The New Left?

I tend to think of the chief difference between Right and Left as the commitment to democracy and collective well-being as an ideal. Since most American-style libertarians tend to favor radical individualism over democracy, this puts them on the right,

I would say that most libertarians see radical individualism as the best way to enhance collective well-being.

I tend to think of the chief difference between Right and Left as the commitment to democracy and collective well-being as an ideal. Since most American-style libertarians tend to favor radical individualism over democracy, this puts them on the right, the same "side" as authoritarians of all stripes, despite the seeming incongruence there

Hmm, I consider a commitment to democracy as authoritarian in nature. To me there is no difference whether one person is a tyrant, or 100, or 51%. If government is trying to strip you of your rights, does it matter whether that government was a democracy, a republic, or a monarchy?

I would say that most libertarians see radical individualism as the best way to enhance collective well-being.

I am sure they do. But it's not simply wanting people to be doing well, it is the democratic component that right-libertarians lack. And I think that a commitment to democracy as the best means of achieving the goal is the distinguishing feature of the left.

You appear to use the term "Left" as a term describing the Anarche side of the Mitchell Chart. In this article I was using "left" to describe the portion of our society where the new and bold ideas are coming from. For the moment, those two definitions are essentially identical.

I am sure you're right. That's what I mean when I say that I think your analysis, and the premise of the Mitchell Chart's construction, are very much "true." I guess I'm just not sure I'd label the results the same way you would.

Are all libertarians on the Right (by your definition)? Some of them are, and certainly the ones who still run in GOP circles are. OTOH, I consider myself a libertarian, but I'm definitely on the anarche side of the chart.

This has much more to do with what one means by "libertarian." I consider myself libertarian in the sense it meant up until the advent of American-style libertarianism. I identify as "libertarian socialist" in circles where people know what that means.

But I would consider anybody who generally supports the platform of the American Libertarian Party, and therefore most self-identified libertarians in the United States, as on the Right. They are opposed to democracy as the chief means of achieving collective goals in favor of individuals pursuing self-interest. So I suppose that if somebody was a paradoxical pro-democracy American-style libertarian, my quibble would be with their self-identification as a libertarian rather than with their placement Left or Right.

I think this statement needs to be unpacked a bit. The word democracy is used by libertarian socialists in a slightly eccentric manner. It can mean "majority vote" but it can also refer to consensus decision making, a committee structure or more broadly just as a synonym for "non-hierarchical."

Indeed. I use it to mean "decisions are collectively made by the people affected by them." That may or may not involve majority voting. But it does involve intentional collective decision-making as a group about issues that affect the entire group, and thus does not include what you later describe as emergent phenomena.

The term self-interest is also problematic, since of course a collective goal is usually also in the self-interest of those involved. By self-interest, I presume you mean a self elevated above others as opposed to a self cognizant of others.

Not necessarily above. I simply mean it in the economic sense of each operating to maximize personal gain and minimize loss. Whether this is done aware or unaware of the impact on others doesn't really matter.

What needs to be understood is that despite rhetorical confusion, libertarians are supporting a freed* market because they want to encourage behavior that is cognizant of others. When libertarians think of the market, they are thinking about a system for transmitting information -- information about what kind of a world people want to live in. We don't have time to discuss it with the six billion other people on Earth so we need some kind of system with emergent properties.

I am sure you know that anarchist democracy doesn't imply every person on Earth debating and voting on every issue. And a market implies much more than merely transmitting information, it implies a specific protocol for doing so -- otherwise there would be nothing to distinguish market from non-market.

So does that mean that libertarians are anti-democracy in the lib-soc sense? In a way, they're more democratic than most libertarian socialists. They're envisioning a society based on total consent and where decision making is done by freely associated groups of people.

Any good libertarian socialists would argue that the very structure of capitalism precludes truly free association and consent. The division of employer and employee precludes equal input on decisions that affect both parties.

The employer is attempting to obtain the highest amount of labor for the lowest amount of pay and the employee is attempting to obtain the highest amount of pay for the lowest amount of labor. Both actors are motivated by self-interest and neither one can be said to be "bad."

I disagree.

The fact is that different people have different inherent abilities. This isn't controversial, of course. The problem is that only some of these abilities allow people to benefit and gain power in a market exchange, and thus those who -- not necessarily through any effort or sacrifice of their own -- possess those advantages benefit and gain power more than those who do not. Capitalism claims that all have their niche, and that this differentiation is actually a good thing. And that would be true, if all were then rewarded equally for contributing whatever they could. But all aren't rewarded equally at all, because deciding on what rewards one reaps is firmly in the hands of those who have those particular skills that result in gaining power.

