On the Compatibility of Libertarianism and Socialism/Social-Welfare

Yeah I was blindsided by the Anarchism paradigm, which certainly should have been included in my second paragraph.  Phiman252 deserves accolades for bringing it into the discussion.

Tao stated "[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 interests." 

Again, I will refer you to Black Like Me, wherein The Tyranny of the Majority rewards the discrimination of a "class of people" (for lack of a better term) by refusing to provide the basic services they require as the others in the Tyrannic Majority--they are provided such services, leading them to view themselves as better, more priviledged, and ultimately (in the Jim Crow era) better citizens.  This is a direct refutation to the quotation I've taken, and I do believe I've taken it in context and thus fairly.

As the most obnoxious NYC Jews do, they refer to themselves as "chosen" and will not deign to touch your skin as it is the antonym of Kosher [I was taught by an observent Jew what the direct antonym of kosher was, labelled my can-opener as such to keep the peace in office, but sadly my recall fails me when I next need it most]).

I intended to delay introducing another aspect that deserves robust discussion in this forum, but it seems that at this point in the discussion the plain question must be presented:

     Is Liberty (as conceived by self-identified Libertarians) and
        Social (or Personal) Injustice [unremedied, that is, Denied or Perpetuated]
     compatible? 

Without an overriding interest in Liberty, my first best answer is No.

As to the free-market weeding out corruption/nepotism/good-ol'-boys network, I am simply unimpressed by your illustration, and will cite the historical record only if you press the point.

Tao: "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."

I am conflicted as to the optimal path of refutation here.  In a society/societies, interaction is paramount.   "Healthy" is a highly subjective adjective, and what is healthy for those in the transaction participating and what is healthy for society-at-large by simply having the transaction occur--sickly, resentful, uncivil, pick your perjorative--is not, IMO, easily divided.  If supermarkets or corner stores refuse service based on bigotry, this an unhealty transaction; if they supply a crappy-but-ultimately-acceptable-because-you-got-little-choice service, the transaction is not healthy between the participants nor society at large.  Arguing that that the Jim Crow laws are OK because they protect one segment of society from providing a service is, IMO, a vile and quickly-refutable argument.  

When the service offered is often a human need, such as hydration, nutrition ("we don't sell that to people like you, only people like me/them") it produces an unhealthy society/Zeitgeist thay disserves and disgraces the society, its individuals, and historically has led to violent infighting within Every Empire. 

Thus, IMO it's a decidely unhealthy Libertarian "principle" that asks a good deal of The Empire of the Republic (or any nation, or for that matter an Anarchist commune) to accept wanton bigotry as An Ideal they can use as a crutch. 

The legality of burning an American flag on U.S. soil is consecrated (Texas v Johnson 1989) but not of a burning cross (not due to religious reasons, but rather the historical context) are crucial SCOTUS decisions.  At the time, I was heartened by the first decision, disheartened by the second, but came around once I understood the historical context of the second decision (one of the last that that idiot Thomas actually spoke aloud during oral arguments).

Tangentially, when I conceived of and consequently created this thread, I thought it would establish (i) the need for some kind of government, and then (ii) what Libertarian policy would dictate regarding the responsibilities, powers and expressly forbidden policies of such a government, and finally (iii) how to feasibly set such a kindred spirit government in office and make it the model for the rest of the world.

Clearly, the responses are at best tangential, but are in good faith & civility, so those goals of mine have hope of fruition.  This forum clearly needs more civil good-faith input by those who read but are reluctant to post, and the resolution of term definitions is always a moving target in political discourse.  Despite these substantive hurdles, a common-use grounding is an immeasurably forward-looking achievement.

My personal desire is that it gets resolved right ("properly" for you British English as a Native Language flirts out there) the first time after vigorous, vouched (i.e. widely participatory) and harshly-antagonistic argumentation.  IMO if such a near-utopian discussion comes to a fine close, the base will be firm (hairline-fracturing notwithstanding), and true reform of the The Republic's political basis will occur, and we just might right this ship before I breathe my final breath.

The last two statements are well-meaning, well within my (agreeeable) conception of Libertarianism.

