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[Jonathan Adler, May 22, 2008 at 7:52am] Trackbacks

Does the Libertarian Party Matter?

Bruce Bartlett ponders the political impact of the Libertarian Party and its relevance to advancing libertarian ideas in this WSJ op-ed.

Libertarians respond that their message of an immediate end to the Iraq war, legalization of drugs, and opposition to the Bush administration's undermining of civil liberties appeals as much to Democrats as their advocacy of free-market economics appeals to Republicans.

Nevertheless, Republicans view Libertarian votes as coming out of their total. They have, for example, blamed U.S. Senate losses in Nevada in 1998, Washington in 2000, and Montana in 2006 on LP candidates.

Whoever gains the LP nomination can expect strenuous attacks from the GOP, and such attacks are already surfacing on conservative Web sites. But it is not clear that a strong Libertarian candidate necessarily hurts the Republican Party as a whole. . . .

To the extent that the Libertarian Party candidate gives [disillusioned Republican] voters someone to vote for at the top of the ticket, they may still vote Republican for Congress and other offices. Thus while a strong LP candidate may hurt Mr. McCain, he may nevertheless aid Republicans in getting sympathetic voters to the polls who would otherwise not vote at all.

Although this may turn out to be a banner year for the Libertarian Party, the LP is not a real alternative to the Republicans and Democrats. Because of the Electoral College, restrictions on ballot access and onerous campaign finance laws, third parties simply aren't viable for actually electing candidates. Nor do they pull the major parties toward their position: Ron Paul's success did not encourage other Republican presidential candidates to even pay lip service to his ideas.

I believe that libertarian ideas would be better promoted by an interest group such as the National Rifle Association than through the Libertarian Party. Such a group could use the limited resources available for libertarian ideas far more effectively by establishing a political action committee, lobbying and advertising than by a political party running futile campaigns for public office.

It's an interesting argument, certainly helped by the fact that it is hard to take the folks running for the LP nomination (Mike Gravel, Bob Barr, etc.) all that seriously.

Related Posts (on one page):

Thomas Frank and Three Common Fallacies About Libertarianism:
Frank on Beltway Libertarianism:
Does the Libertarian Party Matter?

Comments

[Jonathan Adler, May 22, 2008 at 11:35am] Trackbacks

Frank on Beltway Libertarianism:

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has revived its long-dormant tradition of having a "house liberal" grace the page with a weekly editorial. Filling this role, once played by Al Hunt, is Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? and other books. His column, which appears on Wednesdays, is called "Fighting Words."

Frank's inaugural column took on "The Tragic Irony of Beltway Libertarianism." As a former "Beltway libertarian" myself, I found the column quite interesting, even if it eventually veers off course. It begins:

Consider the poor Washington libertarian. Everywhere else in America his type is an exotic species, a coffee-shop heretic who quotes from "Atlas Shrugged" and steers every conversation toward Ron Paul or gold. Take him or leave him, he doesn't care. He is his own master.

Not so the Beltway variety. Here, in the very home of the taxing, regulating leviathan, the libertarian is such a commonplace and unremarkable bird that no one gives him a second glance. Here he is a factotum of the establishment, a tiny voice in a vast choir assembled by business and its tax-exempt front groups to sing the virtues of the entrepreneur.

And therein lies his dilemma. Almost by definition, our young libertarian's job is to celebrate the profit motive from the offices of a not-for-profit organization. He is subsidized, in other words, to hymn the unsubsidized way of life. Rugged individualism may be his creed, but a rugged individual he ain't.

Frank's bottom line is that idealistic free market advocates don't "sell out" their principles when they leave think tanks or other non-profit policy work for high-paying corporate gigs, because Frank believes this is the underlying logic of hte market itself.

Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous "revolving door," by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question -- or its clients.

The libertarian nonprofits that line the city's streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.

What Frank seems to overlook, however, is that "private-sector Washington" is only so wealthy because of the public sector. Washington, D.C. is a company town -- and the hometown company is immune to recession. And as the government grows, so does the economic value of influencing government decisions. Were Beltway Libertarians to get their way, lobbyists and political consultants would not be worth so much. In such a world, Washington would be quite a sleepy place, and "selling out" would involve finding a productive, wealth-creating job out in the "real world," not signing up with a Beltway bandit or other hired gun.

Related Posts (on one page):

Thomas Frank and Three Common Fallacies About Libertarianism:
Frank on Beltway Libertarianism:
Does the Libertarian Party Matter?

Comments

[Ilya Somin, May 22, 2008 at 1:47pm] Trackbacks

Thomas Frank and Three Common Fallacies About Libertarianism:

Thomas Frank manages to pack three common fallacies about libertarianism into one short Wall Street Journal column. Two of them occur in this passage:

Here, in the very home of the taxing, regulating leviathan, the libertarian is such a commonplace and unremarkable bird that no one gives him a second glance. Here he is a factotum of the establishment, a tiny voice in a vast choir assembled by business and its tax-exempt front groups to sing the virtues of the entrepreneur.

And therein lies his dilemma. Almost by definition, our young libertarian's job is to celebrate the profit motive from the offices of a not-for-profit organization. He is subsidized, in other words, to hymn the unsubsidized way of life. Rugged individualism may be his creed, but a rugged individual he ain't.

Frank's first fallacy is the assumption that libertarianism is about the "celebration" of the "profit motive." In reality, libertarianism advocates the superiority of the private sector over government. Parts of that private sector are mainly driven by the profit motive, others are not (e.g. - families, many civil society organizations). There is nothing in libertarianism that is inconsistent with working in a "subsidized" organization so long as the subsidies don't come from the state. On the other hand, many government programs are themselves driven by the profit motive: for example, government subsidies for large agribusinesses; protectionism for powerful domestic economic interests, and so on. Libertarians have no problem denouncing these programs despite the fact that they arise from the profit-seeking of their beneficiaries.

The second fallacy is the assumption that libertarians defend the interests of "business." On some issues, that is indeed true. But it is not a general rule. There are many, many, businesses that lobby for and depend on government handouts of various sorts. Libertarians and libertarian organizations - including the "beltway libertarian" groups that Frank attacks in his piece - regularly criticize these businesses and the government programs that benefit them. Indeed, as I discussed in this post, libertarian groups have often had to distance themselves from business interests in order to be effective - precisely because the latter often have an interest in promoting big government.

Finally, Frank makes the common but wholly untenable claim that today's government policies are mostly market driven and that the market has somehow crowded out "public service" - thereby rendering libertarian advocacy unnecessary, or at least superfluous. This is simply false, given the reality that government spending at all levels is more than one third of GDP, that regulation is also at very high levels, and both have grown massively during the years of the Bush Administration.

Frank does indirectly hit on one ironic reality: if not for the existence of big government, there would be little need for libertarian organizations or "beltway libertarian" advocacy. But that is true of professional advocates of any cause. There would be far less need for them if the cause prevails. There would be little need for environmentalist organizations if pollution is largely eliminated, for anti-racist groups if racism declines to insignificance, and so on. Frank himself is most famous for advocating government policies to reduce income inequality. If income inequality ever is reduced to levels that liberals and radicals find acceptable, Frank would probably have to find another line of work.

The symbiotic relationship between libertarian advocacy and big government does create a risk that professional libertarians will pull their punches in criticizing the state so as to avoid killing the goose that lays their golden eggs. So far, however, I see little evidence of that happening. Indeed, Frank's concern seems to be that libertarians spend too much time criticizing government (which he claims is somehow inconsistent with their supposed support for the "profit motive"), not too little.