These sorts of “purity” litmus tests of how “good” a libertarian (or Marxist or Progressive or what have you …) bother me and I am sure they bother most people. I see their allure, I really do. But I think two points should be made. First, while I understand that having the pure and consistent idea held by folks is a way to make people know that such views exist, without qualifying such positions they are virtually assured to turn everyone off. For example, one “extreme” view that I hold is the immediate and complete abolition of government from the K12 schooling enterprise. But by saying that people immediate think I am advocating for knocking down every single school, sending every unionized teacher to Siberia, and forcing stupidity on a generation of students. My belief is that to intelligently argue for the abolition of government schooling  a clear vision of what that means has to be presented, and so too does a clear vision for what a transition looks like and that we must anticipate what the worries of folks might be. In short, I simply do not think the chances for ending government schooling are nonzero if we simply argue for this extreme position.

But second I think the libertarian movement ought to take a lesson from behavioral economics. People have a psychological aversion to extremes and are psychologically much more comfortable with small changes — the classic frog in the pot story. So just as Hayek sometimes worried that incremental changes in the direction of central planning could get us over time to a very collectivized society, in part because it can change the psychology of a people, the process works in the other direction. I really do believe that people will welcome small movements toward freedom and in targeted areas. For example, most folks understand the Post Office is done. But rather than end it tomorrow (my preference), perhaps allowing first-class mail delivery in rural and expensive areas by private companies (i.e. the unprofitable routes that the post office tells us would never be served privately) would be a start. And over time as people become accustomed to the well-functioning of private mail delivery (after all, I know some people who use UPS and FedEx almost daily), then the freedom idea is very likely to be spread over to another area. The insights of behavioral economics clearly demonstrate that people have a far easier time “going full monty” on private education if we already are full monty on private postal service than if we jump right to it. In other words, you simply have to adjust the frame of reference for people when thinking of reforms.

By the way, the left has been extremely successful at doing just this for almost 100 years, and in fact it has been an express strategy on their part in several areas of policy. Examine Paul Starr’s political history of health care reform – and he clearly makes the point that all early compromises on health policy are acceptable because proponents of single-payer health care understand that moving incrementally toward it would be inevitable. Just get people comfortable, for example, that “the VA works and doesn’t pull the plug on Vets” … and then people get comfortable with more subsidies for Medicaid … and then people get more comfortable with additional government interventions. You might think of it as a sort of Trojan Horse strategy. And if it works in moves toward collectivism, then surely it will work in the other direction. Sadly, the non-left is not very deft at using this strategy and allows the left to completely demagogue any moves toward freedom as radical and scary.

Does this mean your mental preference for what society should look like ought not be full-monty? Not at all. But unless you are incredibly brilliant and charismatic it is going to be extremely hard to be taken seriously if such a pure vision is regularly presented. Of course, the fact that a classical liberal view of the world is considered extreme is depressing and requires many posts of its own.

Yet the error of libertarianism lies not in championing liberty, but in championing liberty to the exclusion of all other values. Libertarians hold that individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable — all are to take a back seat.

It is totally understandable why someone would say such a thing. But is it too much of me to ask that Mr. Sachs stop to think about what it is he just said and implied in that sentence? And yes I understand that this is supposed to be a take-down of libertarians – but he would have had my fuller attention had he made more (any) mention that there has to be some default rules for living socially, and that there is perhaps a little more than an “error” in the pragmatism he promotes (and certainly other “-isms” that he does not).

Let’s stop and think about why some of the Occupy Wall Streeters are upset. They are upset that working hard and getting an education has not produced a “fair” return for them, and that some folks in society are getting an “unfair” return. Fine, I have no problem with that interpretation. Life is not fair perhaps, but I have no issues with that. But what I DO have a serious issue with is the implicit hypocrisy in the complaining here. It seems to me that the OWS-ers that make this complain wish to work hard at doing whatever the heck they want and they are upset that they cannot make a living by spending a life in the Peace Corps or making Youtube videos.