The concept of "choice" as self-evidently true and viable can be scorched to the marrow.

"The problem is when the State forces it upon us all" and your later comments regarding Anarchism now make much more sense to me.  I don't see Nation-States dissolving anytime soon, as I mentioned later in the thread, and your statement both supports and refutes the concept of "fair service"--the liberty to trade, or (tragically) the liberty to not trade. 

I'm not an affirmative action guy, but there are innumerable instances on the historical record where the latter leads to disaster.

I had this posted before about (about 9 hours previous, actually a longer post with more comments and links), but it seems to have been erased somehow, and not by myself as far as I know. Has this happened to anyone else here?

Forgive me for responding in non-paragraphs here, there is a lot of stuff to cover and finessing it into an essay-like structure would take more time that I care to invest in it (finding the references took long enough). I think you will find the linked references to be insightful should you read and reflect on them in some depth.

- Re. businesses and discrimination: I stand by my claims. Any business owner who shuns or discourages a large amount of potential customers, suppliers, and workers stands to be out-competed and out-sold in the marketplace. With sufficient competition - something almost always present in an industrialized and free-market environment - this is likely to result in the much-lessened profits and/or bankruptcy, things very much against the desire of most business owners. Even if one business did persist in unjust discrimination and survived, there would undoubtedly be other businesses who would be very happy to employ, work with, and sell to the discriminated-against group in nearly any marketplace, thereby gaining a significant competitive advantage vs. the discriminating company.

Re. Black Like Me: I think comparing 1960 (when the book was written) to 2012 is an apples-vs-oranges comparison. When a relatively unknown black man (Obama) can beat an established white war hero (McCain) in a presidential election by a significant margin (7.2% of the popular vote), the days of institutionalized racism in the US as a whole seem pretty much gone. Even in the southern states, a "New Great Migration" has resulted in a net migration of black people (including college graduates and middle class individuals) into seven southern states as early as 1975-1980, reversing a 35 year trend. I would be willing to bet that blacks in most of those states are not only the majority of inhabitants, but also the majority of elected officials overall. Also note that the Jim Crow Laws (highly non-libertarian in nature) were overthrown by virtue of being in breach of the US Constitution (fundamentally a libertarian document) backed up by popular opinion of US citizens as a whole IIRC even then.

Re. the topic of socialism and genuine social welfare (especially amongst blacks) I suggest the work of Thomas Sowell, a well respected economist, professor, and author who also happens to be black. Here is a quote from Dr Sowell that seems to sum up his views (as I understand them) on the topic: “The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family - which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions - began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help."” This is exlained in his view - and mine as well - by the fact that the state funds single/unwed mothers, and indeed funds them much more if there is no father in the home, thus encouraging single motherhood ("incentives matter", as the economic truism goes). Related, the children of single mothers do much worse than children of married couples who adopt at birth, something that has been known for some time now.
 

Re. racism and its effect on poverty, see http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods32.html (quoted below)

The ideology that informs the thinking of present-day "civil rights" agitation is cluttered with misconceptions. It is not true, for example, that discrimination must lead to poverty. As Thomas Sowell observes, the Chinese have never enjoyed an equal playing field in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, or Vietnam, yet the Chinese minority in these countries — a mere five percent of the population — owns most of these nations' total investments in a variety of key industries. In Malaysia, the Chinese minority suffers official discrimination at the hands of the Malaysian constitution, and yet their incomes are still twice the national average. Italians in Argentina were subject to discrimination but ultimately outperformed native Argentines. Similar stories could be told about Jews, Armenians, and East Indians. In the United States, the Japanese were so badly discriminated against that 120,000 of them were confined in detention camps for much of World War II. Yet by 1959 Japanese households had equaled those of whites in income, and by 1969 they were earning one-third more.