And this doesn't even take into account that most often the "skills" that give people decision-making power aren't skills at all, but simply a priori possession of money! What is it, morally speaking, about simply already having money that entitles employers to take power over people who need such money? How can such a system ever be said to be legitimate without rewinding history and having all people start life at economic parity, even if we accept the ludicrous proposition that people should be rewarded for possession of genetic gifts and talents?

In other words, I would say that the employer is indeed "bad," though I don't think all or even most employers are intentionally so. If you're embedded in a system and culture that says your position is justified, of course you believe you are doing right when you exercise the privileges it brings.

However, there isn't any alternative to a price system that I know if.

Nor I. And I've never heard of any serious economic system that rejects the concept of a price system, all variants of socialism I'm aware of included!* But a price system is not the defining feature of a market -- competitive self-interest is. It is the way that prices are determined that is the protocol I spoke of. Prices could well be determined by monarchist decree, but that wouldn't make a market economy. It is the existence of profit (and thus, profit motive) that makes a market a market.

* Except for give what-you-can and take-what-you-need no-money anarcho-communism, but I'd hesitate to call that a "serious" economic proposal...

The fact is that different people have different inherent abilities. This isn't controversial, of course. The problem is that only some of these abilities allow people to benefit and gain power in a market exchange, and thus those who -- not necessarily through any effort or sacrifice of their own -- possess those advantages benefit and gain power more than those who do not.

So the inevitability of unequal outcomes dictates a necessity for limiting free action? Why? What is so important about equal outcomes that is worth sacrificing freedom of action?

I do not understand your view of employers as evil domineers out to exploit helpless workers. It bears no relationship to what I have seen in the workforce. When I worked crappy jobs when I was younger it was rather liberating since I knew I could always quit and go to another crappy job, as I did rather often. When you were describing your community meeting as your neighbors and friends - who do you think employers are? Are they some separate species or something? No, they're your friends and neighbors too.

I don't understand the big focus on something that is not the heart of the market anyway. The market is about the sale and purchase of goods and services. That would still be true even if everyone was self-employed and there no employers or employees.

What is it, morally speaking, about simply already having money that entitles employers to take power over people who need such money?

What is it, morally speaking, that entitles anyone else to my money? Nothing. Only the free exchange entered into between me and anyone who wants my money, be that an employee, a salesman, or someone collecting for a charity or a political cause.

How can such a system ever be said to be legitimate without rewinding history and having all people start life at economic parity, even if we accept the ludicrous proposition that people should be rewarded for possession of genetic gifts and talents?

Given that people do have different talents, it would just end up with some people having more and some people having less again. You also seem to ascribe everything to random genetic gifts. You don't seem to see a connection between someone who works hard or goes back to school or starts a part time business on his own at the expense of personal time to that person doing well. Do inborn gifts matter? Yes. Does hard work and focus matter? Yes. Does luck matter? Yes. All of them matter.

So the inevitability of unequal outcomes dictates a necessity for limiting free action? Why? What is so important about equal outcomes that is worth sacrificing freedom of action?

It is not the inevitability of unequal outcomes. It is the inevitability of unequal opportunity!

It is capitalism that limits people's freedom of action, by restricting the resources available to them by virtue of which advantages they happened to be born with.

I do not understand your view of employers as evil domineers out to exploit helpless workers.

You'll note I went out of my way to say that I don't think employers are actually evil, personally. I think the existence of their social role is bad, not them themselves. I don't think there are many employers at all who are consciously out to harm their employees.

I don't understand the big focus on something that is not the heart of the market anyway. The market is about the sale and purchase of goods and services. That would still be true even if everyone was self-employed and there no employers or employees.

I'm focusing on employers only because it came up in discussions of democracy. But even if everyone were self-employed, the problems with the market -- rewarding people on an unfair basis, being woefully inefficient, and being otherwise misanthropic -- would remain.

What is it, morally speaking, that entitles anyone else to my money? Nothing.

What is it, morally speaking, that entitles you to "your" money in the first place? Nothing. Recognizing private property is merely a social convention that we find convenient because we like owning things.

