On the Compatibility of Libertarianism and Socialism/Social-Welfare

I wanted to title this forum topic "Libertarians and Socialism/Social-Welfare:  Incompatible, somewhat compatible, or largely compatible?" but it was too long for chess.com.

Rather than beginning with an opinion, I invite others to share their opinions and/or experiences and I'll chime in later this week.   The issue as I see it is nailing down where people stand regarding the role of local, state and federal government in the U.S., and the feasibility of such roles.

I suppose I should at least put up a few examples for contrast and discussion.  The easiest to pick the is paradigm of a Democratic Social Welfare State is Sweden; Canada (I once had the equivalent of U.S. green card of that nation) is similar but the safety net is not nearly as wide as Sweden; and the final model for contrast would be the U.S.A. if run as a Libertarian Republic, taking the national Libertarian party platform as a sound-off point.

Re. your second post, I think the US would be the healthiest of the three by far, as I think can be demonstrated by a comparison between the US in 1960 (before the "big society" programs) and presently. I don't know about Sweden, but Canada has serious debt issues, especially when unfunded liabilities are counted. This is an especially sad state of affairs as Canada is a very resource rich country, number 4 on this list after Russia, the US, and Saudi Arabia.

The US in 1960 was the greatest creditor (money-loaner) nation in the world, and the world's biggest/healthiest economy. It's people were highly charitable, and communities - for the most part - were strong. Poverty was falling at a fast rate (about 1% a year), most children were raised in two parent families (which achieve much better outcomes for children), and crime was fairly low. It's culture - based largely on personal rights and freedoms - was respected around the world, and therefore attracted the best and brightest of less free nations worldwide, increasing its economic advantage over other countries. While not fully libertarian, it was much closer than most countries in the world to that ideal.

In 2012 the US is the greatest debtor (borrower) nation in the world, borrowing about 40% of its budget every year. This does not include unfunded liabilities, i.e. upcoming debts such as the costs of medicare/medicaid/social security that will be increasing as people get older. Poverty rates have stagnated since about 1970 (when the "big society" programs came into force), and communities are much weaker, with gangs being a significant issue across the US. Most of the debt has come from these socialistic programs, though other non-libertarian concepts such as a world military empire and a "war on drugs" are also very costly, with the "war on drugs" having serious social costs as well IMO. Divorce and crime rates are much higher than in 1960, and educational outcomes are quite poor, with a large number of dropouts and a larger number of people being functionally illiterate despite about 10 500 per student per year being spent on "education". Even many of those who do graduate are poorly equipped to prosper in modern society, even those in the sciences. This is currently being balanced out by immigration (see here - 4 min video), though this may change as more restrictions are placed on immigration and businesses.

I think that a lot of the support of socialism comes from a fear of what would occur in its absense and an unawareness of the fruits of liberty, despite the historical record. With the school system being mostly government funded and union-operated, and the mainstream media being quite leftist overall, this is understandable, though unhealthy.

This is just a brief summary, if anyone here want me to expand on any of this - or to ask me related question - let me know.

Krugman was on Colbert recently (and Stewart ten days beforehand as well as on Maher's show) plugging his book.  In the course of his thesis, he held up Sweden as being perfecly healthy over the past few decades (debt issues, if any, being a picnic compared to the current situation in the West, and also in the eurozone mess), contrasting to the (right-wing) Heritage Fund Index' #1 for "economic" freedom--Ireland, which has 14% unemployment, 30% youth unemployment. 

Also, in line with the Libertarian foreign policy platform, Sweden has not fought a war since the late 1700s (I believe under Charles XII) and does not participate in [post-script:  I initially stated U.N. when I meant] NATO or other security pacts.  It's greatest crisis in my lifetime has been having their Prime Minister killed by a random lunatic that remains at large, and that was perhaps two decades ago.