Another misconception is that statistical disparities between groups necessarily prove the existence of discrimination. Here again Sowell's work is essential. There are a great many morally neutral explanations that can account for these differences. Ethnic groups in America often differ considerably in average age, sometimes by as much as a quarter century. That factor alone would be enough to account for a considerable portion of income differences between groups, since an older group will tend to have more education, more job experience, and more accumulated wealth. The various ethnic groups are also distributed very differently across the country, some concentrated in largely low-paying areas and others in high-paying areas. Thus the difference in incomes between Asian Americans and whites (with Asian Americans earning more), and between whites and American Indians or Hispanics, essentially disappears when we control for geographical distribution, education level, and proficiency in the English language. For a quarter century, in fact, college-educated black couples have earned slightly more on average than college-educated white couples, yet "civil rights" leaders prefer to obscure the real situation by looking at the two races in the aggregate. Only that way can they claim that "racism" is the explanation for white-black income differences.

Then there are behavioral differences that have an economic impact. For example, fully half of Mexican-American women marry in their teens, while only 10 percent of Japanese-American women marry that young. This cultural factor alone would account for considerable differences in incomes between the two groups, since a young married woman will tend to have less mobility and fewer educational opportunities than a young single woman.

Re. poverty in the US see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_poverty_rate_timeline.gif which shows a stagnant rate poverty since 1967, a rate which I have been told was falling at about 1% a year since 1946.

Re. the main threat of socialism IMO (bankruptsy via unfunded liabilities), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GAO_Slide.png. I have never heard a leftist (nor many right-wingers for that matter) give a good accounting of how these things might reasonably be fixed, on the other hand I have heard a lot of complaining from leftists about anyone threatening to cut or modify these programs to the degree apparently necessary to prevent bankruptsy and/or hyperinflation. Leftists claim to be highly moral individuals, but I must ask of them how moral can it possibly be to dump massive debts onto children and the unborn in future years, effectively guaranteeing taxation without representation for the younger generation who will be asked to pay into programs they will likely get little to nothing out of (Social Security for example)...

Regarding the last 3 posts prior to my previous post, some more thougths in reply and/or support of my views...

--- first post ---

Re. threats to free association via racism and such, I see little to no chance of this happening as per market incentives and societal shunning, either of which would be harmful or deadly to a business in modern times as explained previously. Note that the Jim Crow laws were highly anti-libertarian and fundamentally unlawful (using government to institute racism), and that the US Constitution (again, a mainly libertarian document) was rightly used to overturn the JC laws. You badly missed my meaning on this, by no means was I supporting Jim Crow laws. AFAIK those laws which were not designed to "protect one segment of society from providing a service", but rather were designed to exclude the free choice of businesses to freely serve black people if they wished to, and indeed mandated extra costs (separate water fountains for example) that few if any businesses would willingly choose to adopt of their own free will if given the choice. Regarding "empires" I would say that big government (socialism/welfare state, large military, etc.) is the more likely cause of the decline and fall of empires, as amply discussed in this video dealing with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and modern parallels.

On the other hand the right of free association does have an upside in terms of fair/intelligent discrimination. The boy scouts might exclude males outside a certain age range or adults with criminal records, breast cancer surviver groups might exclude men, synagogues might discriminate against KKK/neo-nazis, and churches might exclude satanists or naked people from their gatherings. Mens groups and womens groups (i.e. groups designed to discuss male or female issues amongst those of the same gender) might fairly exclude those of the opposite sex in search of their goals. What right would anyone have to tell them that they couldn't do so, that they should be forced to associate with those outside their groups under the threat of government violence?

You seem to make libertarianism out to be a hateful ideology, when in fact it is fundamentally based on non-violence and a strong respect for people's basic human rights. I think this fact is very important to remember when discussing the philosophy.

Under a libertarian system of government, if someone causes harm to a person or his property, or steals from or defrauds them in some way, then they are considered to be fully liable for making restitution for this damage. This is clearly better than the current setup IMO, as not only is the victim in modern day socialistic countries asked to take time to testify (perhaps paying the cost of lawyers from the BAR cartel to help represent them), but they also do not generally get restitution from the criminal actor, and indeed they are asked to pay for his dealings (police, courts, jails) with the state via taxation… This is truly an unjust system in my view, as not only is the victim not fully compensated but his is further victimized by additional costs related to his victimization…


--- second post ---

If you were to understand the ideas of Austrian economics and libertarianism I think you and others would come to believe that markets work extremely well in solving societal problems (policing & military being a few possible exceptions), and that government interventions are the root cause of many of the ills that are presently blamed on free-market forces. When people's fundamental human rights are respected and people held accountable for their harmful actions (those causing harm, fraud, and loss/theft), things tend to work extremely well, as shown by the examle of Hong Kong in comparison to similar big-government countries.