But why should they be upset? Isn’t their motivation entirely selfish and individualist? The irony of course is that the reason the are not able to make a living as professional checker players or in the Peace Corp is that “society” actually does not value those things so much. In other words, one of the most basic tenets of selfish, market capitalism is biting them in the arse. In other words, our private capabilities are predicated on social/public evaluations of what is and is not valuable. It seems to me that objections to this tenet are akin to saying that society does not matter, that their own selfish idea about what is valuable matters. But isn’t that precisely the opposite claim they are trying to make?

Does it make me selfish if other people happen to value the things I have chosen to do with my life? Does it make me unselfish if not? I don’t think so, but that is what it seems the complaints are all about.

First from Tyler Cowen on the Eurozone crisis:

Chris Calomiris wrote in 1999 that the euro is doomed (pdf).  Milton Friedman had some pretty good predictions about the euro.  Here are my 2004 predictions about the euro, and here is my bit from 2003 (“The three percent rule is effectively dead…The real question is what will happen when one of the smaller nations thumbs its nose at France and Germany…and then claims exemption from the relevant penalties.”)  I have been worried about euro-like arrangements since the late 1980s.  Here are Paul Krugman’s 1998 remarks,

…

Roubini predicted the course of the current Italian financial crisis in 2006.  And so on.

It is sometimes asserted that the economics profession should lose some status because so few economists predicted the U.S. financial crisis.  I’m not sure economists should be judged by their ability to predict asset price movements, but grant the point.  The euro crisis is now here, and it seems our profession should win some of its status back.

And perhaps even more pertinant, here are the Bleeding Heart Libertarians on the rise of the Corporate State:

America is suffering from rampant, run-away corporatism and crony capitalism. We are increasingly a plutocracy in which government serves the interests of elite financiers and CEOs at the expense of everyone else.

You know this and you complain loudly about it. But the problem is your fault. You caused this state of affairs. Stop it.

…

We told you this would happen, but you wouldn’t listen. You complain, rightly, that regulatory agencies are controlled by the very corporations they are supposed to constrain. Well, yeah, we told you that would happen. When you create power—and you people love to create power—the unscrupulous seek to capture that power for their personal benefit. Time and time again, they succeed. We told you that would happen, and we gave you an accurate account of how it would happen.

You complain, perhaps rightly, that corporations are just too big. Well, yeah, we told you that would happen. When you create complicated tax codes, complicated regulatory regimes, and complicated licensing rules, these regulations naturally select for larger and larger corporations. We told you that would happen. Of course, these increasingly large corporations then capture these rules, codes, and regulations to disadvantage their competitors and exploit the rest of us. We told you that would happen.

It’s not rocket science. It’s public choice economics.

Read the rest. Enjoy your morning coffee. Here is the most depressing thing you can do with the next hour of your day.

Four centuries after the celebration of the first Thanksgiving, there is still widespread disagreement about the reason for the Pilgrims’ feast. But whether it was a harvest festival, a strictly religious observance, or a thank you to the local Wampanoag Indians, such a feast would not even have been possible were it not for the abandonment of the utopian ideas the Pilgrims laid out in the original Mayflower Compact.

Imagine a world where the earnings you generate from teaching, or nursing, or tending your orchard, from working the cash register, or mowing some lawns – all of the fruits of your efforts went into a common pool. Imagine further that each of your friends and neighbors, and every stranger in Monroe County was entitled to an equal share of what was placed into the kitty. It didn’t matter whether you mowed 20 lawns per day or one, whether you treated 30 patients per day or none, whether you taught 50 students per day or none – you received the same “income” as everyone else in the community. Imagine further that your home was owned in common by all in your community and that rearing your neighbor’s children was as much your responsibility as anyone else’s.

Such was the intention of the Compact – by eliminating any semblance of private property and personal accountability, which were declared to be the foundation for avarice and selfishness – prosperity and brotherly love would result. How did it work out?

You need only look at the cleanliness of your office fridge or the condition of a public bathroom for a glimpse into the horrors of such collectivism. People suffered, starved and perished. Governor Bradford wrote in his diary, “For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense … that was thought injustice.”

Most shocking perhaps is that this injustice generated penury, jealousy and sloth in a society comprised entirely of (self-professed) holy people, each with a common cause, each from a similar background, and in a community with less than 200 settlers. The lessons for a society comprised of people of varying degrees of “saintliness”, with differing interests and backgrounds, and hundreds of millions in size should be obvious.

