Notice that your comment is framed from the perspective of what Libertarians believe, and analyzing from that context. Mine is different: analyzing a specific type of personality common in tech careers, and analyzing why that type of person tends to be much more receptive to libertarian ideas.
I’m familiar with libertarianism and its various schools/movements within that broader category. And I still think that many in that group tend to underappreciate issues of public choice, group behaviors, and how they differ from individual choice.
Coase’s famous paper, the Theory of the Firm, tries to bridge some of that tension, but it’s also just not hard to see how human association into groups lays on a spectrum of voluntariness, with many more social situations being more coercive than Libertarians tend to appreciate, and then also layering Coase’s observations about the efficiencies of association onto involuntary associations, too.
Then at that point you have a discussion about public choice theory, what the group owes to defectors or minority views or free riders within its group, what a group owes to others outside that group in terms of externalities, how to build a coalition within that framework of group choice, and then your nuanced position might have started as libertarianism but ends up looking a lot like mainstream political, social, and economic views, to the point where the libertarian label isn’t that useful.
Ok, I think I you’re saying that tech attracts self important people that self identify as libertarian.
The opposite is also true, in that it attracts self important people who self identify as socialists. Both think other people should follow their ideals because their ideals are obviously good for society. The difference is that the “libertarian” thinks they’ll get more of what they want with fewer rules, and the socialist thinks that more rules (and the right people) is what’s needed.
But I think you’ll find that if you put either in power, they’ll make similar changes (at least on the libertarian to authoritarian spectrum), but they’ll both justify them as being “good.”
The problem, imo, isn’t with a specific ideology, but the self importance that causes them to openly push their political opinions in a setting where that just doesn’t apply, like a workplace. Unless you’re working in journalism where your political biases could impact your work output, it’s just not relevant.
public choice theory
At a certain point you trade market failures for government failures, or vice versa. The bigger a government gets, the more susceptible it is to special interests. The smaller it gets, the less effective it is at correcting market failures.
Libertarianism, to me, isn’t an end goal (there is no libertarian utopia), but a direction that attempts to solve problems with more liberty rather than less. Sometimes it’ll misstep, and sometimes it’ll look like the two major parties, but the approach is usually the same: how can we solve a given problem with more liberty rather than less.
And that’s the difference. Conservatives want to solve problems by preserving some set of values, and progressives want to solve problems by adding some new government service.
And yeah, there are a lot of questions to resolve, but they’ll be addressed from the perspective of liberty. Public choice is certainly one of those problems, and it’s at least partially resolved by libertarian paternalism, but again, it’s a process instead of a destination.
Notice that your comment is framed from the perspective of what Libertarians believe, and analyzing from that context. Mine is different: analyzing a specific type of personality common in tech careers, and analyzing why that type of person tends to be much more receptive to libertarian ideas.
I’m familiar with libertarianism and its various schools/movements within that broader category. And I still think that many in that group tend to underappreciate issues of public choice, group behaviors, and how they differ from individual choice.
Coase’s famous paper, the Theory of the Firm, tries to bridge some of that tension, but it’s also just not hard to see how human association into groups lays on a spectrum of voluntariness, with many more social situations being more coercive than Libertarians tend to appreciate, and then also layering Coase’s observations about the efficiencies of association onto involuntary associations, too.
Then at that point you have a discussion about public choice theory, what the group owes to defectors or minority views or free riders within its group, what a group owes to others outside that group in terms of externalities, how to build a coalition within that framework of group choice, and then your nuanced position might have started as libertarianism but ends up looking a lot like mainstream political, social, and economic views, to the point where the libertarian label isn’t that useful.
Ok, I think I you’re saying that tech attracts self important people that self identify as libertarian.
The opposite is also true, in that it attracts self important people who self identify as socialists. Both think other people should follow their ideals because their ideals are obviously good for society. The difference is that the “libertarian” thinks they’ll get more of what they want with fewer rules, and the socialist thinks that more rules (and the right people) is what’s needed.
But I think you’ll find that if you put either in power, they’ll make similar changes (at least on the libertarian to authoritarian spectrum), but they’ll both justify them as being “good.”
The problem, imo, isn’t with a specific ideology, but the self importance that causes them to openly push their political opinions in a setting where that just doesn’t apply, like a workplace. Unless you’re working in journalism where your political biases could impact your work output, it’s just not relevant.
At a certain point you trade market failures for government failures, or vice versa. The bigger a government gets, the more susceptible it is to special interests. The smaller it gets, the less effective it is at correcting market failures.
Libertarianism, to me, isn’t an end goal (there is no libertarian utopia), but a direction that attempts to solve problems with more liberty rather than less. Sometimes it’ll misstep, and sometimes it’ll look like the two major parties, but the approach is usually the same: how can we solve a given problem with more liberty rather than less.
And that’s the difference. Conservatives want to solve problems by preserving some set of values, and progressives want to solve problems by adding some new government service.
And yeah, there are a lot of questions to resolve, but they’ll be addressed from the perspective of liberty. Public choice is certainly one of those problems, and it’s at least partially resolved by libertarian paternalism, but again, it’s a process instead of a destination.