Reflexive inactivity

Brian Moore, in a good post about us 'crazy legalizing libertarians':

This might be a bit nitpicky, but I also like the abuse of the term “reflex,” as if cultural libertarians were reactively doing something in this situation. It works for cultural moralism — when confronted with the stimulus of prostitution, they spring into action by calling for prohibition. When the cultural libertarians hear of prostitution, they say, “So?” You can’t reflexively do nothing.

I dunno -- I suppose amongst the blogger community the libertarians are a bit more considered and thoughtful about their preference for private action, but most regular, workaday libertarians I know are actually exactly like this: present them with a new potential policy problem, and their gut reaction is, "So what?" In other words, "please now provide arguments for why this problem needs solving on a coercive, governmental scale." In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that this is the distinguishing characteristic of the natural-born libertarian -- a robust intuition that the burden of proof is always on the party proposing new/more governmental action.

Libertarian archetype: the stubborn old coot

Wired's Tony Long on libertarianism. An odd piece, mostly about how Ron Paul is a wacko. In general I'm on board with the sentiment behind this -- I'd be both embarrassed and alarmed to have RP as our chief executive. But not great journalism, as it takes Ron to be representative of actual libertarians, who are usually a bit more intellectually sophisticated. Tony Long is kind of like somebody's cantankerous grandpa -- some of what comes out of his mouth is blatantly offensive and incorrect, some is surprisingly insightful, all of it is delivered in a patented 'independent old coot' style. Come to think of it, Mr. Long bears a striking resemblance to (and shares a last name with) a certain famous fictional libertarian old coot.

Why libertarians should learn to be friendly

This is true:

Given the relative rarity of libertarians, both in the public eye and in general, most people’s judgment of libertarianism will be based on a very small sample – often a sample size of one. If the first libertarian someone meets is a smart, reasonable, decent person, they will come away with a positive impression and possibly a willingness to explore further. If the first libertarian someone meets is a wild-eyed lunatic, on the other hand, they could easily write off libertarianism as the ideology of wild-eyed lunatics. [...]

This is why, when I talk to young libertarians about how to spread their ideas, I say they should think of themselves as ambassadors for the movement. That means, first and foremost, presenting themselves as fundamentally decent people that you would actually want to have a beer with [...].

This personality thing is a problem for libertarians, even the most reasonable, articulate, non-moonbat varieties. Sampling errors aside, there's a well-recognized phenomenon wherein views expressed by people we admire and like are more persuasive merely by being associated with that person. (Mormons seem to get this, in a big way.) Friendly people are far more successful at spreading their beliefs (cf. meme theory). And libertarians, even the smart articulate ones, tend to come across as intellectual, elitist, even snobby at times (especially in person, as opposed to in the blogosphere). Maybe this is because on average, libertarians spend way more time identifying and thinking about their beliefs than people of more standard political persuasions, thus making them more conversant with political theory and/or somewhat scornful of the unthinking multitudes. Whatever the reason, libertarians (and I don't except myself here) may need to make a special effort to be approachable and friendly and, well, nice, in addition to the traits Glen identifies above.

Libertarian smackdown, 20th century fiction version: Galt v. Frodo

Two of my favorite things, together at last! Via Reason Hit & Run, Juliusz Jablecki contrasts the respective masterpieces of J.R.R. Tolkien and Ayn Rand, and wonders which novel presents the truer libertarian vision. The essay focuses in on one major difference: the answer to the question of how to fight the system. Rand, of course, disliked statism and went after communism with a vengeance every chance she got, but Jablecki correctly notes that "in Atlas Shrugged [...] it is hard not to notice that somebody drives the world, maintains the reality in order, and without him everything would plunge into chaos." In Middle-Earth, on the other hand, there's no big plan for the world, no one running things, no unified political consciousness, no system. Rand, despite her big talk about statism, seems determined to have her characters implement a top-down solution, a solution based on crashing and then rebooting society around the most productive, creative members. Tolkien's solutions to Middle-Earth problems are much smaller, more individualistic, bottom-up.

I'm on board with this analysis as far as it goes, but it seems to overlook some important questions about motivation. Hobbits, presented by Jablecki as the ideal small-libertarians, content to cultivate their gardens, can only be moved to action by powerful wizards, who themselves have some decidedly unlibertarian tendencies -- plans for everyone, and the willingness to intimidate others into following along. It's worth remembering that Tolkien frequently described the hobbits as child-like, not just in stature but in moral character: simple, generous, fun-loving, innocent, ignorant of the great evils afoot in the world. The part of the world where hobbits live is protected by the aforementioned powerful wizards, for the purpose of preserving this child-like nature. This seems to be not a great model for libertarians in the 21st century, or any century, really.

Jablecki also criticizes Rand's tendency to anoint 'supermen' among her characters, people who are just more productive, more creative, more intelligent. I think this is a reasonable criticism, especially since for many of Rand's characters (especially women), philosophy seems to be more or less replaced by hero worship. But Tolkien's world, too, is populated by those who seem to motivate others by virtue of their power or personal charisma, rather than by reasoned persuasion. Mostly these are wizards and elves, endowed with extraordinary gifts, but sometimes they are humans endowed with extraordinary destinies. Interestingly, these more-than-humans always have ancestry tracing back to elves somewhere along the line. There's a strong element of hereditary destiny and elitism running through Tolkien, which for me has always overpowered the more parochial, small-libertarian hobbit lifestyle.

Forbidden or compulsory -- take your pick.

This enjoyable TigerHawk post discusses the concept of painting all city rooftops white, to increase their albedo and thereby slow (or reverse?) global warming; he cites some evidence that doing this would raise earth's albedo from 0.29 to 0.30, which could lower global temp by as much as 1º C, which would effectively undo all the global warming since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The post notes that this is exactly the sort of easy, painless thing anyone with a shred of environmental consciousness should be willing to do, but that many US zoning restrictions and community covenants prohibit this. The best part of the post:

The obvious libertarian answer is to pass a federal law that declares that any state or local law or restrictive covenant may not be enforced to prevent the owner of property from painting his roof or driveway to raise its albedo. The obvious Gorean answer is to require that all building owners paint their roofs (and, for that matter, driveways and parking lots) white by 2010, with an extensive government program to specify the type of paint to be used, an inspection regime to be sure that it has happened, and subsidies to be paid for by a new tax on the "rich."

What a charming synopsis of the problem that undermines attempts at coalition-building, even where both sides are in agreement as to the fundamental goals, as enviros and scientifically-minded libertarians often are on this.

Paging Robert Heinlein...

Tyler Cowen at MR wants to know, would immortals be libertarian? More precisely, would human 'post-mortals' who had eliminated aging and could only die from unnatural causes, become libertarian? Tyler thinks they would, especially around social issues: "Immortals are going to want to try everything, and why not?"

I think this is true for social issues, less true for safety and security issues -- if you don't have to die, you're motivated to try pretty hard to eliminate dangers that could cause your unnatural demise. (MR commenters make this point clear.)

Another aspect to think about: once people quit dying of old age, we're talking about a major lebensraum problem, solvable only by space colonization (more efficient use of urban space can only get us so far). In other words, a post-mortal society has to become a pioneer society. And pioneer societies tend to be libertarian, bordering on anarchist, partly because they attract independent types, partly because law enforcement gets trickier when the population is dispersed, and partly because there's plenty of space between you and your neighbors. Plus, a diasporized human race has the opportunity to experiment with lots of different legal and cultural arrangements -- so even if post-mortal humans aren't more libertarian on average, this would still be a more libertarian-friendly world.