Tang lang chuan Libertarians

Tang lang chuan

Libertarians and classical liberals, Austrian economists and whoever else is on the wagon this week are fond of quoting this passage. Over at CafeHayek it is proffered as advice for would-be czars and other experts to remember. Yet libertarians et al rarely realise that Smith s reflections apply with devastating force to their own state-minimalist politics. Even in the world of minimal-state libertarian fantasy, there will inevitably be economic recessions. Eventually, at least one of these will be severe. In recessions people suffer; that s what unemployment and poverty entail, especially under the minimal state where there is presumably no welfare support. When people suffer, however, they do not sit around idly and wait for the market to fix itself whenever that might be. They take action to alleviate their sufferings as soon as possible. Under such circumstances, large-scale collective action will be taken by individuals seeking relief from suffering. Action of this sort is known as politics. In this politics, human beings mobilise so as to tang lang chuan the levers of power into the hands of those who will or at least promise to alleviate their sufferings. In modern societies this is done via the state apparatus. Hence even if magically we start out with libertarian state minimalism, we will not stay there. The power of the state will eventually be deployed so as to interfere with the market forces currently failing to alleviate the sufferings of ordinary people. Two things follow. First, and with especial irony, the libertarian minimal state can only be sustained by coercive state force. When ordinary citizens tang lang chuan to demand state action to alleviate suffering, the politicians they select, and the movements that propel them to power, must be repressed in order to preserve the minimal state which refuses to interfere in the economy or to provide state support. Minimal state libertarianism either organically gives way to state interventionism, or resists this organic development by becoming an anti-democratic tyranny. At a conceptual level, this basically means minimal state libertarianism tears itself apart upon any contact with the constraints of reality. Secondly, with such considerations in place we can return to the real world and look at the alarming historical record. During the 20th century, when economic situations became sufficiently dire for sufficiently long, it was not mildly interventionist Keynesians who took power. It was murderous Fascist, National Socialist and Bolshevik regimes, who either wrested control of the state by force or were selected by desperate populations via popular vote. Hayekians or whatever are being extremely myopic when they denounce Keynesians and other interventionists who broadly support market-economic systems whilst attempting to actively mitigate their worst failings.