Yes, Canada is very much in crisis, fiscal as well as sociologically.  When I studied there (1975-1982) and my mother & stepfather lived there (together until 1988 or so) (stepfather doing fine currently, tenured in Vancouver), the system worked incredibly well.  I needed pretty serious healthcare twice as a teenager and it didn't cost the two-then-post-graduate-students a dime.  It did blow up sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s, and reports from longtime friends indicate that the situation has dimmed considerably (its tough to keep unity and cultural diversity/division in line with each other, and they take in every refugee of every European or Asian dispute, quite unlike the USA).   There is also the Great Olympic Mistake--Montreal and (I assume) the Dominion finally paid off the 1976 Summer Olympics and its horrible stadium in 2009--but they have a truly sizeable VAT that even applies to books (our First Amendment demands the printed word not be taxed due to the potential abuse of such).  I put it up for a model of criticism as "where did they go wrong" because I feel that the mistakes they made are ones the US has or may will make, and because the cultures are much closer being neighbors.

My impression is that Denmark, consistently rated the "happiest" nation in Europe, has a social welfare state quite similar to Sweden. 

I'm aware this is a first-off cursory response to your (appreciated) post, currently I'm not of the tempermanent to research as hard as I typically do.  The east cost heatwave is fading as I type, so my patience has been tested for a week, and I just went through a frustrating exercise posting on my forum some game analysis that this site simply lost and I had to re-do from scratch.

I have a tremendous problem with statement "the [American] mainstream media being quite leftist overall".   FoxNews--which does even bother to disguise its bias at this point--crushes NBC/MSNBC + CNN combined in every rating category & demographic imaginiable, and CBS seems to be in disarray.  This leaves investigative journalism, pioneered in the late 1960s and coming into fame with "60 Minutes" Sunday night for four decades as the keeper of the flame, and they've just not been right in quality prior to the events of Tuesday 11 September 2001, largely to the aging (and current attrition) of that generation.   ABC seems alright, but it relies on AP wire reports, which are relatively factual but often badly written and certainly not copy-edited.  The NY Post was a liberal paper until Murdoch bought it, as well as channels 5 & 9 in NYC, and the allegedly-liberal New York Times was more than merely instrumental in galvanizing popular support for the Second Gulf War travesty/tragedy.  Moving to radio, jingoism undeniably reigns; Air America couldn't lift off if it turned itself to pollen.

The point is that between TV, newspapers, and radio, the concept that any of these mediums exhibit an "overall liberal bias" is thoroughly refuted both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Al-Jazeera English and the BBC offer fairly objective journalism, the former remarkably measured given their public image.   The BBC naturally highlights national issues over global ones, but their global perspective is fresh and not imperialist in nature--a stark contrast to every outlet save Democracy Now!, which has seriously immature production values.

My issue with the MSM and their oddly-influential late-night satirical offshoots is the stories they don't cover.

I live in Canada, though have a large exposure to the US media as most channels are US-owned, and as the size, influence, and proximity of the US is hard to escape. I'm not sure that that Canada is in a sociological crisis, though I will note that Quebec (the most socialistic of all Canadian provinces) has serious problems with corruption and debt, and has for some time now. As for Olympics, they are almost always money-losers worldwide, which is in line with most government-run operations.

Re. the ideological slant of the US media, see surveys on the subject, or this article by the UCLA, quoted below.

I suggest that people wondering about potential bias ask themselves how often the media suggests increased vs. decreased government intervention on various topics, or how they deal with topics such as feminism, gay rights, abortion, or regulations, unions, and free trade. I think that Fox News is indeed right wing (it was formed to support the Republican Party as I recall), but that it is very much an outlier, which would also explain why it seems so hated amongst the rest of the US media at large.

From the article:

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist
By Meg Sullivan December 14, 2005

While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.

These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

"Overall, the major media outlets are quite moderate compared to members of Congress, but even so, there is a quantifiable and significant bias in that nearly all of them lean to the left," said co‑author Jeffrey Milyo, University of Missouri economist and public policy scholar.

The results appear in the latest issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which will become available in mid-December.
...

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS' "Evening News," The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

Only Fox News' "Special Report With Brit Hume" and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter...

IMO, the benchmark of 1960 seems to be somewhat arbitrary.  The common conception of baby-boomer generation is that it started in either 1946 or 1948, but that it certainly ended if you were born after the Beatles played Ed Sullivan (and Shea Stadium) in 1964.  The immediate life-circumstantial impact is that, if you were born after the Beatles, your current Social Security retirement age is 67 (and will turn 70 within my lifetime, or so I've been convinced shortly after I started paying into three decades ago), whereas baby-boomers are protected at 65.

