The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
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The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
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Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#2This raises an interesting follow up question. Do those surveyed consider themselves to be the wealthy? Or do they expect someone else to be making do with less to make the redistributive policies work?
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#3> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.”
That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services, enviable ranking on most indexes of economic freedom (eg, https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking?version=638), and so forth, and so on.
Letting the markets be relatively free to generate money, capturing it via efficient flat taxes (first and foremost, a consumption tax), and using it to fund an effective social safety net targeted at the poor is not a unique idea, it's what some parts of Northern Europe has been doing for the past 40 years.
Maybe they meant "unique in the US political debate".
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#4Maybe it’s that I have very weird friends, but pretty much no libertarian I’ve met has defended zero redistribution.
They all hate the way it’s done now, and favor other arrangements like a negative income tax or UBI (as a substitute for government-run services).
I haven’t seen all the questionnaire, but the questions shown in the article could be read both ways.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#5The low-regulation approach seem great until you find out how far businesses will go to cut their costs and increase profits: you end up with situations like flammable cladding installed on high-rise towers, horse meat sold as beef, or bleach sold as a cure for Covid-19 (one of these may be fictional). The line between legitimate business and scam becomes impossible to define.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#6> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…
> Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised fire and ambulance services
I’ve heard many US Libertarians say that they want the US Fire services completely privatized. We would stop paying taxes for this services and instead private services would spring up that we could chose to pay monthly for. The competition would drive down prices as there would be a free market of many such providers.
This is not what Denmark is doing. Denmark has traditional fire departments paid by the government. It’s almost entirely a single company and that company is almost entirely owned by a non-profit organization.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#7This is by no means a new political stance: liberaltarians used to be known as "left-wing libertarians" or, somewhat jocularly, "bleeding-heart libertarians" but the gist was pretty much the same.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#8> So their overall approach is unique: Let the markets operate how they should and redistribute income after the fact. Some people have called this new type of political animal the “liberaltarian.” That is, of course, the model that Nordic social democracies have followed for many years now. Denmark is by many measures significantly more free-market than the US; note their absence of minimum wage, mostly privatised f…
Denmark has no minimum wage because it has a very strong union sector. So collective bargaining ensures there's an effective minimum wage equivalent.
Which is why Denmark is also much less free market than the US. Businesses operate under strong social constraints, and power structures aren't one-sidedly pro-business/pro-corporate.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#9The low-regulation approach seem great until you find out how far businesses will go to cut their costs and increase profits: you end up with situations like flammable cladding installed on high-rise towers, horse meat sold as beef, or bleach sold as a cure for Covid-19 (one of these may be fictional). The line between legitimate business and scam becomes impossible to define.
This is not a problem of regulation, but a problem of law enforcement; there is no need or regulation "don't sell horse meat as beef", but to remove the US legal system plague of settlements where companies pay money to get rid of investigations and claim "they have no fault".
I know a real case of horse meat sold as beef in UK and they have lots of regulations (including the EU on top of local). You can put all the rules and laws in the book, but don't just relax and hope all will be obeyed. As some SCOTUS decision stated a while ago, some laws and regulations are made so dense and confusing it is almost impossible to comply to the letter - they were talking about something as simple as driving a car on a public road.
Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”
#10The low-regulation approach seem great until you find out how far businesses will go to cut their costs and increase profits: you end up with situations like flammable cladding installed on high-rise towers, horse meat sold as beef, or bleach sold as a cure for Covid-19 (one of these may be fictional). The line between legitimate business and scam becomes impossible to define.
Lowering regulation does not mean no regulation. And outright fraud or misrepresentation would still be punished by the courts.