Kerry Howley has responded to my post criticizing her essay on libertarianism and culture. I don’t think her response actually answers most of my main points, however. Kerry criticizes me for asking for a “bright line rule” about what cultural values libertarians should care about:
The lack of libertarian tolerance for ambiguity is an unfortunate thing. “Be more precise,” Ilya says. He says this of a jeremiad against bright-line-ism. There are no bright lines, even within the domains Ilya thinks most clearly delineated. When is coercion justified with regard to property? Libertarians disagree. What constitutes property rightfully obtained? Libertarians disagree.
There is a great deal of room between an absolute bright line rule and the degree of imprecision present in Kerry’s original essay. On one interpretation of her argument, almost all cultural norms are threats to freedom because all constrain our choices to at least some degree. On another, only a very narrow range are (perhaps those that leave people with little or no exit option from highly constricted lifestyles). As to what “libertarian” means, I agree that there is disagreement about it. However, to my mind, the term as commonly used delineates people who advocate either strictly limited government or none at all. Thus, libertarianism is primarily a political philosophy about the appropriate role of government in society, not a comprehensive ethical system that covers all the important issues in human life.
Kerry next claims that a concern about culture is essential not to all libertarians, but merely those who are libertarian primarily because they care about liberty:
A political philosophy of limited government is a means to an end. For a great many though by no means all libertarians, the end is individual liberty, understood as the ability to pursue one’s singular aims. For some, support of limited government is, as Tim Lee puts it, “one facet of a broader liberal worldview.” It would be beyond pointless to construct an argument about what supporters of small government “ought” to care about. My Reason piece argues merely that supporters of small government who care about liberty ought to care also about culture, in part because culture and individualism are very often at odds.
I appreciate the clarification. But even with respect to those libertarians who “care about liberty,” Kerry’s argument isn’t entirely successful. Liberty and individualism are not synonymous. For many of us, the liberty we care about includes the liberty to choose to live in cultural communities that aren’t necessarily individualistic. As I suggested in my original post, most of those who live in conservative subcultures in the modern West are not trapped there. They are exercising their liberty no less than Kerry and I are by choosing a different life. To use Kerry’s terminology, people who exercise “individual liberty . . . understood as the ability to pursue one’s singular aims” need not always value “individualism.” Moreover, I am one of those people who is a libertarian because I care about happiness as well as liberty. In a world of diverse people with very different preferences, some will find their greatest happiness by exercising the liberty to live in a socially conservative, nonindividualistic culture.
Kerry somewhat misunderstands me when she says that “Ilya says we cannot know what cultural norms are conducive to liberty broadly construed.” Rather, I argued that different cultural norms may be optimal for different people and groups, and that a libertarian society should therefore accept cultural diversity, at least within very broad limits. I also suggested that such cultural diversity actually increase our freedom by giving us a wider range of lifestyle choices – including conservative ones.
Finally, Kerry states that her essay was aimed at a very narrow target: “[T]he minority of libertarians, like [Todd] Seavey, for whom government is a leviathan so totalizing that thought beyond its influence is rendered impossible.”
She now says that she accuses only this small group of believing that ““social pathologies such as patriarchy and nationalism are not the proper concerns of the individualist.” I appreciate the clarification, and I am sorry for misinterpreting her position (which, in my view, wasn’t stated nearly as clearly in her original essay). However, it now seems as if she is aiming at virtually a null set. After all, even those libertarians most focused on combating state power (e.g. – Murray Rothbard) admitted that nondefensive private violence and theft should also be opposed. And I would be surprised if Seavey himself thought that libertarians can afford to be completely indifferent to nationalism or patriarchy, given that both have historically promoted large-scale state-sponsored oppression.
In sum, I fear that further clarification is necessary. If all Kerry is saying is that libertarians who care about liberty shouldn’t completely ignore cultural values or private actions that might threaten freedom, I don’t disagree with her, and neither would any other libertarian commentator I know of. For example in my original post, I noted that some cultural values are problematic from a libertarian standpoint because they promote statism or aggressive private violence. This is perfectly compatible with believing that in the modern world government power is the single greatest threat to liberty, and that libertarians should therefore devote the bulk of their time and effort to combating that threat (areas like Somalia, where no meaningful state exists, are exceptions to this generalization). If, however, Kerry wants to argue that there is a wide range of cultural values that libertarians should be against because they imperil freedom even when no violence is used or threatened, then the criticisms I made in my original post still apply.
UPDATE: Will Wilkinson has joined the debate, replying to this post and my previous one. Will, like Kerry, is a thoughtful commentator. But I fear that his post suffers from some of the same problems as Kerry’s reply. Like Kerry, Will argues that all he’s saying is that people are affected by cultural values and that some of these cultural values may be threats to freedom:
As I see it, Kerry’s claim is that many libertarians fail to adequately acknowledge the fact (and it is a fact) that people are embedded in and shaped by culture, and that, as a consequence, many libertarians fail to grasp the extent to which cultural norms and social structure can limit individual liberty or work to deny some individuals the opportunity to develop the capacities needed to meaningfully exercise their liberty rights.
As noted above, no serious libertarian thinker denies these points, at least not at this level of generality. The more contentious question is whether and to what extent cultural norms pose a threat to liberty even when they aren’t backed by either state power or private violence.
Will also emphasizes that libertarian ideology is in part the product of its social environment and that it can and should evolve over time. I don’t deny this, and I doubt many other libertarians would either. The more difficult question is what direction the ideology should evolve in. In my view, libertarians are right to believe that government power is by far the greatest threat to liberty and happiness in the modern world, and that cultural norms unconnected to either state or private violence are, in most places (especially the developed world), a relatively minor problem by comparison. Moreover, as argued in my previous posts, I think the availability of socially conservative cultures of a kind Will and Kerry might decry actually increases both freedom and happiness so long as people have reasonable exit options from them.
