(As usual, the opinions expressed here are mine, I don't claim in this post to have any scientific data to back up my opinions - they're opinions. So don't bother yelling at me.)
Libertarianism
There's been a discussion on an email list I'm on about the demonstration in Washington last week by the "Tea Party" folks. During the course of that discussion one of my friends said
"If I had to label myself, I guess I would be a Libertarian; I want the government to get the hell out of my life and my pocketbook. Everything the government runs turns to crap; they accomplish so little with such amazing expenditures of our cash. It is close to being a true inverse relationship (there’s a piled higher and deeper thesis for you); the more it costs, the less effective it is."
That got me to thinking again about Libertarians, what they believe, and why. I'm a liberal, I've always been a liberal, I'm pretty sure I always will be, although I do get conflicted about certain things. I just don't get conservative ideology (more on that later). Libertarians are odd ducks, though, because while it would seem they normally would line up with conservative Republicans, they've also got this government is bad no matter what thing going on that is interesting.
According to Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge these days) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism, "Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state....The best or most commonly known formulation of libertarianism supports free market capitalism by advocating a right to private property, including property in the means of production, minimal government regulation of that property, minimal taxation, and rejection of the welfare state, all within the context of the rule of law."
My initial response to this is "why that is so 18th century!" Here's why I think so. The second sentence in the definition above seems to sound a lot like various things said just before and after the American Revolution. The values expressed, IMHO, may have worked and the consequent policies may have worked when the population of the USA was 3 million and largely rural, say in 1789.
But by the time the population got to first 50 million (roughly 1880) and then 100 million (roughly 1914) and was a mix of rural and urban, most of this stuff (again IMHO) didn't work. And now, at 300+ million and overwhelmingly urban (81%+), those values and policies don't work at all for the plain and simple reason that with that many people there are many more predators around and many more people likely to be victims. Of course, if you don't believe in helping your fellow man, this is not an issue.
I heard a great quote on NPR this morning during a report on the economy and on regulating the financial system. It went something like this - if you have a system that allows cheating and theft, people will cheat and steal. So I think that given the size of the country, the size of the economy, and the opportunity for cheating and stealing, that more regulation (and hence more government) is called for. I think that unregulated free market capitalism is evil because it allows the predators to do what they will, at the expense of everyone else (thank you Bernie Madoff). I also think that capitalism is the most viable economic system, it just needs to be regulated and the regulations need to have teeth. (The Soviets showed that having the government own everything and eliminating all competition is just a bad idea.)
One of the other things that Libertarians rail against is the federal government, but many of them seem to think that state governments are not so bad. Pshaw.
IMHO states are just a bad idea. They're yet another holdover (like the electoral college) from the initial competition between the 13 colonies as they emerged into independence (there's that 18th century idea thing again). The only thing states should be used for is to determine the number of Senators - a balance in the legislative branch I like. How often has the federal government had to send in troops or go to court to reverse some egregious action by a state? Think segregation, please.
Libertarianism also seems to be a bastion of the idea that everyone is basically on their own, and that they are not obligated to be their brother's keeper. The health care debate is just the latest in a long list of examples of this moral value (or lack thereof, IMHO). One of the most striking comments I've heard came from a self-professed conservative Republican at our Congressman's local town hall meeting this summer (Hare, D-IL 17). A woman who was enrolled in the Medicare system thought that universal health care (of which she was a beneficiary - but the irony did not strike her) was immoral because "we paid into this all our lives and we shouldn't have to support anybody else." (a paraphrase, but it stayed with me)
Aside from fundamentally not understanding how Medicare works, she was espousing the "I'm in it for me and nobody else" philosophy that seems to run through right-wing Republicans and Libertarians these days.
Oh, and the canard that the federal government is wasteful. Well, sometimes it is, but sometimes so are unregulated corporations (anyone want to go on an AIG junket???). And sometimes the government is _more_ efficient. A recent GAO report says that the cost of a stay in a VA facility (a real socialist medical program because the government is not only a single payer, but they own the hospitals and employ the doctors) is 2/3 the cost of a stay for someone with private insurance in a private hospital. And the veterans are happy with their care - overwhelmingly. And they don't have any co-pays and their insurance won't get canceled when they get sick.
So, overall, I think Libertarianism is an idea whose time has come and gone. It can't survive in a country of this size that is mostly urban; it's ideas just don't make sense to me in that context.
