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The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

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Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#41

Post by incompatible »

grasshopperpurp wrote: post #30
lixtra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market

I think we've been trained to fixate on labels, because it limits our tools to solve problems, and the people in power don't want us solving these kinds of problems. Depending on which labels you (general you) ascribe to yourself, most ideas are DOA, because they don't fit in your identity box. Who cares if it's free market or not? A strong union presence is significantly more effective than a minimum wage. One amoun…

I don't think I've ever seen anything resembling a free market in labour, and I doubt that it would be tolerated. It would be a market where wage rates could go up or down depending on economic conditions. In reality, people get very unhappy if wages go down and companies are more likely to cut costs by sacking staff. It would be a market where if you were unemployed, but qualified, you could approach a company and offer to do a job a bit cheaper than an existing employee, and expect that the employer would sack that employee and take you on instead. Further, why do the most unpleasant, and not necessarily easy, jobs often pay the worst wages? Why do chief executives and other managers get paid so much, often without showing any particular competence? Society has a whole set of expectations about how much certain professions "deserve" to be paid, which can't be explained by any kind of market.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#42

Post by zozbot234 »

imafish wrote: post #31
zozbot234 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European-style redistribution is extremely costly for what it achieves. It means that the government has to take or transfer a sizeable fraction of GDP via taxation, while also burdening the economy as a whole with excess regulation (e.g. the firm size regulations that were mentioned elsewhere in the comments, and many others). It would be very surprising if there was no way of achieving comparable results with less…

It will be very surprising if there is a way to achieve comparable results with significantly less burden on others. European countries have looked for it for 40 years now.

> European countries have looked for it for 40 years now.

They really haven't. Classical liberalism, while perhaps more popular than in the U.S., is still a niche political stance in Europe. The 1980s saw a wave in liberalization and deregulation, and that's when stuff like NIT or UBI reached its peak in popularity.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#43

Post by claudeganon »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16
lixtra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market

for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. The Nordic countries aren't "free market" by any American definition of the term. They're corporatist/tripartite economies. This has just become a fashionable talking point among the mentioned 'liberaltarians', like the Niskanen Center, who invented the term to my knowled…

> for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding.

To me, this sound like a guarantee of greater worker freedom than anything else. Somehow economic “freedom” in the US seems to equate to corporate structures where CEOs and other managers have immense power over the lives of hundreds or thousands of workers (including their ability to get healthcare), with almost no counterbalancing force.

Implementing this kind of rule seems a pretty sane check on that level of authoritarianism, no? Beyond a certain level, the workers actually have to be given a say themselves?

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#44

Post by DangitBobby »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #9
incompatible wrote: post #5

The 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…

Wouldn't a law against using flammable building materials always be considered "regulation"?

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#45

Post by gfunk911 »

lixtra wrote: post #15
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market

Because in America, public sector unions are the dominant unions, or at least the most visible, and those are very different. Agree strongly for private sector unions.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#46

Post by take_a_breath »

itsumoiru wrote: post #22
bovermyer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, you can't have law enforcement without laws to enforce...

The law that applies/ought to apply is the one against fraud in the beef example.

One must first outline what “beef” is before you can assign fraud. Outlining what makes something “beef” is textbook regulation.

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#48

Post by kubanczyk »

Barrin92 wrote: post #16
lixtra wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very strong union sector Why is this not free market? Employees are part of the market as well. At some point you may argue that the unions form a cartel maybe. But that is another sign of a free (from state) market

for one because the government mandates every business over a certain size (IIRC 50 employees or so) to vote on unionization which is then binding. The Nordic countries aren't "free market" by any American definition of the term. They're corporatist/tripartite economies. This has just become a fashionable talking point among the mentioned 'liberaltarians', like the Niskanen Center, who invented the term to my knowled…

In preschool calling something "very bad" is a good point that can even win the whole discussion. It's the same thing you are doing with curse words like "corporatist" and "social". Or using "free market" as an ultimate blessing.

By itself, it just doesn't look convincing on this site. Maybe dig a level deeper?

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#49

Post by pjc50 »

paganel wrote: post #33
Lazare wrote: post #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 f…

Scaling what Denmark is doing for its population of ~5 million to the 300+ million people of the US is way harder than it looks at a first sight. To say nothing of the way more diverse human capital of the US.

Why?

Re: The Rise of the “Liberaltarian”

#50

Post by AdrianB1 »

sandoooo wrote: post #19
AdrianB1 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarian and redistribution have an obvious logic conflict, so you may be right about very weird friends. Libertarian base idea is freedom, as much as possible; redistribution is the opposite of freedom because you work, earn money and someone comes and takes it from you. Makes sense?

[flagged]

They do make sacrifices, but it does not mean they are in favor of having to do it; that is the point my comment was responding to.
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