Will further argues that even if I am right to conclude that in the United States today, people can freely choose to leave restrictive cultures, that was not true of the United States in earlier eras or other countries around the world today. These are much bigger issue than can be addressed in an update to a blog post. In general, my view on these questions that 1) the exit options in the US of decades ago or other countries today would have been much better if the restrictive norms in question were not backed by state power, and and 2) to the extent that they would have remained a problem, it is in large part because of low levels of economic development, which constricted people’s mobility and access to information. As I see it, the best way to combat these problems is to promote limits on government power economic growth – a package very similar to the traditional libertarian agenda.
Finally, Will suggests at one point that, in the modern US, libertarians should oppose even those social norms that constrict liberty in ways that fall short of “radical” restrictions: “I’d submit that one or two steps shy of radically constricted freedom isn’t free enough.” In my view, once we get to that point, I think it is best to rely on people choosing for themselves in the private sector. What looks to Will like “constricted freedom” may well be people exercising their freedom to choose a nonindividualistic or socially conservative lifestyle.
subpatre says:
One example in the previous article (backing Howley) throws the spotlight onto the Pandora’s Box she wants to open. Howley’s article refers in one instance to
She is referring of course to the religious fundamentalists practicing polygamy in Texas. The same people who had over 400 children taken away from them by the state on spurious evidence. Not one of those people asked for asylum or protection; every single individual wanted their personal liberty to return to their lifestyle.
Howley’s definition of personal liberty is hers and hers alone. The FLDS wants her and the goons out of their lives. Texas is prosecuting some, but there are no complainants, only the state.
That’s pretty much the antithesis of libertarian dogma: Victim-less acts and state coercion. Between Howley and the FLDS, weird though they may appear, the FLDS has a more solid grasp on the concept of liberty.
.
What truly illuminates Howley’s error came from a commenter in the previous thread, and (interestingly) created a ‘bright line’ test of sorts:
Which can just as easily be asking ‘just how “voluntary” a teenager’s presence is
on a ranch in texas or utahin their family, despite the lack of state action.’Twirlip responded, advising to “consider that it can lead quite easly to calls for state action to “free” that teenager from his involuntary presence in a particular place.”
October 25, 2009, 12:56 amyankee says:
I read Howley as speaking to broader social norms that are not easy to avoid. Lots of social norms exist across society rather than being particular to one or another subculture. Despite your claims that restrictive social norms are easy to avoid, the cost of avoiding a “universal” norm is extremely high.
Until very recently, it was virtually impossible to insulate yourself against anti-gay norms. The effects of these norms were not trivial: you were subject to being fired, ostracized, cut off from your family, denied housing, and so on. Nor were they easily evaded: even if you cut off all of your previous social and business acquaintances, moved to San Francisco, found a job with a gay business, and ran a gay-centric social life, you would still be subject to stigma, harassment, and prejudice as soon as you stepped outside those extremely limited boundaries.
Your view seems to be that the availability of the option to move to San Francisco, etc. was enough to cause anti-gay norms to have only a trivial impact on the liberty of gay people (except insofar as those norms inspired anti-sodomy laws and private violence.) You can consistently take the view that social norms, as such, can never have any significant impact on liberty, but as long as you concede that it is possible for social norms to impact liberty I think the gay example thoroughly refutes the “exit costs are so low that the impact is trivial” argument.
Healy’s view would be that libertarian organizations should have supported gay activists in their effort to change the culture (though not in e.g. enacting laws against anti-gay “hate speech.”) Do you disagree even though the exit costs were very high?
I would add that those who like restrictive social norms are rarely interested in keeping them in their own subcultures. Typically they want to promote their norms as views that everyone else should adopt as well. James Dobson doesn’t just want to discriminate against gays privately: he wants everybody else to do so as well. If represeive social norms, if widely adopted, can restrict liberty, then presumably people who care about liberty should oppose those who are advocating repressive norms.
October 25, 2009, 2:44 amIlya Somin says:
I read Howley as speaking to broader social norms that are not easy to avoid. Lots of social norms exist across society rather than being particular to one or another subculture. Despite your claims that restrictive social norms are easy to avoid, the cost of avoiding a “universal” norm is extremely high.
Until very recently, it was virtually impossible to insulate yourself against anti-gay norms. The effects of these norms were not trivial: you were subject to being fired, ostracized, cut off from your family, denied housing, and so on. Nor were they easily evaded: even if you cut off all of your previous social and business acquaintances, moved to San Francisco, found a job with a gay business, and ran a gay-centric social life, you would still be subject to stigma, harassment, and prejudice as soon as you stepped outside those extremely limited boundaries.
If the norm really is universal, or close to it, then it is indeed hard to exit. However, if a universal norm is right (i.e. – it really does promote freedom and happiness overall), it may not be a bad thing from a libertarian point of view. If, on the other hand, it is based on logical and empirical fallacies, like the anti-gay norm was, then it is likely to break down in a competitive, pluralistic society, unless it is enforced by government. For example, if gays are not pernicious, don’t harm those they associate with, and so on, then areas and firms where gays are welcome are likely to do better as a result, and to prevail more often in competitive markets. Others can learn from that experience and draw the right conclusions. That process would have worked a lot faster if it weren’t for the fact that gays were forced into the “closet” by government coercion and often could not freely interact openly even with those private sector institutions prepared to welcome them. Thus, even in this situation, the primary (though by no means exclusive) libertarian focus should be on the activities of the state.
October 25, 2009, 3:02 amricky says:
“suggested that such cultural diversity actually increase our freedom by giving us a wider range of lifestyle choices — including conservative ones”
Silly rabbit, don’t you know that libertarianism is about the freedom to drive a Prius to your government desk job, eat vegan, and occasionally smoke a joint with your multicultural, proportionally-represented group of genderqueer friends? It is crucial that the government support this freedom by outlawing all other lifestyle choices!