Please note I am being intentionally inflammatory with that -- I actually think you're entitled to do what you want with your money. I am in favor of private property in the sense of personal possessions! I am just trying to point out that the whole game is based on everyone agreeing to play. And that's a good thing, but it is not inevitable that the rules be the particular rules we play by now.

(And I know, I know, libertarian capitalist types think there is the whole self-ownership thing that, through a series of twists and turns and voluntary associations and contracts leads to the emergence of property rights as natural laws. I, like, don't.)

Do inborn gifts matter? Yes. Does hard work and focus matter? Yes. Does luck matter? Yes. All of them matter.

Yes, they all matter. But should they all be rewarded? I think we should absolutely reward the hard work and focus, the things that people actually do. We shouldn't reward the inborn gifts and luck.

Inefficient compared to what? Resource allocation by discussion is automatically going to be slower than market allocation. Even if the market allocation is less functional on the first pass, a market can adjust before a council has even had time to meet.

If "efficient" means "fast," then why not just say "fast?" But efficient doesn't simply mean fast. Efficient means achieving your goals without incurring loss. Speed is a factor in that of course. I'm willing to grant that planning may be slower -- I don't think that's the case, but I'll grant it for argument.

Let me use an analogy. Slavery was quite efficient for whites in the South. Without having to pay their workers, plantation owners could achieve their production goals while losing very little. That's because the term "loss" was defined in purely monetary or material terms. They in fact lost a great deal: decency, integrity, justice, fairness, equality. And it was only efficient from the perspective of certain people. To the slaves, it was the most inefficient system imaginable. It profited them little, if any.

An economy is not purely monetary and material. It is a system that binds every single person in a society, and it does not exist apart from values like liberty, equality, and solidarity. Capitalism is only efficient at a certain task -- maximizing profit for those in a position to take it. It does so swiftly, and in the process is indeed tangentially advantageous for consumers for many goods and services. But like slavery, it achieves these goals at great expense.

We are all familiar with the concept of externalities, such as environmental damage. These are costs to production that are rarely factored into pricing except through government intervention or taxation. The recent scare of chemicals in toys didn't make the delivery of those toys any less efficient by market standards -- cutting whatever corners that allowed the harmful products to be produced made the production more efficient, and people were willing to buy them! Markets routinely misprice virtually every good and service sold by being based on the monetary value of inputs and what people are willing to pay, rather than on the actual costs involved.

So markets are efficient only for a narrow definition of the term. Democratic planning is in fact far more efficient, even if it were slower, at achieving the goals society actually wants -- not simply getting things fast and cheap, but fairly and without causing harm.

What is it, morally speaking, that entitles you to "your" money in the first place? Nothing. Recognizing private property is merely a social convention that we find convenient because we like owning things.

On the rights side, the right to be free from violence. Because how else are you going to take my possessions from me? I'm not going to just give them to you so you would have to take them by force. Also the right to order your own life as you see fit as long as you hurt nobody else. If you invest time in making something, that thing is yours. Otherwise you have no real control over your own life.

Private property becomes a large part of the world where you can practice virtues or vices. Are you generous? With what property? Are you stingy? Are you neat? Are you a slob? Are you a hard worker or a slacker? If all crops are communal, then who in a community of farmers is rewarded for prudence and hard work or punished for slackitude? When you stop rewarding people for hard work, they stop working hard.

But even if everyone were self-employed, the problems with the market -- rewarding people on an unfair basis,

I don't see how. Person A has a widget to sell, and person B wants to buy it. They each think they're getting a good deal. What is unfair about this? Are you worried about Person C having a better widget? Something else I don't see?

Yes, they all matter. But should they all be rewarded? I think we should absolutely reward the hard work and focus, the things that people actually do. We shouldn't reward the inborn gifts and luck.

We should ignore the Einsteins' casual brilliance and only focus on the hard working but utterly untalented Joe Shmoes? With a particular definition of 'fair' I can see how that would make sense, but for practical consequences that could be disastrous. What if you're looking at two paintings, one brilliant but effortless, and one terrible that was very hard work for the artist to produce. Which one are you going to want? It is at this basic automatic level that we start rewarding talents. I can't imagine any way that could be stopped.

I apologize if I skip over anything crucial -- I've got so many burners going I'm trying to only hit the high points.

We should ignore the Einsteins' casual brilliance and only focus on the hard working but utterly untalented Joe Shmoes?

