The "Gully Foyle Bashes Libertarianism" extravaganza.

[A18]

Lockean property would here mean "those things regarded as property in Lockean philosophy" (which is not to say that Locke was a libertarian).

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Lockean property would here mean "those things regarded as property in Lockean philosophy" (which is not to say that Locke was a libertarian).

Having never read Locke other than opening parts of An Essay concerning human understanding I don't know what this definition is....

[A18]

His work is nuanced enough that a complete description would be impractical, but here is a very rough outline:

1. The world has been given to mankind in common.

2. If universal consent were necessary, "man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him" (§ 28).

3. As this would be absurd, there must be some way that a single individual can take something out of the common lot and make it his own—that is, his property. Locke reasons that because a man owns his labor, by mixing his labor with some unclaimed portion of nature, he acquires legitimate title to it.

4. A person is not entitled, under first principles, to take more than he can make use of before it spoils (a vague but not meaningless criterion). The introduction of money changes the picture: "But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor" (§ 50).

[JohnFKennedy]

Philip,

Firstly, it should be noted that Locke talks about property in two senses. Aside from the narrow definition of man mixing his labour with natural resources to create property, in the Second Treatise he also discusses a more capacious definition in §87

'Man being born, as has been proved, with a Title to perfect Freedom, and an uncontruled enjoyment of all the Rights and Priviledges of the Law of Nature, equally with any other Man, or Number of Men in the World, hath by Nature a Power, not only to preserve his Property, that is, his Life, Liberty and Estate, against the Injuries and Attempts of other Men; but to judge of, and punish the breaches of that Law in others, as he is perswaded the Offence deserves, even with Death it self, in Crimes where the heinousness of the Fact, in his Opinion, requires it.'

Of course, Locke most certainly was not an advocate of a libertarian or a liberal ideology (to suggest as such would be to suggest an intention that simply could not have been there) and certainly did not regard those property rights as absolute (or at least absolute in the sense that several posters around here have argued they are), as he also made clear in his discussion of the beginning of political societies in the Second Treatise in §120:

'To understand this better, it is fit to consider, that every Man, when he, at first, incorporates himself into any Commonwealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexed also, and submits to the Community those Possessions, which he has, or shall acquire, that do not already belong to any other Government. For it would be a direct Contradiction, for any one, to enter into Society with others for the securing and regulating of Property: And yet to suppose his Land, whose Property is to be regulated by the Laws of the Society, should be exempt from the Jurisdiction of that Government, to which he himself the Proprietor of the Land, is a Subject. By the same Act therefore, whereby any one unites his Person, which was before free, to any Commonwealth; by the same he unites his Possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they become, both of them, Person and Possession, subject to the Government and Dominion of that Commonwealth, as long as it hath a being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by Inheritance, Purchase, Permission, or otherways enjoys any part of the Land, so annext to, and under the Government of that Commonwealth, must take it with the Condition it is under; that is, of submitting to the Government of the Commonwealth, under whose Jurisdiction it is, as far forth, as any Subject of it.'

That all leads me to enquire quite what you meant when you stated that libertarians is predicated upon the doctrine that Lockean property rights are absolute or near-absolute. Locke saw political society as essential to the preservation of property rights. These were not absolute property rights, but ones held by virtue of an original contract between citizens and state, which would seem to undermine the possibility of their being absolute, although that obviously depends on what you meant by absolute.

[A18]

I am aware of Locke's broad definition of property (and have occasionally alluded to it on this forum), but in the context of Gully's question it seemed proper to focus on material objects.

I don't claim that Locke believed property rights were absolute or near absolute. As you suggest, Locke clearly believed that they were qualified by a social contract. By "Lockean property rights," I had in mind bodily integrity and homesteading-based claims to physical objects. I was not referring to a "Lockean" legal framework, taken as a whole.

I disagree with your claim that Locke saw property rights as being held by virtue of the social contract. He saw them as being qualified by the social contract, to be sure; and he certainly saw civil society as being essential to their protection. Nonetheless, he makes it clear that they exist even in the state of nature: "If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others" (§ 123).

[JohnFKennedy]

I wasn't suggesting you claimed Locke believed that, my intention was more to point to the fact that Locke's ideas about property were strongly linked to his arguments on political society, such that the legal framework and the principles of property don't seem to be divisible. That's where my final query about what you meant by 'absolute' came from.