October 25, 2009, 5:06 amFrater Plotter says:
This, I think, is the most important point to be made in this debate. There are precious few people who believe in restrictive social norms for themselves but not for others. Rather, many such groups, when they are not in power, will plead for religious or social tolerance for their unusual and restrictive ways — but whenever they acquire power, set about imposing those ways on others and, all too often, restricting exit as well.
This is why, after all, so many libertarians (and honest liberal-democrats) are worried about the effects of political Islam — because we can see that the Islamists are not really just interested in private sharia-based arbitration systems. They’d really like to impose sharia on everyone; indeed, that’s explicitly required in their rulebook, and we have the example of Islamist countries to demonstrate that.
I understand that some libertarians who want the support of America’s conservative movement do not want to extend the same reasoning to “Christianists” (so to speak) that so clearly applies to Islamists. However, I fear that it applies nonetheless, for precisely the reasons noted above: the cultural-conservative leaders, such as Dobson’s set, are also political advocates who would dearly love to impose their rules on everyone.
October 25, 2009, 6:30 amricky says:
Frater Plotter-
Are you arguing against allowing Muslims to operate their “private sharia-based arbitration systems”, or arguing against allowing Muslims to immigrate to “free” countries en masse? Because only one of these, in my opinion, is likely to lead to Sharia-For-All.
And what of those who would outlaw speech against Islam because it could lead to an oppressive racist anti-Muslim regime? Isn’t preventing that possibility just as important, nay, more important than your silly, outdated, bigoted fears of Sharia-For-All?
Slavery is freedom, indeed.
October 25, 2009, 7:30 amDavid says:
Professor Somin, one of the issues you touch upon but don’t address full-on is the distinction between (in your words) “… “libertarian” … delineates people who advocate either strictly limited government or none at all.”
I submit to you that these are actually quite distinct positions, a distinction which you implicitly acknowledge later in your essay in referring to Somalia ["... libertarians should therefore devote the bulk of their time and effort to combating that threat (areas like Somalia, where no meaningful state exists, are exceptions to this generalization)."]
Government may be one of those areas to which hormesis applies. There is a dramatic difference between what I’ll call Randian minarchism–advocating a strong, limited government–and Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism, which treats all government as intrinsically evil (I’ll leave it to you to ponder the deontological implications of this POV).
The Framers were minarchists, not anarchists: they understood perfectly well that if you lie down with anarchists, you wake up with warlords. And they tried to frame a truly minimalist state–see the Articles of Confederation. But they discovered that–in a dangerous world, surrounded by adversaries–it didn’t work: hence, they rebuilt it using the Constitution.
Libertarians–at least those I’ve encountered, either personally or in print–celebrate liberty from government interference and bemoan the oppressive nature of the ever-burgeoning U.S. government. They enjoy that luxury under the aegis of the most powerful and at the same time most benign state in human history.
I grew up with aunts and uncles who had lived through the War and the Occupation. I can tell the difference.
October 25, 2009, 9:50 amdevil's advocate says:
Howley’s authority is an appeal to Hayek’s “preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead”.
That is perhaps significantly different than countenancing change when we can see precisely where it will lead. What howley’s stalking horse – Leslie Chang – did not do was to gather repressed peers and guillotine her parents. Rather she supports them. That is why Burke is as much the architect of the kind of change that is underway in China as Hayek:
This, I think, is the central point of the Reflections and while it refers to the state and governance it does so from the reference to the natural state of people which is inclusive of culture.
Simply put, Ilya’s winning point is that any instance of cultural conformity that is worthy of concern will manifest itself with coercive action. Minarchists basically agree that government limits on certain forms of private coercion is a proper exercise of coercion, I think. Ergo violence or threats or high identifiable psychological barriers to exit should be of concern to libertarians.
But attempting to set a standard in which the weakest willed among us has no societal direction regarding their individual choices is a fools errand. Howley does not set this standard explicitly but it is the logical conclusion of her arguments.
As is usual she argues for tolerance of everyone except the intolerant.
Brian
October 25, 2009, 9:51 amSuperSkeptic says:
What would you have us do David, “shut up and take it” because it’s not as bad as Nazi-occuied Europe?
***
Subpatre accurately describes my concerns. But I assume libertarians would support an intrusion into that family if there were rape, incest, or domestic violence. Am I wrong? If so, then the problem is drawing the line, no? The family is not inviolable. Howley wants us to intervene when we “subjectively” view the situation as oppressive, whereas I think current standards of libertarianism would only intervene when it’s “objectively” oppressive (with actual force/fraud/coercion), which, being a higher standard, allows for more “oppressive social norms” than the subjective standard she endorses would, I think. Also, less manipulation of the standard of liberty for one of oppression a la Fratter Plotter’s point.
October 25, 2009, 11:12 amfrankcross says:
What if Ilya is right in theory but wrong in practice. I.e., that an inevitable consequence of private anti-libertarian norms is that they are translated into government action (perhaps to ensure their perpetuation). While his theory is appealing in the abstract, a theory has to work in practice. While this would mean that tiny fringe anti-libertarian groups are fine, widespread groups would simply result in more government statism.
And, as for norms breaking down, the anti-gay norm has broken down as fast or faster in the context of government action than it has in the context of private culture.
October 25, 2009, 1:03 pmOren says:
Ilya, with all due respect to these incredibly informative posts, I don’t think this is a reasonable model for how social/cultural changes actually occur. They certainly do not start by attacking the government-imposed restrictions to that liberty — quite the opposite, government policy seems to me a lagging indicator of the broader trend.
It seems to me that the mechanism of such changes start with individuals who confront the restrictive social change and set an example for others. The taboo gradually reduces until it becomes acceptable for most everyone to be in favor of individual liberty. Only after that happens can a (democratic) government remove whatever de-jure relics of the original restriction existed.
The strategy for those of us in favor of broad social liberty is then to engage in the first step of confronting the taboo. Maybe that’s not “libertarianism” according to some definition (the nominalist side of this debate is tiring) but it seems to me a huge component in the real-life expansion of personal freedom.