Myself, my mother, and biological father were all born 1-4 years outside of this gap.  I've no idea how the latter is faring, but last we spoke of Social Security he declared he upgraded from a two-decade green card to Naturalization in the 1990s as he figured out that it treats him if he lives and works abroad as dual-citizen with a fourth-world nation passport.

Also, 1964 shortly predates the ethnic urban riots that a hallmark of the 1960s--Watts 1965, Detroit, Newark (196/7or9?), Harlem (during the Lindsay Administration), the Chicago DNC police riot of 1968, the Attica uprising--and other lesser-but-nonetheless-lethal explosions of citizen dissatisfaction.  These riots speak directly to the context of any qualitative discussion of crime during this period.

A UCLA media study published in an economics journal.  Strike me strange.

I'm not bothered by its seven-year age, but I promise to visit their methodology by 1 July 2012.

For the record, Murdoch purchase media outlets everywhere and turns them into his own private tabloid + neo-con outlets.  He then leads the Republican party into its own insular neo-con/Tea Party base; he does not do this for the benefit of the RNC, the RNC does this to appease Mr Moneybags.

And the UCLA finding of 2005 O'Reilly show is definitely the weakest link, and surveys are a terrible quantifier--see Dinkins-Giuliani 1989 where for months Dinkens had an 18+ point lead and won by barely more than 1 percent. 

I refused to re-fill my census form (I refused to answer more than half the questions--they had enough for an enumeration, and that's all I was going to give them) and had some a-hole middle-aged woman yell at my door for 5-10 minutes.  I just cranked up the Judas Priest to cover her noisehole.  That's a census, not a survey, and it doesn't work with canterkous folks like me.  I take a survey only if I believe I can game their system.

Next census you might check out some youtube vids on the subject of what is lawful (required), and then simply ask the census takers about their "authority" to ask questions while taping the interaction.

Chances are you will get them to keep to the legitimate parts, and have some good footage for youtube when you are done. From what I've seen, once you know the fundamentals of law you can get some good outcomes simply by asking questions based on these questions while filming the interaction, as most people don't know the law and don't want to seem like idiots on youtube when they are exposed as not having true authority for their actions.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_States

Gallup Polls show that most Americans do not have confidence in the mass media "to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly". In 2011 a 60% majority reported a perception of media bias, with 47% saying mass media was too liberal, 13% too conservative. ... According to Gallup, in every year since 2002 more Americans think the media show liberal bias than think the media show conservative bias.^[14]

...the Democratic Party received a total donation of $1,020,816, given by 1,160 employees of the three major broadcast television networks (NBC, CBS, ABC), while the Republican Party received only $142,863 via 193 donations.^[23] Both of these figures represent donations made in 2008.

A study cited frequently by critics of a "liberal media bias" in American journalism is The Media Elite, a 1986 book co-authored by political scientists Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter.^[24] They surveyed journalists at national media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the broadcast networks. The survey found that most of these journalists were Democratic voters whose attitudes were well to the left of the general public on a variety of topics, including such hot-button social issues as abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights. Then they compared journalists' attitudes to their coverage of controversial issues such as the safety of nuclear power, school busing to promote racial integration, and the energy crisis of the 1970s. The authors concluded that journalists' coverage of controversial issues reflected their own attitudes, and the predominance of political liberals in newsrooms therefore pushed news coverage in a liberal direction. They presented this tilt as a mostly unconscious process of like-minded individuals projecting their shared assumptions onto their interpretations of reality.

In a survey conducted by the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1997, 61% of reporters stated that they were members of or shared the beliefs of the Democratic Party. Only 15% say their beliefs were best represented by the Republican Party.^[25] This leaves 24% undecided or Independent.

A 2002 study by Jim A. Kuypers of Dartmouth College, Press Bias and Politics, investigated the issue of media bias. In this study of 116 mainstream US papers, including The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, Kuypers stated that the mainstream press in America tends to favor liberal viewpoints. They argued that reporters who they thought were expressing moderate or conservative points of view were often labeled as holding a minority point of view. Kuypers said he found liberal bias in reporting a variety of issues including race, welfare reform, environmental protection, and gun control.^[26]

...