As for "harshly-antagonistic argumentation", from what I've seen this tends to  cause people to become more angry and locked into their previous views than anything else, and is therefore not an ideal way to reach deeper understandings and/or mutual respect…


--- third post ---

I realize you are disabled (back injury) and this is not meant to anger you, but the topic of affirmative action and similar programs always reminds me of John Stossel's program on the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) which nicely shows some of the unintended consequences of affirmative action-like programs. According to that show, he effect of the ADA has been increased costs for businesses (forcing some to shut down) and a *decrease* in the employment rate of disabled Americans by about 10% since the act was passed, all this despite an American public which is getting more open-minded every decade (see gay rights and marijuana for example). This is not even counting the "unseen" effects, namely businesses that might have started up if not for the additional costs of compliance and/or the fears of devastating lawsuits if they were found to be in non-compliance with that act.

Related video: Free to Choose, by Milton Friedman (series). A few decades old by now, but a classic in terms of explaining libertarian thought and the benefits it brings to countries that adopt it - and the relative harm done to countries that don't.

[COMMENT DELETED]

Edit: this was a test of the system which shows that I did not delete my previous post by accident, as if I did the post would have simply shown up as [COMMENT DELETED] as per above...

fwiw, I deleted nothing, and if do not have the power to do so as I am a lowly common member of the group--that I created the forum gives me no such power.  I certainly did not contaminate the discourse by deletion.  My understanding is that the admins and SAs have the (abuse of) power to do, as well as this site's staff.

This site has a long, sad history of low tolerance for political and spiritual/religious discourse.  Normally I would ask the staff, but my experience is such experience will be highly counter-productive... receiving threats from the staff and the like.

fwiw, I've watched Stossel take on about a dozen topics, and while I initially found him appealing my current opinion is that he is to Libertarianism what  Geraldo Rivera is to journalism.

Micro-apologies for my overly-glib post last.  I still stand by the content but no so much the delivery.

Bringing the ADA in question could not possibly anger me; part of the reason I wanted this forum to rise and flourish was due to the dual appeal of Social Welfare, from which I have benefitted in both Canada and the U.S., and libertarianism, which is the most cogent anti-authoritarian political ideology I know of and whose appeal may lie in my counter-culture upbringing.

fwiw, I thought I was just screwing up my life when a counselor suggested I apply for disability.  During the application the CT scan of my back was conducted, diagnosed and prognosed (sp?), and the image of my left T9 (which appeared to be bent 180 degrees) scared the daylights out of me.  Fortunately it was an optical illusion--the bone that shouldn't be overlapped the left T9 itself.  It led to the only epiphany I've ever experienced; I lost ten pounds over two weeks without a change of diet or exercise, just the losing of the emotional weight that my problems were not entirely my own fault. 

Hence the issue of compatibility--I made my way into the upper-middle class, afterwards market and personal turmoil turned my life nosediving into destitution, and now am unclear what ideology serves both society and my idiosyncratic experience.

I like Stossel a lot, although he is not the deepest thinker in the world he has had the intelligence and courage to question his old (socialistic) thought patterns and to deal with some major problems that the mainstream media (Fox News aside) tends to stay far away from. Regarding his style, I gather that his producers have sought to steer him into adopting a fast-paced, controversial and semi-tabloid style to make his show more palatalbe for a dumbed-down US audience.

I think - as with so many discussions of this type - that the differences of opinion here about social welfare programs are a matter of "the seen and the unseen". Ron Paul states that everyone was effectively covered for medical needs before the government took over (more or less) from '67 onwards. Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams (both of them black academics) states that black families and communities were much healthier pre- big-welfare programs than after, and Charles Murray (author of "The Bell Curve" and "Falling Apart") says the same about white families and communities.

I think it was Tom Woods who states that 20 000 to 25 000 charitable/social/community groups existed in the US to take care of those in need before the "big society" programs came into being, groups which also served an important sociological and psychological function, as Charles Murray and others explain.