October 25, 2009, 1:21 pmKen Arromdee says:
This doesn’t really follow. People pay money for all sorts of intangibles, and the intangibles actually become part of the market. For instance, bad restaurant service doesn’t really leave you worse off than good restaurant service, once you’re out of the restaurant. Yet people are willing to pay money for restaurants with good service. The market does not lead to good restaurant service being priced out of the market.
As long as people hate gays, “absence of gays” becomes a marketable intangible commodity the same way as good restaurant service. The market, then, will lead to gays being discriminated against. For a firm to do better by hiring gays is, given customer preferences, like a restaurant doing better by providing lousy service. Restaurants which give lousy service are patronized less and customers refuse to pay as much in them, and there’s no guarantee that the gain in efficiency from providing bad service (or from hiring hardworking gay people) outweighs the loss from refusing to sell the customers the intangible.
October 25, 2009, 1:41 pmsubpatre says:
Ken Arromdee wrote: “For a firm to do better by hiring gays is, given customer preferences, like a restaurant doing better by providing lousy service. Restaurants which give lousy service are patronized less and customers refuse to pay as much in them, and there’s no guarantee that the gain in efficiency from providing bad service (or from hiring hardworking gay people) outweighs the loss from refusing to sell the customers the intangible.”
So true, except you forgot that gays are also —in fact primarily— customers first. Your example relies on gays preferably patronizing places that refuse to hire them or have gays on staff. For two restaurants providing comparable product, gays will prefer to buy at the restaurant proving the more accepting or accommodating environment.
That, and the general public’s (actual) tolerance is what has happened in the real world; including places where homosexuality was culturally stigmatized or even illegal.
The real world acts differently than you presuppose. Although California is known for acceptance of alternative lifestyles, when its high Court intervened, the people went to Proposition 8; a consequence of politicizing a cultural value. In Virginia the prospect of government action in one single case —of official government authorization of homosexuality— propelled a ‘one man-one woman’ constitutional amendment on marriage to approval. Another consequence of (attempted) politicization of a cultural value.
Libertarianism is first and foremost a political movement, so by definition effects government. Any cultural issue the party or movement involves itself in necessarily extends the reach of government toward that issue. Don’t do it! It becomes the antithesis of what libertarianism claims to be; not that there aren’t a few dandy examples of that already.
October 25, 2009, 2:42 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Despite our debate yesterday, I absolutely agree Oren. This comment by Gov98 at 11:07 am toady on the “what books to recommend” thread is on point, whether one is a Christian or not:
The one book I would refer one to if I hoped to change their mind would be the Gospel of John. You cannot change someones mind until their heart is changed and “these things were written that you might believe.”
October 25, 2009, 2:52 pmAngus Lander says:
One issue here is whether Howley’s “cultural libertarian” values liberty. Howley says he does because he aims to maximize the number of options people have available to them (by eliminating cultural norms that preclude the availability of vast swathes of options to certain classes of people). Somin says he does not because he would deprive people of the option to limit their options (by eliminating cultural norms that people voluntarily adopt).
Somin and Howley both think that the libertarian should be concerned with maximizing liberty, they just disagree about what it is for someone to be more or less free. For Howley (as Somin reads her), the more options A has the more free A is. For Somin, the more valuable-to-A) options A has the more free A is. Thus, Somin can say that a woman who wants to live in an orthodox Jewish community, but can’t because cultural libertarians have demolished orthodox cultural norms, is less free even though (as a member of the mainstream community) she has more options than she would within her preferred community. For Howley, this woman is more free.
Neither Somin’s nor Howley’s view of what it is to have liberty is indefensible. The problem for Somin and Howley is that neither view is especially libertarian. Howley’s libertarians should be concerned with maximizing people’s options allows (in principle) for substantial government interference (wherever limiting one option creates two, it should be done). Somin’s libertarians should be concerned with maximizing the options-people-care-about-having likewise does (wherever limiting one of these options creates two, it should be done).
Libertarianism needs a view of liberty according to which one is free as long as one is not coerced (he also has to say that an act of coercion isn’t justified even if it prevents two acts of coercion down the road; it’s just unjustified simpliciter). A libertarian should be able to say what (I recall) Hayek says somewhere in the early pages of The Constitution of Liberty – that a climber stuck on a mountain is undoubtedly free, though he can go nowhere.
October 25, 2009, 3:31 pmOren says:
Why does the second sentence follow from the first? Can we not, in addition to opposing government coercion, also work towards other means of increasing personal liberty?
I don’t understand the aversion to promoting cultural values that affirm the ideal of individual choice through private action that does not rise to coercion.
October 25, 2009, 3:36 pmDavid says:
SuperSkeptic says:
“What would you have us do David, “shut up and take it” because it’s not as bad as Nazi-occupied Europe?”
Not at all–I’d merely like some recognition from libertarians that *some* government is, in fact, better than no government at all–as you could have deduced if you’d actually read what I wrote.
*Of course* things are getting worse here–I’m not blind. I just think that most libertarians have no real context for their hermeneutic (for want of a better term) of government.
I read years ago–I believe it might have been in Sowell’s “Classical Economics Reconsidered”–a description of the history of institutions that we nowadays take for granted–land rights, an independent judiciary, the entire apparatus which we call “rule of law”–which concluded with the observation (I paraphrase): “Those who believe that /laissez-faire/ capitalism means a government that “does nothing” must be assumed to be entirely ignorant of this history.”
October 25, 2009, 4:00 pmsubpatre says:
Oren asks:
Yes we can! [Couldn't resist the Obama-man setup] People can do that, it’s just not a function for libertarians; or democrats or republicans. There is no aversion “to promoting cultural values”, there’s a reasonable and strong argument against political organizations taking cultural positions.
[A subsidiary argument is that non-cultural organizations —such as a political party— that do take cultural positions reduce their membership. There is no gain for the movement or organization, and potential loss.]
