Criticism of Libertarianism

Adherents of different ideologies, left and right, have criticized libertarianism for various reasons.

General criticism

From the right

Although libertarianism is at times considered a conservative ideology (especially in the United States), other conservatives often argue that government is needed to maintain social order and morality. They may argue that excessive personal freedoms encourage dangerous and irresponsible behaviour. Some of the most commonly debated issues are [...] norms, the [...] war and public education. Libertarians feel that the state has no business being involved in what they see as victimless crimes, but conservatives view some of these same issues as threats to society. Conservative Jonah Goldberg of National Review consider libertarianism "a form of arrogant nihilism" that is both overly tolerant of nontraditional lifestyles (like recreational [...] use) and intolerant towards other political views. In the same article, he writes "You don't turn children into responsible adults by giving them absolute freedom. You foster good character by limiting freedom, and by channeling energies into the most productive avenues."

Goldberg has had repeated disagreements with Lew Rockwell and his followers (whom he calls "angry libertarians") over what they see as conservatism's concessions to socialism and its support for the war in Iraq. Goldberg argues that modern conservatism incorporates the best features of libertarianism without its flaws through what he calls fusionism:

Hayek says that in the United States you can 'still' be a defender of liberty by defending long-standing institutions that were designed to preserve freedom. In other words, 'conservatives' in America are– or can be– classical liberals... traditionalist conservatives and free-market libertarians agree on about 85% of all public-policy issues... When [libertarians] try to break ranks entirely the most common result is that they throw a party to which nobody shows up.

From the left

John Rawls and Ernest Partridge argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that harm some individuals so long as they are beneficial overall. They may further argue that rights and markets can only function among "a well-knit community of citizens... with an active understanding that every citizen, without exception and whatever his accomplishment, bears an enormous burden of moral debt to both predecessors and contemporaries". If these prerequisites for a libertarian society depend on paying this debt, these critics argue, the libertarian form of government will either fail or be expanded beyond recognition.

In his essay "From Liberty to Welfare" in the anthology, "Ethics: The Big Questions", philosopher James P. Sterba argues that a morally consistent application of libertarian premises, including that of negative liberty, requires that a libertarian must endorse “the equality in the distribution of goods and resources required by a socialist state.” Sterba presents the example of a typical conflict situation between the rich and poor “in order to see why libertarians are mistaken about what their ideal requires.” He argues that such a situation is correctly seen as a conflict of negative liberties: the right of the rich not to be interfered with in the satisfaction of their luxury needs is morally trumped by the right of the poor “not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs.” According to Sterba, the liberty of the poor should be morally prioritized in light of the fundamental moral principle ‘ “Ought” implies “Can” ‘ from which it follows that it would be unreasonable to ask the poor to relinquish their liberty not be interfered with, noting that “in the extreme case it would involve asking or requiring the poor to sit back and starve to death” and that “by contrast it would not be unreasonable to ask and require the rich to sacrifice their liberty to meet some of their needs so that the poor can have the liberty to meet their basic needs.” Having argued that ‘ ”Ought” implies “Can” ’ establishes the reasonability of asking the rich to sacrifice their luxuries for the basic needs of the poor, Sterba invokes a second fundamental principle, “The Conflict Resolution Principle” to argue that it is reasonable to make it a moral requirement. He concludes by arguing that the application of these principles to the international context makes a compelling case for socialist distribution on a world scale.

By Objectivists

While Ayn Rand's Objectivism philosophy advocates laissez-faire capitalism based on individual rights, she considered it radically different from libertarianism and explicitly rejected the term. Objectivists have criticized libertarians for suggesting that a just society is based on an axiomatic (intrinsic) belief in liberty or a pragmatic (subjective) belief that uses the practical outcome of capitalism. Objectivists argue that abstract ideas don't exist in a vacuum, and thus the concept of liberty needs to be validated by a process of reason with an underlying philosophy of rational selfishness, reason, and objective reality.

Specific criticism

Economics

Critics of the economic system favored by libertarians, laissez-faire capitalism, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifled innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that markets do not always produce the best or most efficient outcome, that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health, and that advances in economics since Adam Smith show that people's actions are not always rational.

Other economic criticism concerns the transition to a libertarian society. Critics may argue that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long term. Libertarians are opposed to any "privatization" that would include compulsory joining of a private system.

Another criticism involves Latin American economies, which were placed under economic policies sought and championed by libertarian economists, such as Milton Friedman:

Between 1973 and 1989, a government team of economists trained at the University of Chicago dismantled or decentralized the Chilean state as far as was humanly possible (the so-called miracle of Chile). Their program included privatizing welfare and social programs, deregulating the market, liberalizing trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its constitution and laws... Chile's economy became more unstable than any other in Latin America... growth during this 16-year period was one of the slowest of any Latin American country. Worse, income inequality grew severe. The majority of workers actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after adjusting for inflation), while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the absence of market regulations, Chile also became one of the most polluted countries in Latin America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only possible by suppressing political opposition and labor unions under a reign of terror and widespread human rights abuses.

Libertarianism's critics argue that the real-world results in Chile and elsewhere demonstrate that libertarian economic theory is not only faulty, but potentially threatens freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth.