I think that people who are into socialism have a fear that in a more libertarian form of government people in need would be left to suffer alone. From the US example however I think the opposite is more likely to be true, that people would not only be covered - and probably better covered than they are today - but that much stronger and healthier communities (a factor in mental and physical health) would also come about as a result. Another positive effect would be having less national debt hanging over children and the unborn, as the US government has done a terrible job of funding its programs for the long-term, with an estimated 100 trillion dollars (and growing) in unfunded liabilities to date.

Regarding the success of libertarianism vs. the failure of liberalism for black people in particular, check out this article from Thomas Sowell titled Liberalism, the scourge of black America (quoted below). The fact that something sounds like a good idea is no guarantee that it will have good effects, and may indeed have opposite effects as to what was intended.

The Reagan administration did not have any special program to narrow the racial gap in incomes. The point is that the kinds of policies followed in the 1980s had that effect, just as the kinds of policies followed by the Obama administration had opposite effects. But just listening to rhetoric won't tell you that.

Over the years, some of the most devastating policies, in terms of their actual effects on black people, have come from liberal Democrats, from the local to the national level.

As far back as the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression of the 1930s, liberal Democrats imposed policies that had counterproductive effects on blacks. None cost blacks more jobs than minimum wage laws.

In countries around the world, minimum wage laws have a track record of increasing unemployment, especially among the young, the less skilled and minorities. It has done the same in America.

One of the first acts of the Roosevelt administration was to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which included establishing minimum wages nationwide. It has been estimated that blacks lost 500,000 jobs as a result.

After that Act was declared unconstitutional, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set minimum wages. In the tobacco industry alone, two thousand black workers were replaced by machines, just as blacks had been replaced by machines in the textile industry after the previous minimum wage law.

Let me say that I am very impressed with the knowledge poessed by all of you. At this point I am somewhat out of my league as I am just inching my way back into political discussion. Three years ago or so I could hold my own with the best of them, but adult life has since taken over and has allowed me less time to educate myself on such topics. With that being said, I definitely look forward to reentering the discussion and this seems to be quite the place to do so.

As far as the topic of race, it is one issue that I am absolutely positive can only be bettered by the introduction of liberty and the free market.

There is simply not a law that can be made that can end or even curb racism to any serious degree. In fact, I think it can be argued that it makes the issue worse in some ways,

In the market sense, being racist simply isn't profitable on a large scale.  I'll give an anecdote to better demonstrate my point. I grew up right across the river from New York City in a very racially diverse city where racism was never a real problem, however there was a slight issue that arose during my senior year in high school.

We would often go out in large groups for lunch and all of the local eateries would contend for our collective business. There were a few spots we went to on the regular, one of which included a pizzeria. To make a long story short, it became obvious that the pizzeria harbored some obvious prejudice, and was not as welcoming to some as they were to others. Once this was realized, we stopped going. In fact, everyone stopped going, including faculty staff.

As I'm sure they quickly realized, their beliefs were bad for business. Our boycott was much more effective then any law could ever be.

I'm going to jump in and out as much as possible. It's nice to get back into this stuff, I was so engrossed in it several years that I had to take a step back. And although I defend a lot of anarchist thoughts, I cannot say that I am in any practical sense. ( Especially if you knew my job lol ) Yes, ideally, I believe it to be the best society for the advancement of human kind, but we are centuries away.

The boycott story makes a lot of sense to me, at a 3% or so profit rate for the average business - most of which have a lot of fixed costs (property taxes, rent, utilities, salaried workers, etc.) - the average business simply cannot stand to anger any significant part of is client/customer base with stupidity such as racism.

I think another good example of this would be India. When poverty is widespread and economic opportunity is low it is relatively easy to implement caste-system ideas such as no physical contact or other dealings with lower caste people. When an economy is freed up and economic opportunity expands however, the profit potential lost by shunning a huge worker/customer/vender base must become much more obvious to all involved, and would also allow those of lower castes to prosper if they had the skills and dedication needed to do so.