October 25, 2009, 5:16 pmFrater Plotter says:
I didn’t say either one, silly. I’m saying that libertarians have every reason to speak out against, and refuse to cooperate or go along with, currently-voluntary systems whose proponents aim to make them mandatory. The sharia example I chose because it is well-known that the goals of Islamists are not compatible with liberty; my real point was that the Christian Right is not compatible with liberty, either, and that we should be suspicious of their “voluntary” cultural agenda as well as their political agenda, because the one is really aimed at accomplishing the other.
I think that part of Howley’s original point was that there are kinds of power — social and cultural power — which are quite outside of the use of force and government to “disallow” things. They involve speaking out, helping people who want to exit repressive groups, convincing others of the value and benefits of liberty. Outreach doesn’t mean kicking the Muslims or the Christians off the island; it does mean making sure that their sons and daughters know that there are other ways to live.
October 25, 2009, 6:13 pmricky says:
“my real point was that the Christian Right is not compatible with liberty”
Good point. Christians, who have existed as a majority in this nation since its founding, are no different from Muslims. They are JUST LIKE US, and anyone who suggests otherwise is racist, and should be thrown in jail and, perhaps, executed for trying to impose their oppressive, bigoted belief system on the rest of us.
October 25, 2009, 9:42 pmChrisTS says:
Christians are just like us? Or, Muslims are just like us? Who’s ‘us’?
October 25, 2009, 10:26 pmCurious Reader says:
Will’s refinement of Kerry’s position appears to be: Libertarians who care about liberty should care about cultural values because, in the real world, cultural values may impede the exercise of liberty. Tyrannical traditions and ancient attitudes may trap us unless we recognize that earlier conceptions of libertarianism may have been just as flawed as the tyranny they critiqued. Because libertarianism evolves as our understanding of liberty evolves, our present day articulation of libertarianism may involve a critical attitude toward past iterations of libertarianism and expand to include new topics that dead libertarian thinkers had yet to consider.
I am not persuaded by this refinement for a number of reasons:
(1) If such a sophisticated refinement was necessary, then the original position must have been flawed.
(2) The refinement fails to justify libertarian concern with the social construction of gender specifically; rather it justifies present day libertarian intellectualism. (I have nothing against libertarian intellectuals, but nothing about the social construction of gender obligates a libertarian intellectual, or non-intellectual, to be concerned with it. One could say that a libertarian intellectual is obligated to consider the scope of government power.)
(3) I would not dispute that culture can oppress much as the state can oppress or private violence can oppress. But let’s take the example of Referendum 71. A libertarian feminist in favor of gay rights might think R-71 is great, in part because gay marriage challenges patriarchal assumptions about the proper exercise of female sexuality. Traditional marriage is sex discrimination, she might say, pointing to a bookcase populated by Judith Butler texts. She might also think that attempts by out-of-state religious folks to prevent gay marriage in Washington state is a violation of federalism and an instance of patriarchal domination through the perpetuation of freedom constraining cultural values. Because she also believes that government should be transparent and accountable, she is in favor of the government releasing the signatures of anyone who signed the petition to put R-71 on the ballot and in favor of disclosure of all in-state donors to any out-of-state organizations mobilizing voters to vote against gay marriage on election day. What motivates this syndrome of beliefs is the union of a belief in libertarianism and a belief that the social construction of gender must be opposed. I would disagree and say that disclosing the names of anyone who signs a petition interpreted as “anti-gay” on the Internet would expose them to harassment and ridicule and disclosing their association with an “anti-gay” organization would increase the intensity of the harassment and ridicule. I would say that releasing the names would foster an oppressive culture in which political speech was chilled and freedom of thought was punished. In other words, the concern over cultural values cuts both ways. What kind of libertarian rejects the right to petition government, the right to anonymous political speech (esp. in the context of death threats and violent reprisals), or the right to freedom of thought? If we accept that cultural values can oppress, we have to accept that changing cultural values in purportedly liberty-enhancing ways can diminish the quantum of liberty or redistribute the burdens of tyranny from one party to another. Isn’t this the practical argument in favor of pluralism? That we let others choose rather than socially engineer outcomes that may cause unintended harm?
October 26, 2009, 12:11 amOren says:
Ah yes, but I was talking about specific cultural positions — ones that seek to give increased weight on individual choice. Not ‘libertarian’ values, since that word is being reserved for the political branch but liberty-affirming.
October 26, 2009, 12:18 amKen Arromdee says:
If 1 out of 10 customers are gay and prefer to patronize establishments which have gay employees, and everyone else is prejudiced and refuses to patronize such establishments, then:
1) This isn’t going to help at all unless the market can support ten such establishments in an area close enough that one can substitute for another. Restaurants are pretty common, but even then, some towns don’t have ten restaurants that are similar enough enough to compete with each other. It’s certainly possible to not have ten hardware stores or farming supply stores.
2) If the customer base is small, the store which appeals to that customer base is going to raise their prices. After all, even if there is a gay-owned establishment, they have a captive audience and it would make simple economic sense for them to raise their prices. The market would have to support several gay-owned shops for them not to do so.
3) Even if the gay-owned stores overcome these obstacles, that still means gays have many fewer places to shop at. The original libertarian idea is that restrictions on where they can shop will disappear–not that they’ll remain in existence but the situation is tolerable.
4) This is going to fail in the more general case because there are a lot of gays and they are evenly spread out, so a gay-owned shop is plausible. Not all targets of discrimination are like this. What happens if a town of a few thousand has a dozen blacks? If the lunch counter owner discriminates against them, they can’t start a black-owned lunch counter. And if someone refuses to hire them, there may not be another similar job with a black owner.
October 26, 2009, 1:33 amsubpatre says:
Ken Arombee – That’s all fine and well except . . . you ignored:
You just blithely skipped over what happens in reality.