John Lott and Kevin Hassett of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute studied the coverage of economic news by looking at a panel of 389 U.S. newspapers from 1991 to 2004, and at a subsample of the two ten newspapers and the Associated Press from 1985 to 2004.^[66] For each release of official data about a set of economic indicators, the authors analyze how newspapers decide to report on them, as reflected by the tone of the related headlines. The idea is to check whether newspapers display partisan bias, by giving more positive or negative coverage to the same economic figure, as a function of the political affiliation of the incumbent President. Controlling for the economic data being released, the authors find that there are between 9.6 and 14.7% fewer positive stories when the incumbent President is a Republican.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on the "media bias" tangent and move on to more substantial territory to further the discussion.  Your responses don't speak to the points I put forth, and the studies you cite are either quite dated (1986?  The Fox Network wasn't even in business at the time), have an institutional bias (emanating from a conservative think-tank), or (IMO) have questionable relevance (Gallup polls and pennies-when-billions are required for significant political influence don't make for solid ground).

Yes I grant that most reporters have a DNC bias, but Democratic party and liberalism have been disengaging for quite some time now.

Thanks for the tips on how to deal with the 2020 census.  Hope I can get my webcam to work by then.

Again, my apologizes are coming into this discussion half way through...

Libertarianism, as I see it, is compatible with virtually any form of political ideology as long as it concurs with the non aggression principle. In a truly free and voluntary society, people would be free to choose which system they would most like to live by.

The problem becomes when the State forces it upon us all.

No need to apologize for participating in a new forum for the first time. 

I agree whole-heartedly the "modularity" aspect, which I hadn't really considered before.  However, "virtually any form of political ideology" includes Fascism, Feudalism, Monarchism and other form of Authoritarianism (e.g. juntas).  I fail to see how Libertarianism could be compatible with those ideologies.

Libertarianism, as I view it, is simply free association and the commitment not to aggres on others without just cause.

In a truly free society ( outside of what we consider traditional governments ), would you object to a group of people who voluntary chose to live under a monarchy, or other form of what we consider an unjust society?

I would object, as the scenario you put forth is an example of The Tyranny of the Majority, in which the minority "enjoy" less stature, and thus de facto less liberty. 

For instance, it's probably not easy being a Jew in Iran, but there are openly-Jewish communities in that 33-year-old Theocracy which have existed on the same sites in some cases for centuries.  These communities certainly have little influence regarding how they are governed, and I would assert that certainly deprives them of essential liberties that the majority of Shia Iranians enjoy.

" I would object, as the scenario you put forth is an example of The Tyranny of the Majority, in which the minority "enjoy" less stature, and thus de facto  liberty. "

I think we are on a slightly different page. I am talking about a theoretically free world where there are no traditional governments and people are allowed to freely choose whom they want to associate with. If a group of Christians came together and voluntary chose to live together under a strict Christian theocracy, what would your objection be to that?

Of course liberty would not be in abundance in such a society, but being free means choosing how you want to live.

If people wanted to live in a Communistic community, that should be their right.

As far as the Iranian Jewish situation, we are talking about a tyrannical government that has proved time and time again that it has no respect for the rights of any of its people.

Everything I've said thus far is what I envision a modern market anarchist society to be.

It is natural that we are on different pages, but you've switched from
"compatibile with other political ideologies" to a hypothetical nation-less world, or at least a world of Anarchist nations (maybe? not sure). 

Anarachism and Libertarianism appear somewhat compatible, but I did mention feasibility at the top of the forum, and IMO Anarachism can exist only at the local level, say 10 000 (the traditional size of a military division).  It certainly becomes exponentially less feasible as it scales from cliques to hamlets to towns ad nauseum.

I also see a serious problem with the concept of a theoretical world where people can choose freely with whom to associate.  Not only is making that a reality intractable, it leads to one of my main objections to the Libertarian premise that one can refuse to do business with another without a substantial basis--for instance, if they belong to a separate ethnic group, or for that matter, political ideology.   All one needs to do is give the classic book Black Like Me a look to see the social injustices that follow the "right to discriminate on any basis I so choose" which, unfortunately, appears to be embedded in Libertarian philosophy.