As for the evolution into a more anarchic/libertarian state, I suspect Stefan Molyneux is right when he suggests it only likely to come about to any significant degree through the implementation of peaceful (reasoned and non-violent) parenting. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbiq2-ukfhM (among other videos of his) for more on this.

Phiman gives credible notion of "free disassociation" being bad for business, but I'm willing to bet the farm that in particular parts of the south--especially a few bars in Boston and New Orleans I unfortunately entered--bigotry is part of the draw.  As Taoput it, it's bad for the averagebusiness, but within The Republic as well as The Dominion there is considerable deviation in terms of social norms.

If I were to prepare for an oral debate on the issue, I would connect the "freedom of arbitrary disassociation in trade" to ethnic cleansing.  I'ld need two to four intermediary stages, but I believe I could convincingly connect the dots.  In Black Like Me, the author vividly describes just how difficult life becomes when the color of your skin makes vital goods and services a scarcity. 

Sadly, I believe Phiman is right that bigotry cannot be cured; in an earlier post, I bemoaned that I could not foresee the end of corruption, nepotism or the-good-ol'-boys club.  However, I strongly disagree that these social ills cannot be curbed.  Both The Republic and The Dominion have fairly reasonable anti-discrimination laws, and I wholeheartedly back the sentiment that put them into place.  I suspect that somewhere in Tao's many references there is a cogent counter-argument, but I haven't made the time to dig that wide and deep.

Tao's recent posts hit on many many topics, so consider this response partial.  Tao introduced the terms "liberalism" and "liberal Democrats", and I find the narrative surrounding that largely irrelevant to the topic at hand for a variety of reasons:  both quoted terms are quite context-sensitive to the era, I thought we were talking about Libertarianism, Democratic Socialism and then other models got thrown in but "liberal" currently means so many different things in so many different places that I'm reluctant to acknowledge it as a political ideology, and the plight of policy on Black America refers to bygone policies.  That's just off-the-cuff.

Thanks Phiman for the kind words.  Too bad we only have three contributors to this forum; I was hoping for at least five out of twenty-five.  We haven't even touched on what I anticipated to be the focus of the discussion:  "given" that we need a government, what is its role?

Finally, just to throw another model into the wrench, post-World War II Yugoslavia flourished as an Authoritarian Socialist state under Marshal Tito until his death; ten years afterwards it became another Balkan mess.  Many Americans and Canadians mistakenly assume the Yugoslavia was part of the Eastern Bloc run out of the USSR.  This could not be further from the truth; the Red Army briefly occupied Belgrade, but withdrew within weeks, and it wasn't until 1967 that visitors from either East or West were permitted to enter the country except in rarified circumstances (mostly diplomatic missions).  What is most remarkable about Tito's reign was his ability to unify a severely ethnically-fractured country; while he led mostly Serbs to liberate the nation by themselves (Western forces provided little support to their cause, and the Germans retaliated fiercely in that art of the world when partisan missions succeeded), many Croatians (like Ukranians) chose to fight for Hitler, and there were at least another three constituencies to appease. 

It was also a great chess nation until the early 1990s.

That's it for now.  Tao gave me a reading and watching list larger than most political science college curriculums

Re. the south, I'm don't see how racism can be really be that big of a problem given the "great new migration" (explained in an earlier post) of blacks back to the south since '75 or so. I am guessing that many of these states have also implemented "affirmative action" polices, which are essentially discriminatory (racist/sexist/etc.) against those who happen to be non-black, non-latino, non-male, etc.

Are there some bars that wish to exclude certain groups based on race? Probably so, but any such bars are likely a small minority given the potential loss of profit and widespread social shunning (of both owners and customers) this would seem to invite in our modern age. That said, like clubs mentioned earlier they might simply wish to attract certain clientele, for example veterans clubs might wish to exclude non-veterans, pilots clubs may wish to exclude non-pilots, etc. In the same vein certain bars might seek to provide a safe/community place for lesbians, wealthy individuals, or may simply wish to exclude members of biker gangs or street gangs or other individuals that are likely to get into fights or otherwise case disruptions with the established clientele at the bar in question. Why this decision should be taken out of their hands when those excluded can easily go somewhere else (where they would undboutedly fit in better anyways) eludes me.