October 26, 2009, 2:05 amKen Arromdee says:
No, I didn’t. If that statement had described reality, then we would have seen prejudice against gays (and everyone else) disappear generations ago in all places that had relatively free markets. It didn’t. The general public became more tolerant as a combination of:
– influence in the other direction (laws and court decisions protecting gays lead the public to tolerate them)
– general liberalization of society that didn’t depend on the market (or again, it would have happened generations ago), and spillover from the ending of other types of discrimination
– general disappearance of religion, which is a big source of intolerance towards gays
October 26, 2009, 10:39 amsubpatre says:
Ken Arromdee wrote:
Shift the goalposts much? Where did the goal —even the possibility— of making “prejudice disappear” come from? Your stated criteria was employment: hiring of gays.
So which one is it? Is your new objective ‘no prejudice’ —a state of being never reached in human existence, with no evidence it can be attained— where gays no longer discriminate against those who don’t approve of their lifestyle? Congratulations, you arrived at a solution that represses the liberty of others to disapprove.
Or is the goal equal legal and civil rights? Where liberty is maximized and people aren’t quizzed about their sexual inclinations at hiring? That is the reality today, a reality you blithely ignored.
October 26, 2009, 1:31 pmOren says:
subpatre, one does not have to believe in the fantasy of a prejudice-free world to recognize that we are much better off now than in 1950, let alone 1850 or 1750.
Part of the goal is equal legal and civil rights. Another part of the goal is the non-coercive disapproval of anti-liberty social and cultural norms.
If a political libertarian wants to send his children to a (Religious/Marxist/Nativist/…) school that teaches that individual choice and liberty are evil and that the only proper way to live is in conformity with (Religious/Marxist/Nativist/whatever) ideals, that’s his absolute right. I absolutely do not approve of the government coercing him to send them to public school or mandating that they teach any curriculum.
I will, however, in the most direct terms, condemn his actions as been utterly antithetical to the notion of individual liberty and to the primacy of personal freedom in arranging our lives. You can teach your daughters that they don’t have the choice to enter the workplace but you cannot seriously do so and pretend to be a supporter of personal liberty.
October 26, 2009, 3:27 pmKen Arromdee says:
No, my objective is “will it do what libertarians think it can?”
The original claim was that in a free market, it’s easy to avoid the bad effects of prejudice. Real-life prejudice doesn’t work this way. You can’t (for reasons I described above) always avoid it by starting your own business. And the supposed rebuttal that tolerance happens in the real world fails to consider how long it takes the tolerance to happen, or why it happens.
October 26, 2009, 3:58 pmAllan Walstad says:
I sympathize with this statement emotionally. Nevertheless, one could consistently renounce (and denounce) the initiation of coercive force while nevertheless personally disapproving of women’s choosing other than traditional male-deferential lifestyles. I don’t think that this combination is likely to be a common one, but it does meet the minimal requirement of libertarianism. And, I’d rather see THAT combination than the emotionally more consistent one of disapproving non-traditionalist lifestyles AND being willing to engage in coercion personally or enlist government coercion to limit women’s choices.
October 26, 2009, 7:52 pmOren says:
One can consistently renounce and denounce the initiation of coercive force while supporting male-dominated lifestyles.
On cannot consistently support individual liberty while supporting male-deferential lifestyles.
If Warren Jeffs wants to be a political libertarian because it will allow him to continue his farce of a religion, good for him. I see no reason to ally myself with him simply because he (quite cynically) signs on to the “liberty caucus”.
I have no desire to be a useful idiot. My ideology is political, social and cultural liberty, not political liberty for the purpose of perpetuating and ideology that is absolutely anti-liberty at its core.
October 26, 2009, 8:06 pmricky says:
“Can we not, in addition to opposing government coercion, also work towards other means of increasing personal liberty? ”
Only a deranged Leftist like Oren could say something like this.
Personal liberty is freedom from government coercion. Period.
October 26, 2009, 8:27 pmOren says:
Let’s suppose I accepted your childish comment as being intellectually serious. Fine. “Personal liberty” is, for the duration of this post, defined as the absence of government coercion (leaving aside for the time being the imprisonment of rapists and suchlike). In that case, I officially would like to state that I’m favor of personal liberty, so defined.
I would also like to state my support for a substantial liberty that places paramount weight on the prerogative of the individual to live his or her life in the manner that seems to her most likely to effect their happiness, provided that it does not harm others. As a supporter of such broad-ranging liberty, I feel bound to oppose social and culture norms whose stated ideology are in opposition to individual liberty, even if they support ‘personal liberty’ according to your narrow defintion.
Happy now?
October 26, 2009, 9:41 pmricky says:
Fine. Let’s suppose I accepted your “I’m rubber, you’re glue” argument as being intellectually serious. It still does not justify an opposition to specific social/cultural norms on libertarian grounds if you support government coercion to destroy those norms. If you oppose those norms and want to influence the culture in a non-coercive way, then you have every right to add your voice to the discussion but only as a cultural actor rather than on the basis of “defending liberty”.
October 26, 2009, 9:55 pmAllan Walstad says:
Oren, I don’t know much of anything about Warren Jeffs. I might share your contempt for many of his views. Nevertheless, IF he sincerely renounces and denounces the initiation of coercive force (which I do not know for a fact), then he does fully meet the basic requirement of strict libertarianism and is a libertarian ally. If he cynically signs on to a “liberty caucus” while secretly planning to use government coercion in the future, well that’s just lying.
Ricky, I take your comment as sarcastic, but my response is serious. Liberty is not just freedom from government coercion. Liberty is non-initiation of force, non-aggression, period. A wife-beater violates liberty. Did you imagine that I thought otherwise?
October 26, 2009, 9:57 pmAllan Walstad says:
OMG–that was a serious statement?
October 26, 2009, 9:59 pmricky says:
“A wife-beater violates liberty”
No. A wife-beater violates cultural norms in our society. Most people do not want wife-beating to be allowed in their society, in which case they can and have utilized the political process to disallow this practice. But do not claim that it was done in the name of liberty.