Apologies, the 'by virtue' comment was slightly loosely worded (I blame it on writing that at one in the morning). What I meant by that remark was that the creation of society alters - and tempers - the nature of property rights from their position in a state of nature. Hence the section (§120) I quoted above where he discusses the uniting of property to a commonwealth.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Bumpity Bump.

All this talk of the gold market (I read some libertarian blogs recently and need to get the stupid off) and the superiority of the gold standard over fiat currency forgets obvious salient fact... that the value of gold itself is based on... absolutely nothing except the perspectives and prejudices of people especially those who operate in the ´market´. Gold serves no real function, in manufacture, in production or any other human economic activity of any great significance. Furthermore, in many societies in history it was not used as a currency (It only had a decorative function in those parts of Pre-colombian American where it was present and used). Some would argue that its rarity is it´s main virtue - but why not then a platinum standard? No, it`s real virtue as a currency as far as I can see is it´s SHINY (and now, it has historical connonations too which is actually one of the major reasons behind the bubble in precious metals. See below). I would like to convinced of gold´s utility beyond the sheer fondness of shiny things in which you can see your reflection but so far I haven´t actually got one. I, at least, would like to think that educated people at least have learned enough to get beyong "OMG SHINY" school of human thought about money.

Anyway it has been clear for some time that the whole ´gold´ debate has absolutely nothing to do with economics (as far as I can see veryfew  people arguing for it actually seem to understand their arguments) but everything to do with a particular (need I say, false?) image of American history.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

The essential contradiction of libertarianism is that of liberalism and liberal forms of socialism, in order to operate a modern economy production and productivity need to increase but in order to do so forms of personal expression and freedom need to suppressed or at least managed. One only has to think of all those times businessmen are found complaining about the amount of national ´sick days´ there are to understand this point. An economy is a fundamentally ´collectivist´ construct, what individuals do within it is what is important. As we all should know by now, people don´t act like social economic models tell us they should (in fact I actually the purpose of these models is for them to be imposed upon people as ´correct´ ways to act. See history of nineteenth century imperalism and that´s just to start with) and if they disobey en masse then of course the ´system´ has problems.

Imagine libertarians were put in charge of a late Imperial China in which a large percentage of the population were so dependant on opiates that it severly damaged the nation´s economy and worker productivity (this is crude example, I know, but it sums up my point). Now, of course, this is due to decisions that the Chinese population made themselves (this historical example alone shows the daftness of most economic theory especially any of a determinist nature. And Austrianism seems pretty determinist to me. Certainly "Libertarian Sociology" seems to be not existant). Would the libertarian argue in favour of ´free trade´(which in common with free trade throughout human history was first imposed by cannon and gun shot) and thereby further help to erode the basis of the local economy or does try to impose the laws and force of coercion that make the economy work in the first place. What is the libertarian solution exactly? I would love to know.

The Soviet Union had a similiar problem with alcoholism in the 80s (actually it was a not totally insignificant cause in the destruction of the union). And let us not forget why men like Rockefeller supported prohibition in the 20s (and continue to support the war on drugs now in many cases).

[dead0man]

I stand by my earlier post....

I'm still waiting for the bashing and the extravaganza.  There is one thing that has become obvious though, if somebody claims to be about to bash libertarians you can rest assured they won't bring up anything even close to a position actually held by a majority of libertarians.

gold's value, while mostly tied to the "shinny" part of the equation does have some very important uses in the electronics field.  It's one of the best conductors and doesn't corrode.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I stand by my earlier post....

I'm still waiting for the bashing and the extravaganza.  There is one thing that has become obvious though, if somebody claims to be about to bash libertarians you can rest assured they won't bring up anything even close to a position actually held by a majority of libertarians.

gold's value, while mostly tied to the "shinny" part of the equation does have some very important uses in the electronics field.  It's one of the best conductors and doesn't corrode.

And the relevance this has to the ´gold standard´ debate and bubble is? (I stand corrected on that issue, btw but not on the wider point).

[True Federalist]

Some would argue that its rarity is its main virtue - but why not then a platinum standard?

