Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2024
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Notes -
I’m a utilitarian libertarian, not deontological. Seat belt laws are easily justified on a cost/benefit basis.
Restricting/taxing things with known severe downsides like alcohol and tobacco is also easily justified, though the details are much more complicated than mandating seat belts. Of late, I think broad legalization of digital sports gambling is a pretty bad idea.
Externalities and tradeoffs are real and ought to be addressed, in other words, and that sometimes necessitates government intervention and curtailing liberty.
Please do so -- what is the net cost to you of increased traffic fatalities? (in a libertarian society if possible, but I guess that's hard mode -- even in today's US I think you will have a tough time)
It’s higher than the net cost of seat belts and a compliance regime.
Having more severe injuries and deaths from auto accidents, that are preventable by seat belts, is so obviously a bad thing for any given individual and society at large due to increased medical spending and decreased tax revenue alone.
There are so many bad cases of government intervention and so it’s always a shame to see a clearly good one get opposed.
You are wrong about the medical spending -- in a libertarian society this would be a personal matter, and in the real world the medical savings from all the additional (mostly) young people who die in crashes rather than getting old and sick far outweighs the additional burden from those who might choose not to wear a seatbelt and incur somewhat more serious injuries than they otherwise would. Same goes for excessive tobacco and drinking.
The second claim is more interesting -- if you think that society has a right to maximize tax revenue from individual citizens, it sounds like government should be able to direct people's labour however it deems optimal, on utilitarian grounds? I'd probably argue against this on the basis of the track record of planned economies in general, but in any case it sounds diametrically opposed to any form of libertarianism (or even anarchism) that I'm familiar with?
Empirically, one does not maximize tax revenue by directing people’s labor. So doing that seems pretty dumb right there. (The great thing about consequentialism is that if something leads to bad consequences you always have the ability to stop doing that thing.)
“You don’t believe in absolute freedom so don’t you support centralized planning?” is not a reasonable understanding of a moderate libertarian position. Central banks can be good though. (I think that issue splits plenty of libertarians too.)
Moreover, the government should not be aiming to maximize tax revenue as a terminal goal. The US government ought to be adhering to its functions as outlined in the constitution; seat belts can fall under “promote the general welfare”.
Consider that most of the Founding Fathers qualify as quite libertarian in their philosophy and yet they certainly were not anarcho-capitalists in their policy.
In the real world, having people dead or crippled from causes where we can reduce the occurrence through low-cost government intervention is going to be bad for the budget, relative to the alternative.
In other words, having seat belts mandated leads to better consequences than the alternative. Making alcohol illegal does not. Clean air laws are generally good (though carbon taxes and such would be better) and occupational licensing is generally bad. Individual issues can be analyzed individually.
Which promotes the general welfare (as pertains to tax revenue; if you mean something else by those words I'll need you to say what exactly that is) more:
or
If you are not quantifying better consequences, I don't think you are making a utilitarian argument either -- 'conventional statist' is my impression, which is fine, popular even -- but I don't see what's libertarian about your philosophy? "You believe in liberty unless someone wants to make a law about it" seems about as good as "You don’t believe in absolute freedom so don’t you support centralized planning?".
My impression here is that you don’t distinguish between anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism and fail to understand how a constitutional system can allow tradeoffs between liberty and other values, using government intervention via a system of limited powers.
By your standards I may be a “conventional statist” when I’m more libertarian than at least 95% of the US population (and 99% globally).
Utilitarianism is a type of consequentialism. People not dying as much from car crashes from some cheap webbing and government enforcement is good mathematically in terms of spending and taxes, as well as just “good” in the sense of easily avoidable death is pretty bad all around.
I believe in liberty as a default and a terminal good, but not an absolute one never to be traded off against other issues. Plenty of libertarians are not anarchic-capitalists; I’m not describing some special set of beliefs unique to me.
Everyone (virtually) thinks this though -- people just differ on which issues they think are valid to trade off against. (usually things that they don't like anyways are deemed insignificant infringements on the freedoms of others who disagree, but that's not central)
I think you may need to provide your definition of libertarianism if you think (for example) that current-day USA is a reasonable instantiation (or at least not incompatible) -- IOW, 'if your libertarianism has brought you here, what good is it?'
I assure you that everyone does not think this way, either for liberty or utilitarianism. Especially outside the US.
The US as originally created was very libertarian. Government growth in its reach over the last century or so has gotten us too much government, and so on average we would be a lot better off with less of it.
Libertarianism is not a very natural tendency for most humans and we have regressed to the mean. The MAGA turn in the GOP does not bode well for a libertarian future, sadly.
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