October 26, 2009, 10:15 pmTodd Seavey says:
You might find my final thoughts on the Howley/me/etc. spat, on my blog, interesting:
http://toddseavey.com/2009/10/26/reason-todd-seavey-vs-kerry-howley/
October 26, 2009, 10:24 pmOren says:
Good thing I support nothing of the sort then.
That’s it? Your entire complaint is a nominalist one? Fine, it’s not “defending liberty”, it’s “celebrating individual freedom” or “maximizing individual choice” or any other phrase you’d like that conveys the same essential message.
Moreover, I have argued that folks like Ilya, who is in favor of “celebrating individual freedom” ought not to ally themselves politically with libertarians who “defend liberty” not out of a desire for individual freedom but to carve out a space for their own anti-freedom ideology. The government (nor private individuals) should not coerce them to stop, but we should not deceive ourselves into thinking they support freedom for anything but their own cynical ends.
October 26, 2009, 10:45 pmAllan Walstad says:
I’ve been around in libertarian circles for over 25 years and I’ve never heard a self-professed libertarian say something like that. I know libertarians. Libertarians are friends of mine. You, Ricky, are no libertarian. Perhaps you never said you were. I hope not.
October 26, 2009, 10:48 pmOren says:
Allan, I hope you don’t mind if I take your post out of order.
No, I don’t accuse him of anything of the sort. He cynically signs on the liberty caucus only to create enough space for him to preach an ideology fundamentally at odds with personal freedom.
This is an alliance of convenience only, not one born of any ideological compatibility. In my opinion, it is both a tactical mistake (as it alienates liberals disaffected by the failure of government to deliver) and a strategic one (as it legitimizes his anti-freedom ideology).
But would you hold your tongue on that contempt because he is useful to you politically?
October 26, 2009, 10:51 pmOren says:
Of course it was, it ended with “Period.”.
It was so serious, in fact, that I’ve completely stopped using the phrase “personal liberty” except to mean exactly “freedom from government coercion”. If he didn’t include the period at the end, I might has challenged Ricky’s right to unilaterally define a term central to the discussion.
Luckily, I managed to find a replacement term and use it to mean what I obviously meant by “personal liberty” (as normally contrasted with “political liberty” that refers only to the government).
October 26, 2009, 10:54 pmricky says:
“That’s it? Your entire complaint is a nominalist one? Fine, it’s not “defending liberty”, it’s “celebrating individual freedom” or “maximizing individual choice” or any other phrase you’d like that conveys the same essential message.”
Blah, blah, blah. If you and others dislike a cultural practice and want to use coercion to enforce it, that is absolutely your right. But to claim that “because me and mine want to use coercion to destroy a cultural practice that we think is anti-freedom” is Libertarian thinking… well, that’s the same thought process that useful idiots like Kerry Howley would use to subvert the entire Libertarian thought process to whatever ideology they serve.
Just admit that you want what you want. There’s no shame in that, and the majority rules in these matters. But demanding more government power under the guise of “Liberty” is absolutely despicable. Liberty is the diametric opposite of what you really want.
October 26, 2009, 11:09 pmOren says:
Please point to the part where I have advocated that I want to use coercion to discourage cultural or social norms that are anti-liberty. I cannot find them. All I see are phrases like (and I quote myself here only because restating that I’m against government coercion seems like an exercise in futility):
[ Note this was before you edict about using the phrase 'personal liberty' to mean 'individual choice'. Had I been informed of the exquisite subtlety of my linguistic choices earlier, the statement would have been more precise. ]
I have never stated that government coercion is an acceptable mean to counter anti-liberty cultural or social norms. I do not support such an obviously contradictory view.
October 26, 2009, 11:35 pmAllan Walstad says:
No, not necessarily. Somebody can renounce and denounce coercion and fulfill the basic criterion of strict libertarianism, and still be a jerk by my lights. But the essential bottom line is, no coercion, and if he’s pushing in that direction then he and I are in an essential (i.e., of surpassing importance) respect pushing in the same direction. I’d much rather have him pushing for liberty than against liberty.
It’s a free country and you & Ricky can use words however you want, but libertarians worked through the concepts of liberty and libertarianism–as we libertarians use the words–long ago. Right next to me on my bookshelves I’ve got David Boaz, David Friedman, Murray Rothbard, John Hospers. Somewhere I’ve got David Bergland, for whom I voted for president in 1980. David Nolan. Mary Ruwart. I’ve read them all and way more. I was regular participant in libertarian discussion groups in the mid-80s. Liberty as absence of government coercion derives FROM liberty as absence of private coercion, the whole idea being (among strict libertarians) that government has no special exemption. The notion of liberty as only referring to the government–that somehow my neighbor’s beating me up and stealing my money doesn’t violate my liberty–turns the whole thing literally on its head. Such “libertarianism” might as well come out of a Crackerjacks box, and if there are self-professed “libertarians” out there who believe it then Howley is right to rip them to shreds.
October 26, 2009, 11:44 pmAllan Walstad says:
PS: “Nighty-night” folks.
October 26, 2009, 11:47 pmOren says:
He’s not just a jerk, those are a dime a dozen. He’s a jerk with an anti-freedom agenda whose fundamental principle is that individuals are not competent to make decisions for themselves.
There are plenty like him, people that believe in anti-freedom concurrently with a political libertarianism is either situational or opportunistic.
You are pushing to end government coercion out of a desire to foster freedom. He is pushing as a means to repress freedom. Your interests are, at most, temporarily aligned.
It’s not quite that simple. For one, who you chose to support is politically relevant (in that it conveys tacit approval).
I thought it was conceded that cultural and social norms, though short of coercion, can still constrict individual freedom. Certainly the women in Jeffs’ cult are not free to pursue their individual aims — they live in a culture of male deference that effectively (although non-coercively) denies them that choice.