As for the idea of "ethnic cleansing", I don't see how a small percentage of businesses excluding a group of people (who it seems to me would simply take their business to other stores in the area) is anywhere near "ethnic cleansing" as it is commonly understood, (i.e. a majority group killing, assaulting, or otherwise pushing out another group of people from a geographical area). In 2012 - again, very different from 1960 from all accounts I have read - I would be quite surprised if any racial group had serious trouble getting vital goods and services based on their skin colour alone…

Re. the term "liberalism", it was meant there in the modern sense of leftists/socialists/big-government types. I recognize that the term used to be more in line with the ideas of libertarianism and free-market economics, but most people nowadays use it in the first sense from what I've seen.

Re. Yugoslavia, I don't know much about it except for what I find on wikipedia, but I did find the following which I found interesting:

1) On 7 April 1963, the nation changed its official name to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Josip Broz Tito was named President for Life. In the SFRY, each republic and province had its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister. At the top of the Yugoslav government were the President (Tito), the federal Prime Minister, and the federal Parliament (a collective Presidency was formed after Tito's death in 1980). Also important were the Communist Party general secretaries for each republic and province, and the general secretary of Central Committee of the Communist Party...

The suppression of national identities escalated with the so-called Croatian Spring of 1970–1971, when students in Zagreb organized demonstrations for greater civil liberties and greater Croatian autonomy. The regime stifled the public protest and incarcerated the leaders, but many key Croatian representatives in the Party silently supported this cause, so a new Constitution was ratified in 1974 that gave more rights to the individual republics in Yugoslavia and provinces in Serbia.

2) An economic crisis erupted in the 1970s which was the product of disastrous errors by Yugoslav governments, such as borrowing vast amounts of Western capital in order to fund growth through exports. Western economies then entered recession, blocked Yugoslav exports and created a huge debt problem. The Yugoslav government then accepted the IMF loan.

In 1989, according to official sources, 248 firms were declared bankrupt or were liquidated and 89,400 workers were laid off. During the first nine months of 1990 directly following the adoption of the IMF programme, another 889 enterprises with a combined work-force of 525,000 workers suffered the same fate. In other words, in less than two years "the trigger mechanism" (under the Financial Operations Act) had led to the lay off of more than 600,000 workers out of a total industrial workforce of the order of 2.7 million. An additional 20% of the work force, or half a million people, were not paid wages during the early months of 1990 as enterprises sought to avoid bankruptcy. The largest concentrations of bankrupt firms and lay-offs were in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo. Real earnings were in a free fall and social programmes had collapsed; creating within the population an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness. This was a critical turning point in the events to follow.


The first quote (each province with its own constitution, supreme court, parliament, president and prime minister) suggests a degree of autonomy within the member provinces of Yugoslavia, with even more autonomy granted when protests over civil liberties and autonomy arose. This doesn't seem nearly as Authoritarian as most people think of when they hear a military general is running things, it certainly seems less authoritarian than most communist countries at the time.

The second quote suggests some major government interference in line with communist or socialistic thinking, with predictable results (major business failures, etc.), especially when compounded by IMF policies -  which tend to be used for wasteful big-government programs while massively increasing debt - and other non-free market interventions by their trading partners (blocking imports, etc.).

In short, it seems to me that Yugoslavia may have survived politically insofar as it took a comparably hands-off approach to governing, and floundered economically insofar as it took a centralized/communistic/big government approach to governing (central planning, massive borrowing, IMF loan, etc.). While it may have survived under difficult circumstances, I wouldn't say that it "flourished", especially not in comparison to capitalistic countries such as Hong Kong or the Unites States during a similar time period.

For a related example of how centralized government controls screw up economic matters, we also have the fine example of Yugoslavia's state care, the Hugo, dubbed "the worst car of the millennium"

Related, I think it is wise to note that free-market/Democratic countries around the world have virtually never gone to war with each other since 1945, while those coming from Communist or other authoritarian forms of government have had plenty of wars between them over this same time period.

I thought that there is no possible way that socialism/social welfare are compatable with Libertarianism. Social welfare is paid for through taxes which are force. I thought we were against the use of force unless it was in defense of force?