Thoughts of a self-professed Libertarian

[Illuminatus Primus]

This notion of society working voluntarily and collectively for the common good is found in both Marxism and free-market libertarianism, which is one of the reasons I equate the two. It is a utopian fantasy with no relation to reality.

What is really absurd is how free market libertarians place faith in the spontaneous collective action of consumers in a market place, where opinions are atomized and information is limited and skewed, but have no faith whatsoever in a suitably well-functioning liberal or social democracy, which is actually a collective representative of the citizenry. Of course I believe most well-known libertarians are insincere and know their ideology is not in the interest of most people, so they bash the state because they fear it as an effective tool in lieu of the impotent consumer action.

[Archaic`]

It's past 3:30am as I write this, I'm going to bed, this will be my last post for the night. Don't expect this to be a fully comprehensive answer.

I'm sorry, but I beg to differ. A single large complex regulation can cause the same amount or more regulatory burden as a larger number of much smaller, more concise and specific regulations.

Let me ask one simple question: what measures do you use to ascertain the "regulatory burden" of a law?

I'm guessing it's "how much does it cost corporations to conform to it". Ultimately, libertarianism is all about saving money for corporations.

And you'd be wrong on both counts. Cost to corporations to comply will of course be an element to it, but it's hardly the only one, and it's far from the most important one. If that was all it was about, you'd simply be removing all regulation, and as I've stated repeatedly, that is not the position I'm suggesting.
What we're really looking at is the burden that regulations put on society as a whole, both in the sense of actual financial costs, and in the sense of opportunity costs (or trade-offs) incurred in the implementation of these regulations.
As an example of pure financial costs, there's the cost to government (and through taxation, to society) of the effort involved in the enforcement of the regulations. That can potentially be as simple as just the amount of paperwork and red tape written into the regulations.
As an example of the opportunity costs, you have to consider things like, "Is the time that needs to be taken by both the corporation and the government to have compliance with this regulation in proportion to its importance?", or "Are you denying society people who could perhaps have been educated in another field and better employed elsewhere, when you need a 4 year university degree (actually, in practice, it'd probably be more than that) in the subject to be considered qualified just to interpret what some regulations mean in the first place?"

Please note here that the implication of what I'm saying here is not "it's too hard to enforce, let's get rid of it", but rather "it's too hard to enforce as it's currently written, let's streamline and simplify it so we can achieve the same level of regulation with less actual burden".

As for your comment that "Ultimately, libertarianism is all about saving money for corporations."? Hardly. Again, the American bastardized version of Libertarianism may be like that, but that's not where the rest of us are coming from. Kindly stop painting us with the same brush.

Nobody ever says "Hey, we need fewer criminal laws", or talks about "minimizing the regulatory burden on criminals". And yet "law" is just another word for "regulation".

Calls for the decriminalization of things such as Marijuana would seem to contradict you here. I'm sure we could all name a number of issues that are really a waste of the court's time. That translates into a waste of taxpayers dollars, an unnecessary burden on society.

[bobalot]

As for your comment that "Ultimately, libertarianism is all about saving money for corporations."? Hardly. Again, the American bastardized version of Libertarianism may be like that, but that's not where the rest of us are coming from. Kindly stop painting us with the same brush.

That's like saying "Well, the Soviet Union is a bastardized version of communism! Stop painting us with the same brush!". It is of course, true to a point. Most people would then point out there is nothing stopping other versions of communism descending into the totalitarian war machine that was the Soviet Union. It is much the same with Libertarianism. How will the "Libertarian-Lite" State you describe avoid the problems that a totally Libertarian state would face?

I guess you missed my example of Iceland. It is an example of the "Euro-Libertarian" style of Government you keep alluding to. It has a flat tax (A particular wet dream of many libertarians), a low corporate rate of tax, "Flexible" employment regulations, light financial regulations etc.

Until recently many Libertarians of all stripes held it up as an shining example. After economic depression that the Private Icelandic Banks plunged their entire country into there has been a strange silence about the country other than the odd loon saying "It didn't go far enough, it should have gotten rid of the central bank!"

[Count Chocula]

Iceland has a central bank. That is NOT a pure libertarian concept. In a "pure" libertarian state, there would be multiple banks, all issuing currency, perhaps the same, but maybe different, all referenced off a common standard (gold or oil for example). The banks would be free to use whatever leverage ratio in their lending and investing practices they chose, based on depositors' approval of their actions. If one bank went too far in leverage and then went "kaboom," it would only be one of many banks and thus the effect on the entire state would be limited. When the sole source of currency and valuation, like in Iceland, makes a series of stupid decisions, everybody suffers.

