals/co-operatives. There’s nothing wrong with this. Since we do not oppose an individual’s right to discriminate in employment, I submit that referring to a co-op as “cartel” is the essence of vulgarity. As owners, the co-op has a monopoly over the resources it controls, just as you have a monopoly over your labor & property.

I’m not sure that the state favors, per se, big business. However, big business as we know them, are essentially an extension of the State, and a very powerful & influential one, at that.

I don’t think anyone suggested that small businesses don’t use roads, only that the extent to which they rely on a national infrastructure/highway system is far less than the big business counterparts. The argument then, was that in a free market, the use of such roads (or the development thereof) would be costs largely incurred by the businesses requiring them - not by taxpayers as individuals.

I think Kinsella is off-the-mark with the assumption that corporations can be “very easily formed by voluntary association.” In fact, what is formed is a mutual or a co-operative. The benefit of incorporation, i.e., limited liability, is a creature of the State. Nothing that Kinsella (or anyone else, for that matter) has argued, has convinced me that a common/natural law would tolerate limited liabilit. Kinsella’s argument was (if I remember correctly) that shareholders can be held liable for tort claims against the corporation, if the plaintiff can demonstrate they were responsible for harm.

The question left hanging here, is how does a free market adapt to deal with an enterprise (even a voluntary one) so large that it is impossible to assign responsibility among the shareholder/owners in the event of a tort?

I liken this to Barry Bonds: BB claims he didn’t know he was using steroids. But he earns millions of dollars with his body, and has a responsibility to know what he puts into it (in order to keep earning money). If BB didn’t know he was using 'roids, it’s because he didn’t want to know. And if he didn’t want to know, it’s because he did know, he just wanted plausible deniability.

If you, as an owner, don’t know what’s happening, then it’s probably because you don’t want to know. And if you don’t want to know, it’s because you already know.

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Isnt "vulgar" a good thing? As in *I dont need 7 different spoons to finish a meal*?

Except two slaves are only equally free in regard to themselves, but not in regard to their owner.

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So what, they’re still equally free?

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Not “so what”. It is not egalitarianism if equality isn`t universal.

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What if egalitarianism (universal equality) can only be achieved by forcing it (even if it is a small amount) ? What if it is better to strive towards it, rather than assume that is can be attained & sustained permanently (which might involve somehow getting around the problem of scarcity)? That egalitarianism is a journey, not a destination?

(I will read the rest of the thread in a few minutes, I was only responding to marko’s post).

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Bravo. Well done.

I’d like to add that the left, particularly the Carson left, does not have a genuine theory of subjective value. Due to this, his theories seem economically non-viable given what we understand about praxeology.

Also, the left seems to believe that capital belongs to the workers, and that one should not profit from merely deploying their capital, but that is counter-intuitive. We know that capital formation is accomplished through savings, which is itself either under-consumption or productive gain.

So if there is no profit from saving, why would one save and form capital? Illogical. And then the notion that we should all return to the land and become neo-libertarian artisans while lovely, doesn’t express the complexity of the world we now live in, and the depths of the division of labour.

The whole point of capitalism, is that the successful get to use capital to create more in the economy, and the unsuccessful are deprived of their capital, thus preventing them from further wasting resources. When the workers own the capital due to their use, proximity in the workplace or familiarity, then the incentive system is totally skewed.

I thought Long was totally owned on that argument, and it’s his own fault. Obviously he is an intelligent guy, but when he strays from logic into the realm of moralizing and subjective assertion, then he was risking being exposed. If you’re going to criticize big business, you better have a definition of it. And for god’s sake, I don’t support feminism anymore than I support male chauvinism. These lefties flirt with collectivism, I can only imagine because they think they can rally more disparate groups to their flag, yet somewhere along the line, they lose touch with the fact that they compromise libertarian values to do so.