Actually, Imperial Russia included "platinum" as one of its standard coin metals when it was on a trimetallic system from 1828-1845.   That experiment helps to show why platinum is not a good coinage metal.  First of all, platinum is hard to work with.  It takes far less effort and cost to mint gold and silver coins of similar sizes.  Second, platinum is difficult to purify.  Indeed, the coins were minted from "pure Ural platinum" to which no other metal had been added, but which still contained significant impurities of iridium and palladium.  Third, as a coinage metal, it is quite possible to counterfeit with other metals.  In particular, gold and platinum have almost the same density, so depending on which happens to be the more valuable metal, one can fairly easily substitute the other to make counterfeits.  During the 19th century counterfeiting or adulterating gold coins with platinum happened a good bit as at that time platinum was the cheaper metal.  Indeed, the counterfeiting problem is why I doubt we'll ever go back to a circulating hard coinage standard unless we have a complete collapse of the trust that makes fiat currency work.  As shady as central banks can be, the ease with which high value circulating coins could be counterfeited makes them even more suspect unless one is dealing with a situation like Zimbabwe.  Even then, the solution was not to go on the gold standard, but to use a trustworthy fiat currency instead.

[Sibboleth]

I stand by my earlier post....

I'm still waiting for the bashing and the extravaganza.  There is one thing that has become obvious though, if somebody claims to be about to bash libertarians you can rest assured they won't bring up anything even close to a position actually held by a majority of libertarians.

gold's value, while mostly tied to the "shinny" part of the equation does have some very important uses in the electronics field.  It's one of the best conductors and doesn't corrode.

Though it's value as an industrial metal has nothing to do with its special place in the heart of cranks.

[dead0man]

Agreed.  I didn't think I said otherwise.

[Gustaf]

There is a confusion here. The argument in favour of a gold standard isn't necessarily linked to gold. I do think Gold is pretty suitable (it is rare but not too rare, it's durable and so on) and it obviously has become a strong candidate by virtue of its position in our culture.

The argument for having a metal based currency instead of a fiat one is not in any way specific for gold. I don't think those arguments are particularly convincing myself, but they don't relate to shinyness.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I missed this earlier.

There is a confusion here. The argument in favour of a gold standard isn't necessarily linked to gold. I do think Gold is pretty suitable (it is rare but not too rare, it's durable and so on) and it obviously has become a strong candidate by virtue of its position in our culture.

The argument for having a metal based currency instead of a fiat one is not in any way specific for gold. I don't think those arguments are particularly convincing myself, but they don't relate to shinyness.

Ummm but that "virtue of its position in our culture" is in fact, that gold is shiny and suitable for ornaments, no?

EDIT: Re-reading my original post I will note that my point on Gold was pretty much a side observation. When is anyone going to get down to the meat of my post?

[dead0man]

I tried reading it again, but I stopped at crop circles and the other thing.  I'm not that kind of libertarian (like most libertarians) so I can't help you in your quest to .....do whatever is you're trying to do here.

[King]

Where can I buy an "I Survived Gully Foyle Bashing Libertarianism" t-shirt?

[Gustaf]

I missed this earlier.

There is a confusion here. The argument in favour of a gold standard isn't necessarily linked to gold. I do think Gold is pretty suitable (it is rare but not too rare, it's durable and so on) and it obviously has become a strong candidate by virtue of its position in our culture.

The argument for having a metal based currency instead of a fiat one is not in any way specific for gold. I don't think those arguments are particularly convincing myself, but they don't relate to shinyness.

Ummm but that "virtue of its position in our culture" is in fact, that gold is shiny and suitable for ornaments, no?

EDIT: Re-reading my original post I will note that my point on Gold was pretty much a side observation. When is anyone going to get down to the meat of my post?

Yeah, sure. You still seem to miss the point that the argument for a gold standard has very little to do with the fact that it's based on the metal gold. Just like the argument for paper money isn't really about the virtues of paper as a material for bills.

I've never seen anyone make a point of the specific metal.

Also, you seem to think that libertarians necessarily think economic growth is a political end, but I've never met one who does (and I know many libertarians). I think most libertarians would think that the individual's freedom to smoke opium supercedes any governmental concerns about economic productivity. That's hardly a contradiction since economic productivity, to my knowledge, isn't a part of libertarian philosophy.

[True Federalist]

Anyway it has been clear for some time that the whole ´gold´ debate has absolutely nothing to do with economics (as far as I can see very few people arguing for it actually seem to understand their arguments) but everything to do with a particular (need I say, false?) image of American history.

Assuming this was the meat you referred to, then let me give you my take on the saner side of the gold argument in general and the libertarian portion thereof.

