On libertarianism

Ok, I've been suckered into a rant on libertarianism. Mostly because I got suckered into posting a response on Slashdot to a paranoid, rambling, libertarian idiot babbling about how campaign finance rules were an egregious affront to freedom of speech (don't start with me Okwui).

At the risk of drawing my former roommate's ire, libertarians piss me off. Now, don't get me wrong...I totally respect libertarians who do, in fact, grasp what they're actually saying: that they want a return to jungle law because they think they can claw their way over most of the rest of humanity to hoard as many resources as possible and rule their defeated foes with an iron fist. I'm okay with that. I respect it, because it's honest. Much more infuriating than self-interest is self-interest cloaked in a veil of magnanimity.

But these warbling retards who think everyone would be better off if all government did was provide an army to fight off invaders and enforce contracts piss me off. The first problem is that there was never, ever a time in which everyone got to start off on equal footing. Resources have never been equally distributed or equally available. Ever. So it's effectively like dropping 20 people on an island, giving all the food, water, and supplies to one person, providing them with an armed guard to make sure any "contracts" they drew up were adhered to, and saying, "Okay, go make a civilization!" Unequal bargaining position anyone?

But ignore that for a minute. Pretend everyone's on equal footing. You're still going to end up with a crappy outcome, because some small percentage is going to be smart/crafty/clever/conniving enough to negotiate/strongarm/coerce everyone else into putting them in a position of power over people and resources. It just naturally happens that way if for no other reason than people are dumb and often won't notice it happened until it's too late. And once you're at a competitive disadvantage, you're pretty much screwed. See above.

So what you end up with is a few barons controlling everything, a few more priviledged underlings who maintain those barons' power in exchange for a share in some of it, and on down the pyramid to the wide base of people who are serfs and basically screwed. Now, I don't call that an ideal society, do you? That's really not much of an improvement over medieval despots. In fact, it's pretty much identical.

Now, that said, I'm no socialist (no, honestly, I'm really not...I used to think I was until I thought about it and realized it was a terrible idea). I don't think you should have a single, centralized arbiter of all resource allocation. Why? Because a) people generally hate it and want the opportunity to compete with and screw each other over, and b) because you can't design a system that is impossible to corrupt (or, to put it another way, someone has to administer that centralized allocator, and that person is likely to be a sleazy, unscrupulous fuck. See Bush, George W.)

So I think competitive markets do have their place. But you do need a regulatory infrastructure to temper those markets to social aims and to make create the environment in which they will optimize results. For example, it would be stupid to have different companies own major highways because you can't exactly build an alternate to interstate 95, now can you? Only one road fits in any given place. You can, however, have different companies use those roads to deliver stuff, because they can both deliver using the same roads. (Incidentally, Congress doesn't seem to get this concept because they think it's ok to have one company own every wire that goes into your house. Then again, these were the same retards who thought it was a good idea to get into the whole Terry Shiavo thing and rename frech fries "freedom fries.")

Anyway, it just pisses me off. Markets are useful things, but they have their limits. They have no conception of social justice, and libertarians don't seem to get that. They seem to think if we had no government the world would be in idyllic la-la land where everybody could do everything they always wanted and everyone would get along.

Maybe they're just fucking hippies and they don't even know it.