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Anarchist without adjectives is essentially meaningless unless one can come up with a coherent theory of property. Which is impossible given the different groups that unite under this label. Nonetheless, I don’t feel like going into this since the moment I do BP will use it as an excuse to hijack the topic.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. Indeed Klein and Kinsella have refuted this nonsense already. From Robert Hessen:

Klein also raises some other issues in regards to the economic incentives for corporations.

Of course, and yet, nobody has doubted this. In fact, I’ve agreed with this. However, your opinion that things would be completely different is an entirely different claim and one that you’re going to prove. It’s a claim that neither Long nor Carson have been able to support.

If you want to support it, I ask for a detailed description of why this is the case, in regard to a particular firm, instead of sweeping generalizations.

I claimed that unions are merely cartels on labour. Which they are, and like all others forms of cartels they are unstable and “bad” for the economy. Please, provide me with a coherent argument in favour of unions.

Klein on cooperatives:

Depends what you mean. Like Carson and Long you seem to treat Wal - Mart and Blackwater as essentially the same. They’re not. Yes, some buisnesses like Blackwater do owe their existance to the state. In which case they are an extension of the state. In any case that’s not important since it has nothing to do with Long’s original article - conflating the free market and big buisness. Which, in the case of Blackwater I’ve not once seen a libertarian do.

As for big buisness being an extension of the state. That’s silly, and renders the initial point invalid. How can you say Wal Mart in an extension of the state when it started out as a small buisness? At what level of “bigness” did it become an extension of that? Perhaps you might answer that it became a part of the state when it asked the state for favours and yet this isn’t revelant since small buisness does that too. Indeed, we all benefit from the state in one form or another. The current debate is not about the last sentence of my post but whether or not big buisness gains disproportionately, which nobody has yet proved.

So what? This doesn’t change the fact that big buisness would deal with the costs of roads far more easily than small buisness. Nor the claim that without the state the use of roads may in many ways be cheaper. Small buisness would, by Long’s definition, be reqired to stay local, in which case they’d provide an inferior good to most big buisnesses. As I said, the left ignores the division of labour, which may mean that a grocery store may have to buy cabbage from place A, bread from place B and tomatoes from place C. Without use of the roads small buisness would not be able to compete. Perhaps they may provide local goods at a better price but even this isn’t sure.

That’s just false. Kinsella provides a very strong argument that this wouldn’t be the case. LL has nothing to do with the state and can easily be formed by private contract. If you want to claim otherwise prove it. The fact is that many people would voluntary contract with a corporation whose shareholders have agreed not to be liable for the debts etc. incurred by the buisness. If they don’t like it, they can go elsewhere.

Ignoring the fact that you sort of assumed your own argument to be invalid. The free market doesn’t have to deal with anything, the person going after the corporation does.

In which case then banks should be responsible for anything commited by the corporation also. How about those that lent to the banks to make these loans possible? How about customers, or even the employers of customers? You have to prove liability, something nobody has been able to do.

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I think you can not force it because force is contrary to self-ownership and universal self-ownership is the only way to have equality in practice and in spirit. I think equality has nothing to do with material possesions. Anyways we wouldn`t want to stray too off topic, Giles seems to have put a lot of effort in his opener…

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Yes, it is so what. Because otherwise your argument defeats itself. Since if you’re on my property, we’re not equal. I’m superior to you since I make the rules. In which case your defintion is untenable. In fact, the only coherent defintion of egalitarianism is the belief that all humans are equal.

Or, to go down another route to disprove your argument. If there’s one slave in society and everybody else is completely free. Would you favour equality in liberty (either, everybody is completely free, or, everybody becomes a slave) or complete liberty.

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You don’t understand left-libertarianism and half of your post is a straw man and the first part of your post is just nitpicking over a word. You yourself have no authority on the matter, as you aren’t even a libertarian, given that you reject libertarian human rights altogether in favor of conservatism and actually herald the establishment of institutional heirarchies as a primary goal.