[ Again I repeat: no coercion should be used against Jeffs or his followers, lest Ricky intentionally misunderstand me again. ]
If traditional libertarianism (you did, after all, vote for President before I was born) does not want the support of the “libertarian-individualists”, so be it. I am not wedded to hitching my political fortunes to libertarianism.
On the other hand, where does a small-government, socially-liberal, individualist belong? The way I saw it going into this thread, opposition to government coercion and support for social and cultural norms that promote individual freedom are highly compatible. Philosophically, they both stem from a desire to allow individuals to pursue their aims independent of the existing structures of power.
Now I see that I might be wading into nothing more than a fight between various power centers none of which had the individual in mind. Warren Jeffs seeks to limit government power so as to create more space for him to enlarge his own. If libertarians are apt to support him, then I really don’t have any dog in this fight at all.
October 27, 2009, 1:41 amOren says:
It occurs to me, actually, that I might take sides with the anti-individualist libertarian (such a Jeffs, but also include more moderate versions) against the government as part of the maxim that when two of your enemies fight, you side with the weaker against the strong.
That is, the government is a bigger threat than the (now dying anyway) restrictive social norms from the last millennium and so I should oppose it first and foremost and worry about the cultural end of things later. This is a very weak form of alliance, of course, since not-so-secretly, I’d rather see them all fall.
October 27, 2009, 1:46 amsubpatre says:
Everything Oren spouts about ‘personal liberty’ or ‘political liberty’ must be viewed through the lens of Warren Jeffs, now long in a prison cell. Oren himself may not initiate force, but he sure cheered government coercion when he saw it applied to those he disapproves of.
In April 2008 officials raided a religious community in Texas. They took custody of ~435 children on the belief that the sect’s practice of underage marriage and polygamy endangered the children.
Despite initial reports, no physical abuse was found, only one underage girl was (or ever had been) pregnant, ratios of males-to-females were normal, no welfare fraud was discovered, etcetera. Not one finding of abuse or danger was made and every child has now — over a year later— been returned.
The state has charged some of the men with statutory offenses; for age-old acts discovered through analyzing documents seized in the ‘Child Protection’ raid or from deduction based on forcibly obtained DNA samples. To date there are no complainants, not one person claiming they were a victim.
Although scattered (the children to fosterage, and the parents followed) over Texas, nobody left the religious community; despite promises of asylum, identity protection, financial support, and (false) promises of court-enforced family custody if they left. Out of thousands— no one wanted the offers promised; they all used what liberty they had to practice their religion and lifestyle.
Oren would have the state seize your property and ruin it, use civil process to effect a fishing expedition for criminal discovery, take your children and scatter them to the winds; all because you are ‘one of them’ and therefore despicable. Oren may claim to be a libertarian, but his posts are hardly different from a 1930s national socialist.
Libertarianism refutes victimless acts as crime. Oren wants to claim the cloak of libertarianism, yet is happy, even enthusiastic, to apply the full, most coercive power of the state against those whose tastes he disapproves of.
October 27, 2009, 2:43 amOren says:
This was wrong. The government overreacted and was subsequently (and rightly) smacked down by the Courts as overstepping their bounds. The system produced the correct outcome.
On the other hand, the conviction of Warren Jeffs of rape by a jury of his peers was quite right. Or is it your claim that the government has no business forbidding coercion when it involves sex?
October 27, 2009, 3:05 pmAllan Walstad says:
Oren, I assume the thread is dead by now. Nevertheless,
It’s not at all that I don’t want your support. You’ve repeatedly said you don’t favor government coercion against Jeffs whose views you vehemently oppose–that’s pretty darned libertarian of you, and at least in that (essential, to me) regard we are in agreement. But I certainly would like you and others to have some respect for the terminology of libertarianism as it was developed by strict libertarian thinkers in classic literature that should be readily available. If you consider yourself a libertarian, then please don’t traipse through it like cattle through a flower bed. If you don’t consider yourself a libertarian, then please be reasonably informed regarding views you ascribe to libertarianism.
Enlarge his own what? Power? If Jeffs actually seeks coercive power over other people, then if he says he’s a libertarian he is lying, or at best deeply confused about libertarianism. If he just wants to be left alone in a group where women behave submissively toward men (in polygamous relationships? We’re talking Mormons?), but where those women cannot be coerced into opting out, then I’ve got way bigger fish to fry than to waste my time ranting against him (or them).
With the libertarians! (Thanks for the softball.) Stand against aggression, whether by government or by private individuals. Use non-coercive means to achieve your ends–which should be easy, since you already renounce force against people like Jeffs. Non-coercive means include criticism, persuasion, boycott, shunning…lots of possibilities.
October 27, 2009, 3:19 pmAllan Walstad says:
…cannot be prevented from opting out…
October 27, 2009, 7:25 pmOren says:
I shall endeavor to describe myself as libertarian-individualist. The non-coercion part comes from the former, the preference for individual agency comes in the latter.
That is, I’ll try to distinguish between the views I hold as a libertarian with the views I hold as an individualist.
There are other forms of power other than coercion. Women in a submissive attitude towards men, for instance, hold significantly less power than those men even if they cannot be coerced into opting out. Cultural and social norms are “soft” power, but they are power nonetheless.
Of course, as to the “bigger fish” part, we’ll just have to differ as to priorities. Helping reduce these “soft” constraints on individual aims seems to me a laudable endeavor.
Hard to to do when libertarians condemn that criticism as inappropriate. Moreover when they insist that no other forms of power other than hard coercive power are even capable of being detrimental to the individual exercise of liberty.
That is, it’s difficult to reconcile myself to a movement that seriously believes that Jeff’s subservient women are really “free”, at least as I understand freedom. To me, it seems like a willful blindness to the reality of the situation for political expediency.
October 27, 2009, 8:17 pmAllan Walstad says:
Ok, thanks for the discussion, which I’m sure we’ll have a chance to continue again. It’s been very useful for me. –Allan
October 27, 2009, 9:39 pm