What about focusing on, you know, both? We shouldn't ignore Einstein's brilliance at all. He should be paid for doing whatever he does, just like anyone else. It's just that what he's doing will be theoretical physics rather than piloting or writing or whatever Joe Schhmo is doing. Do you really think Einstein should have been a billionaire just for being a smart guy?

I know that it's hard to know exactly what I'm advocating, since there are so many socialist systems and I have yet to explain mine in excruciating detail, but part of my style of socialism is much more balanced job duties. Not that everyone does everything by any means -- that would waste the very talents we're talking about. Most jobs in a modern economy require specialized training as well. The idea is just that nobody exclusively does @!$%# work, while other people exclusively do creative work, and others exclusively wield power. If you will indulge me to imagine such a system, you can see that it makes the idea of rewarding effort and sacrifice much more practical; with everyone doing a job that matches their talents but is not significantly more or less, well, @!$%#ty than anyone else, rewarding effort and sacrifice becomes mostly a matter of paying for time put it. With the occasional outlier, of course. I don't have a problem with the equivalent of hazard pay, for example, because that falls under sacrifice.

But the way to eliminate externalities is to put those social principles into (or back into) the market, not to start over from scratch.

It is my belief that you put those principles into a market, you wouldn't have a market anymore. Which is exactly my point. However, I am sure we disagree on specific principles -- maybe you can put those that you find important into a market and still have one. I don't think any system based on competition can account for, e.g., solidarity and democracy, except for very generous definitions of the words.

Since, if a market with all externalities internalized is something you'd like to call "socialism" -- well then, I'm a socialist.

Internalizing the cost of externalities is the principle libertarian approach to environmental issues. So I would have to object to calling it socialism :) I think we should shift to taxing the things we want to discourage like pollution and carbon dioxide emissions and away from things we want to encourage, like income. Although so does French president Sarkozy. The difficulty in many cases is determining the costs of externalities, so a simple approach is a tax on X at Y rate to hopefully approximate that cost. As soon as you build those incentives into the system, the market responds. Just look at how much more fuel efficient, and less commonly used, cars are in Europe than in America. The difference is just that gas costs twice as much there.

I think we should shift to taxing the things we want to discourage like pollution and carbon dioxide emissions and away from things we want to encourage, like income.

I'd have to disagree. Taxes should be for raising government revenue, not setting policy. Especially because you can always get into that dangerous ground whereby the taxes work too well at setting policy and act to prohibit the behavior, thus making no tax revenue for you. There's just too many competing interests when you use taxes to set policy.

Just look at cigarette taxes. Many states use these taxes to fund large parts of their budget, yet if people actually started smoking less, then their budgets would fall. Thus by taxing cigarettes to discourage them, government is actually placed in a position whereby it needs to encourage smoking in order to fund all of the programs it is used to.

Just look at how much more fuel efficient, and less commonly used, cars are in Europe than in America. The difference is just that gas costs twice as much there.

I think that is only a small part of the picture. The price of gas has increased over three times since about ten years ago, and yet American's driving behavior still hasn't changed all that much.

I think the reason that European driving behavior is so different, and much less than in America has far more to do with the setup of their towns and communities.

First off, Europe is far more centered around towns and cities, than we in America are with our housing developments and suburban sprawl. Our zoning laws and artificial geography has created a society that needs to drive. People rarely work in the same town they live in. They need to get to work somehow.

Also, while in the '50s the federal government was pumping billions into the federal highway system, we've allowed our rail lines to decline and collapse. In Europe on the other hand, they have kept their railways top of the line and in great shape.

The alternative to using taxes to effect market behavior is to outlaw certain behaviors. One is much easier and effective than the other. How has the number of cigarette smokers changed in the past 30 years compared to the number of marijuana smokers? One is down significantly, and one is not. It would work the same with taxing pollution. Tax pollution at a reasonable level and everyone pays the tax and tries to pollute less. Enforce rigorous pollution laws and you have to create an expensive enforcement mechanism and most polluters will just do what all the pot smokers do, just try to skate by under the radar - and most of them will succeed. Not to mention that Congress has no Constitutional authority to issue those kinds of "do this don't do that" mandates in the first place, while their authority to tax is crystal clear.