The primary theoretical advantage of a gold standard is that it is not a fiat currency.  That means that the size of the money supply is not dependent upon the whims of government.  (Not entirely true, but more on that later.)  That advantage of course is not solely held by gold.  Other commodities can and have held that position.  Indeed, there need not be a single standard.  For example, in pre-British India, some of the local rulers coined both gold and silver coins, but did not set a fixed exchange rate between the two metals.

So why did gold coins obtain their preeminent position as the standard of value?

To begin with, consider the advantages of coins.  They are a convenient size to be used in small  transactions.  Because they are made from metal, multiples or fractions of the base unit can be chosen as convenient.  You can't do that with hides.  Metal also happens to be durable.  You don't have to worry about vermin getting into your money as you would if one used a grain standard as Heinlein had a colony planet use in Time Enough for Love.   Of course what I have mentioned so far only explains why metal and not coins in particular.  The advantage that coins have over random lumps of metal is that it takes effort to make coins and a good deal of that effort, the production of dies, is the same whether one is making 1 coin or 1000 coins.  This means that once you have come to trust that a particular coin contains what you think it does, then other coins from the same source can also be trusted to a degree.

So why did we end up on a gold standard instead of a silver standard, a copper standard, a tin standard, etc.?  Well first off, while coins can be made into convenient sizes, for any one particular metal, you can't cover all of the desired denominations.  For any particular metal, the difference between the largest practical coin and the smallest is roughly 10:1 to 20:1. (You can find coins that are too small or large to be practical that were minted anyway.)

That's one of the reasons bimetallism developed in the first place.  The ratio of the value of gold and silver remained fairly stable for a considerable period of time (tho never constant) and close to or in that range, thereby making the the value of the largest practical silver coins and the smallest practical gold coins roughly equivalent.  That encouraged setting a link between gold and silver usually by fixing the value of gold coins to those of silver.  Since there were far more silver coins and silver was the bridge between gold and copper in value.  The reason trimetallism probably never developed was that the ratio for silver to copper was usually higher, which is why copper coins were not usually minted so as to have enough metal to be worth the equivalent of its stated value, altho the British cartwheel pennies minted at the end of the 18th century did.

So why did bimetallism get abandoned and why did we pick gold?  Simply put the ratios that made it possible stopped working.  The usual case when the ratio between gold and silver differed from the official ratio was to reset the ratio. For example,  the guinea beloved of English punters was originally a gold coin worth 20 shillings (1 pound).  When the value of gold relative to silver increase, the coin was revalued at 21 shillings.  (The United States eagle ($10) was reduced in size in the 1830s for the same reason.) Bimetallism was abandoned in the 1870s because the discovery of new deposits and improvements in metallurgy (that for example made it worth extracting low concentrations of silver from copper or lead deposits) caused the value of silver to gold to not only drop quickly, but to drop to the point that restoring the ratio to a point that would make bimetallism work again would have left a gap in the range of coin sizes.  Bimetallism had to be dropped and governments profited by transforming the silver coinage into a token coinage.  (Note: Some countries such as China, that had never bothered much with coining gold remained on a silver standard.)
Having covered why we eventually fell into being on the gold standard, let me next cover why we really weren't, or at least weren't on a pure gold standard. The simple explanation is credit.  The multiplier effect of credit on the money supply loosens the link between the size of the money supply and the size of the gold supply.  A strong central bank even gives the government a degree of power over the size of the money supply by giving it tools to control how much money is in circulation for a given amount of gold.  Eliminating central banks won't eliminate that power, just put it in the hands of those who own the banks.

Fiat money is more flexible than money from a gold-backed bank, which is both good and bad.  Those who favor gold-backed banks fear the bad more than they appreciate the good.

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I'm bumping this old thread to post a Caplan article that needs to be read for its sheer awfulness. Mercifully, it's short...

Feeling vs. the Minimum Wage

Bryan Caplan

Last week, I argued that some ideas are inherently hard to sell to people with "Feeling" personalities:

If you're trying to sell libertarianism to Feeling people, "hard head, soft heart" ideas are more persuasive than "hard head, hard heart" ideas.  But the libertarian remains at an inherent disadvantage against intellectual rivals pedaling "soft head, soft heart" ideas.

Several critics replied that this is just a failure of imagination on my part.  If you can make an idea appealing to Thinking people, you can make it appealing to Feeling people.  Just skillfully repackage the product, and you're done.

I'm skeptical, but I'd love to be proven wrong.  So I propose a simple challenge to pave the way to my refutation: Tell me how to sell the abolition of the minimum wage to the typical Feeling American.  