Confronting the disaster of collectivism, Plymouth’s elders wisely “resorted” to a system of private property and free exchange. Bradford wrote of the reforms, “… it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression…By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the faces of things were changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.”

I doubt many Pilgrims themselves properly understood the nature of their original problem, nor its solution – which is why I doubt that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of liberty and private property. While they might have thanked Providence and luck for the bounties that followed the change in property institutions in 1623, it was only their industry, thrift and discipline in response to the formation of private property institutions that such a feast was even possible.

Fast forward to 2008, where the most productive among us are made to feel like criminals, and the non-productive (those who are able) are portrayed as innocent victims of a tyrannical system of capitalism. That Thanksgiving is a “national” holiday is ironic – for it is was a celebration enabled by an explicit movement away from “nationalistic” ideals – a celebration made possible by the unleashing of the individual productive efforts of all in the Plymouth colony.

I am blessed to have a healthy family, the ability to have completed my formal education, and the discipline to work hard with the lot I was given in life. Providence and luck has been kind to me. I give thanks to that every single day of my life. But on this day, this 385th renewal of Thanksgiving Day, as many in our nation clamor to gallop anew down a 21st century style collectivist path (health care for everyone, financial bailouts, auto bailouts, fairer taxes, public schools, managed trade, green-collar subsidies, farm subsidies, licensing restrictions, “living wages” and more) littered with the tragedies of hundreds of failed experiments before us, let us remember what made the first Thanksgiving possible, and what has made our modern prosperity possible.

The productive efforts of billions of individuals past and present who unknowingly cooperate each and every day in an effort to improve their own lots, have bestowed upon us a gift even greater than the yams, apples, turkeys, wheat, and other resources that we were naturally endowed with. Just how large a gift have they given to each of us? Imagine yourself alone in the New England wilderness on a cold and wet November day 500 years ago. The difference between the “fire roasted” yam you might conjure up with days of immiserating work in 1508 and the majestic spread set out before you today in 2008 is but a glimpse of the bounty that liberty and property have bestowed upon us. Let us hope that the light of liberty remains lit, so that we may see our way through harsh and brutal winters that might lie ahead.

There can be no such thing as “human rights” without a corresponding right to property. Indeed, a property right is a particular form of human right. This has to be true. Consider the basic human right of “free speech.” We all think we know that it means Wintercow can say whatever he likes, wherever he likes, so long as he does not libel someone in doing so (although some folks even argue that libel is morally appropriate!). But what does this right actually mean? Am I a floating wraith in space? Not at all. To say that I have the right to “free speech” is nothing more than to say that if I have peacefully acquired the means to create speech, then and only then is my right to say whatever I want guaranteed. But no one has to provide me a microphone, a podium, a website, book, pen or paper. I am free to speak so long as I can acquire those things and to deliver such speech to people who voluntarily agree to hear it.

Similarly, to invoke a right to anything implies that humans have obligations with respect to that right. To say that there is a human right to speak freely means that others in society are obligated to provide you with the means to do so. Now, that obligation insofar as I see it, only extends to respecting your ability to speak conditional on you obtaining the property upon which to do it. But I have met very few people who seriously argue that as a member of the human community, wintercow has an obligation to provide pens and paper to every other person, and also to guarantee that every human read what others write. And so long as no such obligation is generally accepted as required, then there can be no right to free speech. If governments want to legislate such positive rights, I suppose that is fine to do – but then let’s not call them rights. And then let’s remember that in legislating your “right” to speak freely, then they are also mandating that someone provide you with the resources to do it. It’s no different in health care or any other positive “right” that is typically invoked.

Which brings us to the Marxists and their relatives. A fundamental proposition of Marxism is the abolition of private property. But if it is true that property rights are a particular form of human rights, and that no one in a collective nirvana can or ought to have private property, then it follows that the fundamental ethic and idea of Marxism is an explicit and direct violation of human rights. That’s not exactly the bill of goods the left sells us now is it?

That uncomfortable position is eerily similar to this one.