I believe Libertarianism demands government for, say, national defense as well as select few other tasks for a nation's common good.  I did not foresee the concept of its ideology without the context of nation-state based simply on the its lack of feasibiliy.   Your conception is nevertheless something that needs to be on the table.

From your reply regarding Iranian Jews, I take you agree that tyrannies (what I call Autocracies) are incompatible with Libertarianism.  History has an overflowing record of Catholicism, Communism, and other ideologies being or devolving into Authoritarianism.  Even if all parties agree that this system works for them, their liberty to dissent is near-void, and thus IMO incompatible.

Tao mentioned (in a different context) corruption; I would also like to bring into the discussion its kissing-cousin, nepotism, and the distant cousin "old boys network".    They infect every ideology I can imagine, and as I grow older the problem of negating these influences seems more and more intractable.   If there was "holistically insular" political ideology that was immune to these very human phenomena, I would love to hear of it.

Nice to have you here Phiman. I agree with you here. I prefer the term "non-initilization of force and respect for property rights" to "non-aggression" (another term often used in these types of discussions), as one might have a legitimate claim to use force (in appropriate measures) against those who are unlawfully infringing on their bodies or property.

In a truly free society I would say that yes, people do have the right to live under whatever system they choose, as long as they respect the people and property of others around them. For example, people could choose to live in a commune (with all property within the commune held in common) as long as they respected the property and human rights of those who chose not to live in their commune. They might also choose to live by the dictates of an authoritarian figure as long as they repsected the rights of those around them to not live under the dictates of this figure...

I suppose it should be mentioned that people choosing to live under the rules of the groups above would always have the right to re-assume their full human rights (association, property, etc.) at any time, as these rights are natural/God-given to the human being barring conclusive reasons (mental incompetence, chronic criminality, etc.) that they should be limited or stripped.

I would be an anarchist myself except for one thing, the potential issue of groups not respecting the property (human) rights of other people or groups without a police/court/prison system in place to protect these rights. All other objections to anarchism do not really make sense to me, as per the work of Stefan Molyneux and others.

For example, if a business owner chooses not to deal with a certain group of people I consider this his human right (of free association). Healthy interactions between two parties require the free consent of both, and forcing one to associate with another without his consent is more fundamentally lacking in respect for free association IMO than allowing one to decline this association. That noted, any human that chose to assault another human (I would include threats and verbal assaults in this definition to some extent) would be initializing force, and would therefore be acting unlawfully IMO.

I think that free markets tend to naturally and strongly move society away from this problem (unfair discrimination) for a number of reasons. For example, a business owner that disallows a certain group from doing business with it automatically loses the business of that group, something that is very much against his financial interests. He may also lose the business of any friends or associates of that group, also against his financial interests. If members or friends of that group protests and succeeds in turning larger segments of society against that business, the economic effect furthered, and is indeed likely to destroy that business outright. There may be suppliers or vendors of that business that belong to or are friendly to the discriminated-against group, which could result in serious or even fatal disruptions to the business.

Keep in mind that most profitable businesses operate on only a 3-5% or so profit margin, that business failures (even of large businesses) are quite common throughout the economy, and that there is strong competition in any free market for just about any service (or equivalent) one can conceive of, and you can see how unlikely unfair discrimination is likely to be in a modern economy. In this day and age (a Black US president, LGBT rights gaining acceptance, racism widely seen as very bad and unjust, etc.) I think the issue of discrimination is a minor issue, and one that is getting more minor every year. When social shunning is the natural response in a society towards anyone engaging in discrimination, I think that the threat of this discrimination to society is essentially a non-issue.

As for "old-boys networks", free-markets tend to destroy these as well, especially when they cannot use government force (tariffs, taxes, regulations, licenses, laws, etc.) to further their goals. In free markets, money flows to those that provide the best (often new) goods and services at the most competitive prices, something that encourages constant innovation, entrepreneurship and shifting of established power structures, especially in our age of constant technological advancement. Cartels are naturally undermined and destroyed by these forces when they cannot utilize government force to further their control. Also, when any cartel forms, there is not only significant incentive for entrepreneurs and customers to bypass it, but also for individual members of that cartel to undersell it as well, as the profit margin for any individual member is higher by (secretly) underselling it and obtaining major sales than by holding with it and getting only a small percentage of sales.