Ironically, the Libertarian ideal of totally free markets would probably work in a society where there was complete transparency in the financial actions of all companies; the lack of transparency, and subsequent inability to properly value, CDOs and other 'derivative' financial products is at the core of the banking crisis currently afflicting us here in the US and in Europe. However, based on what I remember of the Lib platform, that kind of transparency would conflict with the "privacy" plank which asserts that people and companies have a right to privacy from so-called snoops.

[General Zod]

Iceland has a central bank. That is NOT a pure libertarian concept. In a "pure" libertarian state, there would be multiple banks, all issuing currency, perhaps the same, but maybe different, all referenced off a common standard (gold or oil for example). The banks would be free to use whatever leverage ratio in their lending and investing practices they chose, based on depositors' approval of their actions. If one bank went too far in leverage and then went "kaboom," it would only be one of many banks and thus the effect on the entire state would be limited. When the sole source of currency and valuation, like in Iceland, makes a series of stupid decisions, everybody suffers.

Amusingly enough, the United States tried something similar in its first 50 or so years. The states all had different currencies but it wound up fucking trade all to hell until the Federal government stepped in and put an end to that dickery by issuing a common currency.

[Count Chocula]

^ Hence the Constituion's requirement for CONGRESS to supervise the issue of an asset-backed currency that would be accepted in all member states, which the states ignored and Congress in the early 1800s failed to enforce. Too bad the Federal Reserve Act fouled that up, along with the ass-hattery of state governors competing against each other with different currencies and tariffs. They forgot Ben Franklin's "we shall all hang together, or we will hang separately" aphorism WRT trade.

[bobalot]

Iceland has a central bank. That is NOT a pure libertarian concept. In a "pure" libertarian state, there would be multiple banks, all issuing currency, perhaps the same, but maybe different, all referenced off a common standard (gold or oil for example). The banks would be free to use whatever leverage ratio in their lending and investing practices they chose, based on depositors' approval of their actions. If one bank went too far in leverage and then went "kaboom," it would only be one of many banks and thus the effect on the entire state would be limited. When the sole source of currency and valuation, like in Iceland, makes a series of stupid decisions, everybody suffers.

That is simply false (Bolded Bit), if that is what Libertarians claim. Before the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 there were regular bank runs and bank failures that contributed significantly to several recessions and depressions, that obviously caused a great deal of suffering for millions of people. There was even a run on the gold supply in 1893. Why do Libertarians avoid actual historical examples when making these fantastic claims?

[Archaic`]

Honestly, I couldn't really give you much comment regarding Iceland. I actually had no idea until I read it in thread on this forum that it used to be used as a "poster boy" for Libertarianism. I've always been more focused on Asia than Europe, and I haven't really looked into the country in great detail. I'm not an economist by trade, and IRL, I'd be leaving questions like these to my colleagues qualified in the area.

Iceland has a central bank. That is NOT a pure libertarian concept. In a "pure" libertarian state, there would be multiple banks, all issuing currency, perhaps the same, but maybe different, all referenced off a common standard (gold or oil for example). The banks would be free to use whatever leverage ratio in their lending and investing practices they chose, based on depositors' approval of their actions. If one bank went too far in leverage and then went "kaboom," it would only be one of many banks and thus the effect on the entire state would be limited. When the sole source of currency and valuation, like in Iceland, makes a series of stupid decisions, everybody suffers.

Eh, I'm not entirely sure about this one. The central bank, managing the mint, is a natural monopoly in my opinion, which makes it the total responsibility of government. Having said that, the central bank itself should be avoiding getting involved in the market to as much degree as possible, besides intervention in cases of market failure or distress to restore calm and stability.

Ironically, the Libertarian ideal of totally free markets would probably work in a society where there was complete transparency in the financial actions of all companies; the lack of transparency, and subsequent inability to properly value, CDOs and other 'derivative' financial products is at the core of the banking crisis currently afflicting us here in the US and in Europe. However, based on what I remember of the Lib platform, that kind of transparency would conflict with the "privacy" plank which asserts that people and companies have a right to privacy from so-called snoops.

Privacy to a point, but this is a case where any harm done from the reduction of the firm's privacy could really only have positive benefits on the market and society as a whole. Increased transparency here would allow investors to make more accurate decisions, make it easier to enforce regulations, and make it easier to see where new regulations might be necessary or old ones may be eliminated.