{"id":542,"date":"2002-05-04T16:28:02","date_gmt":"2002-05-04T23:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/05\/monopolies-are-good-for-you\/"},"modified":"2002-05-04T16:28:02","modified_gmt":"2002-05-04T23:28:02","slug":"monopolies-are-good-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/05\/04\/monopolies-are-good-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Monopolies are good for you"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t— Libertarian bloggers
\nare real excited<\/a> about the Francis Fukuyama
\n
\nOp-Ed in the WSJ<\/a> mounting a weak attack on libertarians for their
\nanti-war<\/a>,
\npro-cloning<\/a> viewpoints.
\nGranted that we all love the conceit of “proving” the correctness of our
\npositions by ravaging a strawman, Fukuyama’s argument is most flawed in its
\nassumption that libertarians had any standing to lose on Sept. 11th in the first
\nplace. <\/p>\n

In all the major policy discussions of our time, including welfare,
\ndrug policy, regulation of monopolies, global warming, and the encroachment
\nof Washington on the sovereignty of state and local government, libertarians are
\nnon-combatants. While the rest of the spectrum is engaged in arguing, for
\nexample, about how best to structure a welfare system so as to promote
\nself-dependence, libertarians simply argue that there shouldn’t be a welfare
\nsystem. And while the rest of the spectrum debates the relative utility of drug
\ncourts and treatment to incarceration for drug offenses, libertarians simply
\nargue that there should be no drug laws. And while the rest of the spectrum
\nargues about what types of cloning and genetic engineering should be restricted,
\nlibertarians simply say that the government should have no say in decisions that
\ncould have more lasting impact on life on this planet than any technology ever
\ndeveloped. It’s strange.


\nThere are some policy debates where libertarians provide much-needed levity,
\nof course, which the Cato Institute does by arguing novel positions. Global
\nwarming is a reality, Cato says, but it’s good for us (link not available because
\ntheir site’s down.)
\n


\n
\nLive from the WTC<\/a> extends libertarian buffoonery into a new sphere with
\nthis argument that monopolies are good for us:<\/p>\n

\nSo in the course of the discussion referenced below, Richard Bennett asked
\nwhy libertarians fall silent on the subject of antitrust. And in the course of
\nanswering that (short answer: it doesn’t do any good), I came across a very
\ninteresting piece of data: after the break up of Standard Oil, prices rose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, I pointed out that libertarians don’t want to talk about monopolies,
\nsince one had said they don’t exist and another that they’re all government-created
\nbefore Megan said you can’t do anything about them anyway. Reading her piece,
\nit’s not clear whether she means gasoline or kerosene prices rose after the SO
\nbreak up, but it’s certainly an entertaining viewpoint. Megan also engages in
\nanother fun project, proving that global warming is no big deal by ripping the
\nKyoto Treaty. Frankly, I have no problem with the fact that Kyoto is a bogus
\napproach to dealing with global warming, if there is such a thing, but its defects
\ndon’t tell us anything at all about climate change and the models thereof.


\nIt hurts me to see intelligent people give their minds over to cultish systems,
\nand there’s no doubt in my mind that libertarianism, in its native guise or when
\ndressed-up as “Objectivism” or as “Dynamism” is a cultish system, providing
\nsimple answers to complex questions and alienating its practitioners from the
\nmainstream. It’s always the smart people that are drawn to these quick-fix,
\nanswer-to-everything, pseudo-philosophical systems, of course, because of their
\nsuperficial intellectual appeal and their many labor-saving virtues. The thing that
\nlibertarians never seem to grasp is that all mainstream political philosophy is
\nconcerned with liberty, but the differences come in when we consider what things
\nare the genuine threats to liberty, and how to best limit their effects.

But liberty
\nisn’t the sole aim of political philosophy: justice is right up there among the top
\nprinciples as well, and the most interesting (and important) debates consider the
\ntension between these two competing values. Libertarians, by focusing solely on
\nfreedom, are literally one-armed men (or people, if you must) in these debates,
\nand their one-dimensionality leads toward a kind of fanaticism. But it does save
\ntime, of course, knowing what you believe even without understanding the issues.


\nSo what’s up with these new-fangled variations on libertarianism, like Ayn Rand’s
\n“Objectivism” and Postrel’s “Dynamism?” While they may make some sort of
\ncontribution to the libertarian ideal that I don’t get because I’m not immersed
\nin the doctrinal struggles of that movement, on the face of it they appear to be
\nlittle more than cults of personality centered around a would-be dominatrix.
\nPostrel says all the traditional distinctions of political philosophy are wrong, and we
\nsimply have to be concerned about dynamism and stasis. Excuse me, but I’m not
\npersonally inclined to throw out Plato, Aquinas, Burke, Voltaire, Locke, Hayek,
\nand Mansfield just because some redhead from Dallas who likes sexy shoes says
\nthey’re like so last century, dude. This is fundamentally a false distinction, because
\nnobody seriously argues that change for its own sake is a virtue. We have too
\nmuch power for that.

So the message is pretty simple, but hopefully not too
\nsimple: if you want to debate politics, learn something about it. If you then want
\nto toss aside the Western tradition, fine and dandy, at least you know what you’re
\ndiscarding. Similarly, if you want to debate social policy, learn something about
\nit, don’t just come crashing in with a doctrinaire viewpoint and a small set of received
\nideas. That’s not too thuggish, is it?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— Libertarian bloggers are real excited about the Francis Fukuyama Op-Ed in the WSJ mounting a weak attack on libertarians for their anti-war, pro-cloning viewpoints. Granted that we all love the conceit of “proving” the correctness of our positions by ravaging a strawman, Fukuyama’s argument is most flawed in its assumption that libertarians had any … Continue reading “Monopolies are good for you”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-8K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}