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The case against corporate limited liabilty is identical to the case against the statist social contract. Good luck trying to refute my argument here without falling back on a line of reasoning that justifies the statist social contract theory:

http://polycentricorder.blogspot.com/2009/01/limited-liability-and-social-contract.html

Throughout the debates that have taken place among libertarians over the validity of corporate limited liability, it occured to me that limited liability suffers from some of the exact same problems that social contract theory does. In particular, the concept of the social contract is problematic because it implies that the terms of a contract can be enforced onto 3rd parties of people who never explicitly agreed to it. Corporate limited liability as a state legal construct functions in the exact same way as this, as the limited liability is uniformly applied to everyone within the society rather than being restricted to those who explicitly agreed to the contract.

In a libertarian society, it is of course true that people are indeed free to form social contracts and limited liability contracts, but these contracts only apply to those who explicitly formed and agreed to them to begin with. A particular group of people can make a contractual agreement, but it is in no way binding on anyone else. An organization could require that one sign a contract limiting liability in order to join or patronize the organization, but it isn’t a given that people will sign such a contract and the contract would not apply to those who are affected by the organization and yet never explicitly agreed to the contract.

So not only is the idea that people implicitly consent to a social contract by merely living in society a nonsensical line of reasoning, but any attempt to likewise justify a uniformly applied limited liability would be nonsensical for the exact same reasons. Parties privy to a contract can choose to limit liability toward eachother but they cannot limit liability towards anyone else in society. It would be equally ridiculous to assert that everyone in society implicitly consents to the limited liability of a given organization. If an organization engages in behavior that affects them and they never explicitly agreed to any contract with that organization, an assertion of limited liability simply doesn’t apply.

So while many right-libertarians are tempted to defend limited liability on the grounds that it can be contractual in theory, such contractual limited liability would inevitably be limited to those who enter into such agreements, and there is no reason to presume that everyone would uniformly agree to limit liability. Indeed, I would generally view a contractual attempt by an organization to shield itself from liability for any damages that is caused to be an attempt to avoid common sense responsibility for one’s actions, and hence I’d be skeptical about such a contract to begin with. So for me a question is begged: who in their right mind would agree to any significant limits on liability? If something bad happens to me as an effect of decisions made by an organization, wouldn’t I want the people who made or enforced those decisions to be held responsible at least for some kind of restitution?

Furthermore, this theoretical contractual limited liability is not the same thing as limited liability as it currently exists, which is uniformly applied as a matter of state law and affectively constitutes immunity from torts. Neither is this theoretical contractually limited liability representative of how the corporate form actually came about in history, which is overwhelmingly a matter of state privilege. It could be said that there were early joint partnerships that contractually limited liability, but this isn’t really the same thing as a corporation. The legal status of a corporation is specifically based on a uniformly applied law or social contract onto the entire society which shields the organization from responsibility. To claim that the matter is purely contractual is highly misleading.

So essentially the defenses that people give of corporations are in some ways identical to the defenses that people give of the state in that many of the same assumptions are held. Both of them are based on a misapplication or distortion of contract theory. Both of them are based on a concept of an organization that exists independantly of its members and has exclusive privileges that allow them to externalize the affects their decisions without being held responsible. In the same way that the social contract implies the enslavement of uninvolved 3rd parties, the corporate form implies applying the terms of a contract to uninvolved 3rd parties as well. The specific purposes of the contract are what differs, but the essential nature of the contract as something binding on everyone regaurdless of genuine consent is the same.

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Typical name calling and ad hom tactics BP. Why not act like an adult for once, and participate in good faith, or keep your trap shut?

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Or I view it as a necessary consequence (and since when do I reject libertarian human rights?). So until you can actually refute what I’ve said, or show the strawmen and stop the ad homs. I’ll continue to view you as you are: a silly little troll. Try taking David_z’s approach. That is, posting a coherent and logical response (even if I do disagree with it).

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Because this thread is a drive-by attack in and of itself, which doesn’t bring up anything new, it repeats the same points he’s been repeating for months which have long since been addressed and refuted over the course of many threads.