I'd have to disagree. Taxes should be for raising government revenue, not setting policy

All taxes have an effect on the market. Income tax, sales tax, property tax, gas tax, cigarette tax, capital gains tax, they all have an effect on what people do. It is literally impossible to have a tax with no market effect. An income tax punishes people for making more income, a sales tax punishes people for buying things, a property tax punishes people for owning more property, a gas tax punishes people for driving more, a cigarette tax punishes people for smoking more, and a capital gains tax punishes people for investing. Recognizing that, it makes sense to use that effect, and to shift to taxing undesirable behaviors like polluting instead of desirable behaviors like making money and investing it. A pollution tax is also the best way to internalize the externalities involved in production of goods.

yet if people actually started smoking less, then their budgets would fall.

That is what I would call a good problem to have. The same as if people started driving less. Would you have to switch revenue sources if that happened? Yes.

The price of gas has increased over three times since about ten years ago, and yet American's driving behavior still hasn't changed all that much

On the contrary, sales of SUVs are down and the trend increases every time gas prices spike again. Truck and SUV Sales Plunge as Gas Prices Rise.

First off, Europe is far more centered around towns and cities, than we in America are with our housing developments and suburban sprawl. Our zoning laws and artificial geography has created a society that needs to drive. People rarely work in the same town they live in. They need to get to work somehow

I agree completely, but that development pattern was made possible by the availability of cheap gas. It won't change overnight, but it didn't get to be this way overnight either.

I like it, can't say that I disagree.

I've been thinking more and more of moving democracy past just a 51% rule, and towards a sort of "opt-in" government.

Think of it this way, and we'll use a direct democracy to simplify things. There is an issue at hand, everyone votes for it. Unless everyone agrees, there will be winners and losers of the vote. But why do we need losers to begin with?

Instead of voting for something that applies to everyone the same exact way, why can't we just vote for what applies to us? For example, say we are voting on a budget. You want program x, but I don't. Well, you can vote for program x and receive it as well as the responsibility to pay taxes for it, while I can vote against program x and not have to pay taxes for it. Obviously there are certain issues that require a single decision to be made, but there are also a lot of areas where we really can have multiple options.

We see this already in the form of local and state governments. Your town can pass laws that my town doesn't and the same applies to states. But why do we have to make government based on geography for all issues? Obviously some issues need to be geographically based, roads and infrastructure and such, but other issues have nothing to do with where you physically are located.

As long as we're being utopian, my dream would involve basically confederated local governance. Which is to say that all policy is made by the local community, and "higher" structures exist only for coordination and administration of policy agreed upon by the local groups. So, let's say that all communities but one agree to cooperate on some venture -- that's fine, that one community just isn't part of that venture. It's free to be a part of the next one. A voluntary democracy of voluntary democracies, you might say. It has roots in Murray Bookchin's libertarian municipalism, but I don't necessarily endorse his version of such a thing.

Participatory democracy that is contingent upon all participants agreeing to be a part of that particular decision-making system and abide by its decisions. The right to secession -- individual or otherwise -- is integral to this vision.

Doesn't the right to secession nullify the agreement to abide by its decisions? That makes it a weaker agreement to abide by decisions you like.

Doesn't the right to secession nullify the agreement to abide by its decisions? That makes it a weaker agreement to abide by decisions you like.

Well, yes, to an extent.

The idea is that very few decisions would be so significant as to require secession. Policy decisions are made through local assemblies. You're dealing with no more than 25-50 other people, face to face, trying to come to agreements. I've been in enough meetings to know that in groups that small, not many people are going to go out of their way to support a proposition that would intentionally cause great harm to other members. I'm not saying it's impossible by any means, just that it's not a matter of impersonal bureaucracies imposing their will on faceless minorities -- these are your friends and neighbors that you came together with. You'd know them in advance of, and outside of, the decision-making process.

Furthermore, secession carries with it substantial penalties -- your local assembly is embedded in a society-wide confederation of such assemblies, carrying out participatory planning of economic issues, among other things. You'd be essentially cut off from the entire economy, for structural reasons that I could go into if you'd really want me to, but that would take some explaining. Suffice it to say that you'd only want to do such a thing as a last resort. And the odds are that if your local group was hell-bent on being douchebags, they'd be shunned from the larger confederation anyway and you could just join up with the next nearest assembly.

As long as we're being utopian, my dream would involve basically confederated local governance.

That is more or less my utopia as well. In that way, if one local community wanted to be socialist or communist, that would be great for them. If another community wanted to be anarcho-capitalist, good for them. I'd think most would choose some kind of compromise or mixed economy.