Of particular interest to economists is the "New Zealand Experiment," which began in 1984 when Roger Douglas became Minister of Finance and began radically restructuring the country's economy to fit the libertarian model. Over the next 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced a steady decline: the youth [...] rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the developed world; the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically; marked increases in violent and other crime were observed; the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992; and health care has been especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle class people. In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.

Free trade critics argue that trade barriers are necessary for economic growth in some or all situations.

Government decentralization or shrinkage

John Donahue argues in The American Prospect that when power is shifted to local authorities, parochial local interests predominate at the expense of the whole, leading to inefficiency, corruption, and loss of freedom - as when limits on federal power were used to defend segregation. He claims with regard to proposals for federal devolution that,

Collective value is squandered in the name of a constricted definition of gain. States win advantages that seem worthwhile only because other states bear much of the costs. America's most urgent public challenges... involve the stewardship of common interests. The fragmentation of authority makes success less likely."

Deontological ethical theories

Siegfried Van Duffel argues that libertarian natural rights theory grounds rights, not in any familiar notion of liberty, but in the idea that a human is a sovereign being. The problem with this idea is that it does not allow one to ground obligations of other sovereigns to respect each other's sovereignty.

Jeffrey Friedman, editor of Critical Review, argues that libertarians often rely on the unproven assumption that economic growth and affluence automatically result in happiness, and shift the burden of proof to their opponents without justification, when in fact "it is the libertarian who is committed to the grand claim that, for some reason, intervention must always be avoided." Friedman argues that natural law libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent:

if (as Boaz maintains) the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights (62), the liberty to own large amounts of property [at the expense of others] should... also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism... The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's 'right to do wrong.'"

There are also criticisms of libertarian opposition to a standard, state-run educational system, and support for private education and home schooling with no government involvement. Paul Kienitz writes, "As increasing technology enables ever greater amplification of abilities, the separation between those who start out with abundant resources and those who don't, in terms of what they can then get out of the market, is likely to widen further... The least we can do is to not egregiously widen the gap ahead of time if we can help it. This is why I oppose such measures as fully privatizing education."

Environment

Environmentalist Jeffrey Friedman argues that libertarians have no method of dealing with collective problems like environmental destruction: "The environment is the libertarian Waterloo: it reveals the flaws of the doctrine in a way that seems to ensure that no 'answer' is forthcoming." Critics argue that a libertarian society cannot prevent natural resources from being destroyed, or the environment from being polluted, because of its rejection of collective regulation and control. Critics find libertarian attempts to protect the environment through property rights are lacking. They see natural resources (like whales or the atmosphere) as too hard to privatize, and legal responsibility for damage (from pollution or wild animals) as too hard to trace.

Ideological culture

Libertarianism is seen as a utopian philosophy by some of its critics. Jonah Goldberg wrote:

Ask a libertarian (no, not all libertarians...) what the Department of Education should do, and he will say 'Well, the Department of Education shouldn't exist.' Now of course he's right... But it does. I've seen it. It's practically brimming with bureaucrats who aren't going away and they're awaiting orders from somebody to do something... I always compared libertarians to the Celtic warrior-tribes often employed by British kings. They are incredibly useful as allies in battle, but you wouldn't want them to actually run things.

Brook Shelby Biggs questioned some libertarians' motivations, writing in Wired, "The ironic thing is that many of today's loudest libertarians were once... stuffing daisies into the barrels of loaded guns... Funny how once they are financially secure, suddenly world peace and economic justice seem less important, crazy ideological college hijinks. Defending one's own wealth is so time-consuming!"

Mutualist Kevin Carson credits himself with coining the pejorative term vulgar libertarianism a phrase that describes the use of a free market ideology in defense of corporate capitalism and economic inequality. According to Carson, the term is derived from the phrase "vulgar political economy," which Karl Marx described as an economic order that "deliberately becomes increasingly apologetic and makes strenuous attempts to talk out of existence the ideas which contain the contradictions existing in economic life."

Alternatively, libertarians are criticized for dogmatism and Market fundamentalism. In a parody of a libertarian pamphlet, Mike Huben writes "Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist!" Milton Friedman joked about an incident in which Ludwig von Mises stormed out of a room full of libertarian economists, yelling, "You're all a bunch of socialists!"

Hernando de Soto, a prominent free-market economist who works to encourage the growth of capitalism in the Third World, stated in an interview:

"One of the problems that you see mainly in Latin America, which is the area I'm most familiar with, is that people who have created special legal niches of privilege among themselves, and who have no way of justifying the privileges that they have created for themselves, have a tendency of quoting a lot of Friedman and Hayek and all sorts of libertarian writers, to justify their privileges.
"So if you are about to open a libertarian club, or NGO, or a think tank in Latin America, and all the guys that sign up have got pinstripe suits and nice silk ties, you'd better be careful. You'd better start suspecting that something's wrong."

External links

• Dissecting the Libertarian government model - A podcast featuring an interview with outspoken Libertarian Scott Horton of antiwar.com.
• Long, Roderick T., Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections

nl:Kritiek op het libertarisme