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Not at all. The economic reason for becoming a corporation is a way to organize smaller lots of capital into a large project, and with so many different shareholders, some form of organization and liability is necessary.

The bottom line remains, if you don’t like the limited liability of corporations, you don’t have to deal with them. But if you deal with them voluntarily, then you accept their claim of limited liability.

If you go into Walmart, and slip and fall, you shouldn’t be able to sue each shareholder individually. Now the problem comes, if a Walmart truck crashes into your house, limited liability was never accepted by you, and thus it wouldn’t apply. Does that sound reasonable?

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I’ve wasted endless paragphraphs doing just that, and you have never been civil in response and you’ve rarely even demonstrated an understanding of the arguments. So what you’ve said already has been refuted - months ago. I am not a troll, I have been 100% sincere about my views on this forum, and it is you who started this thread which just begs for a left-libertarian to respond to it.

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No, obviously people are responding, because it isn’t something that has been addressed or refuted. In fact, GS recently replied to my blog about this topic. Some of us are still discussing it. I’m not quite sure you are the one who should be making editorial decisions for the LvMI community.

That doesn’t excuse your childish behaviour either. I read your original response, and then you went back and tacked on some ad homs for good measure.

It’s a real sign of weakness, that when challenged on this topic, your first tact is to make a personal attack, and then to post information.

It would really be appreciated that if you can’t argue honestly and respectfully, you get lost. This forum is a much nicer place to discuss and learn when you are absent. That’s not an attack or insult, it’s simply a fact.

Now if you have something meaningful to add, then by all means continue. I’d rather address your points than your emotional outbursts.

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Fair enough, I’m just trying to state where I come from.

I never suggested that things would need to be “completely different”, only that you need to accept the possibility that a great deal of things would be “completely different.” They might not be - they might be the same, in which case we’d see that government accidentally solved the calculation problem.

The fact of the matter is that the free market hasn’t chosen anything that we currently would use as an example. Some of the firms that have been “chosen” in the unfree market, and I say this with 100% guarantee, would immediately cease to exist in a free market, many others would have to completely restructure/repurpose (I’m thinking of the armies of tax accountants, e.g.)

You’re awfully defensive here. I agree that they’re cartels, and I didn’t mean to imply or suggest an argument in their favor, other than the fact that what you might call a “union” could conceivably exist as a co-op or a mutual, with exclusive membership.

I’m not at all sure what led you to that assumption. They’re certainly not the same, by any stretch of the imagination. Blackwater is 100% parasite. Wal-Mart is some non-zero percent parasite.

You seem to be You’re putting the cart before the horse: a large business can more easily deal with costs.

NO. A business becomes large, if it can deal with the costs and satisfy customers at the same time. I’m not anti-big business, per se. Surely, we can imagine businesses that are large because they are successful.

If someone buys the product conditionally and agrees not to hold us liable, that’s an entirely different argument. It is not a question of organizational structure, but one of contract & enforcement.

Here’s a good example, as food for thought: yesterday I tried to re-sell some concert tickets online, but because they were e-Tickets, the only way I could guarantee them was to re-sell them through TicketsNow.com - a ticketmaster affiliate site. Users on craigslist and eBay were wary that I could simply print several copies of the same ticket, and sell them. I could assert my honesty, that I did not mean to defraud them, but I would’ve had to sell them at a steep discount.

When I say “you are liable for my actions” (buy my tickets on craigslist) the price I’m able to command is lower than it would be, if I could offer a meaningful, enforceable guarantee, that I would not succumb to the moral hazard of duplicating the PDF tickets.

Could you sell things caveat emptor on a free market? I don’t see why you couldn’t. I just don’t think it would be as easy as “take it or leave it.” A lot of people might “leave it,” like they all did on craiglist for me yesterday.

Yes, that’s precisely the problem! I’m saying that if the structure of the organization is such that liability can’t be proven in all but the most egregious cases, then it’s the structure of the organization that is the problem.

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Agreed esp. w/r to the Subjective Thy of Value. I’ve previously criticized Carson’s LTV.