Please don't give me any "hard heads, soft hearts" answers.  Give me "soft heads, soft hearts" answers.  You're trying to persuade Oprah Winfrey, not Data from Star Trek after he gets his emotion chip.

Feel free to critique and improve on each others' responses in the comments.  I'll post the best candidates in the near future.

As I was told in the other thread that I was making a strawman version of libertarianism, I shall not be providing any commentary but it is hardly necessary anyway and I should emphasize here this is not satire. Repeat, not satire.

[ingemann]

I was reading the essay in the first post and as a Dane I feel have to comment. As example ticket sale to trains, ooutside a few major stations we don't have a shop which only sell tickets, in fact mostly they are sold either in automats or in 7/11 (who lease shops on most Danish train stations). So he entered a highly specialised service shop and expected minimum workers. Next that the person knew the train plan came as a surprise to him (not really the most complex task), especially a person answering question about tthe train plan the entire day. How incompetent is American service workers that these things come as a surprise to anybody? Next the worker likely do not have more than a elemental school or high school education (but the former is more likely), but some of the few things Danes learn very early are; take intiativ, cooperate and try not to borther your boss by things you can find out yourself (as example with the computer she stand in front off).

[SPC]

I'm bumping this old thread to post a Caplan article that needs to be read for its sheer awfulness. Mercifully, it's short...

Feeling vs. the Minimum Wage

Bryan Caplan

Last week, I argued that some ideas are inherently hard to sell to people with "Feeling" personalities:

If you're trying to sell libertarianism to Feeling people, "hard head, soft heart" ideas are more persuasive than "hard head, hard heart" ideas.  But the libertarian remains at an inherent disadvantage against intellectual rivals pedaling "soft head, soft heart" ideas.

Several critics replied that this is just a failure of imagination on my part.  If you can make an idea appealing to Thinking people, you can make it appealing to Feeling people.  Just skillfully repackage the product, and you're done.

I'm skeptical, but I'd love to be proven wrong.  So I propose a simple challenge to pave the way to my refutation: Tell me how to sell the abolition of the minimum wage to the typical Feeling American.  

Please don't give me any "hard heads, soft hearts" answers.  Give me "soft heads, soft hearts" answers.  You're trying to persuade Oprah Winfrey, not Data from Star Trek after he gets his emotion chip.

Feel free to critique and improve on each others' responses in the comments.  I'll post the best candidates in the near future.

As I was told in the other thread that I was making a strawman version of libertarianism, I shall not be providing any commentary but it is hardly necessary anyway and I should emphasize here this is not satire. Repeat, not satire.

What's your objection, to his advocacy for abolition of the minimum wage (I don't think many libertarians would object to legalizing transactions between consenting adults), or his acknowledgement that libertarians are bad at pathos?

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

I'm bumping this old thread to post a Caplan article that needs to be read for its sheer awfulness. Mercifully, it's short...

Feeling vs. the Minimum Wage

Bryan Caplan

Last week, I argued that some ideas are inherently hard to sell to people with "Feeling" personalities:

If you're trying to sell libertarianism to Feeling people, "hard head, soft heart" ideas are more persuasive than "hard head, hard heart" ideas.  But the libertarian remains at an inherent disadvantage against intellectual rivals pedaling "soft head, soft heart" ideas.

Several critics replied that this is just a failure of imagination on my part.  If you can make an idea appealing to Thinking people, you can make it appealing to Feeling people.  Just skillfully repackage the product, and you're done.

I'm skeptical, but I'd love to be proven wrong.  So I propose a simple challenge to pave the way to my refutation: Tell me how to sell the abolition of the minimum wage to the typical Feeling American.  

Please don't give me any "hard heads, soft hearts" answers.  Give me "soft heads, soft hearts" answers.  You're trying to persuade Oprah Winfrey, not Data from Star Trek after he gets his emotion chip.

Feel free to critique and improve on each others' responses in the comments.  I'll post the best candidates in the near future.

As I was told in the other thread that I was making a strawman version of libertarianism, I shall not be providing any commentary but it is hardly necessary anyway and I should emphasize here this is not satire. Repeat, not satire.

What's your objection, to his advocacy for abolition of the minimum wage (I don't think many libertarians would object to legalizing transactions between consenting adults), or his acknowledgement that libertarians are bad at pathos?

Are you really so blind as not to see the absurdity there?