Not long ago, a friend asked me the difference between Libertarians and Left-wing Democrats. I suspect he was trying to make the point that they are very different. But on thinking about it, I noticed similiarities.
What I am about to say will, I am sure, offend some people, since it is not true of all Libertarians or Democrats. But, I can assure you, it has been true of some that I have met.
How are some Libertarians and some Left-wing Democrats similar? Two ways come to mind immediately. Both are fundamental:
I disagree. As a practical matter, lack of such regulation means monopolies will grow. Other than an idealistic belief in the goodness of everyone, I see these people as favoring a rule of thugs.
Some Left-wing Democrats are against independent, non-governmental organizations that operate businesses. They are against private firms. They favor a single authority that makes decisions.
I disagree with this, too. As a practical matter, without many independent decision makers, a society will stultify. Other than an idealistic belief in the goodness of everyone, I also see these people as favoring a rule of thugs.
The difference is that in the one situation you are beaten by private thugs; in the other, you are beaten by government thugs.
My Libertarian friends have told me that they expect rapid technological change to continue. With such rapid change, monopolies will die quickly — within a generation. In the modern world, they say that strong companies are unable to hinder technological change sufficiently to prevent themselves from being hurt fatally, even though the people in the companies have every motivation to do so.
Moreover, they argue that no private group will ever take over or strongly influence a government. They have told me that even though the thugs have motivation to do so, they will not. They argue that you will never see an oligopoly lobby for a government to start an `Interstate Commerce Commission' as the railroad owners did in the 1880s. You will never see a world wide trade organization such as the WTO that responds primarily to the strong but not the weak.
My Left-wing Democratic friends have told me that there is more to life than a desire for profit, but that if you permit any organization to focus on profit, it will become powerful. That is because successful profit-taking enables you to purchase other resourses, including those of coercion. With money, you can pay the Mafia or a government to do your bidding, whether it be directly, by giving people bags full of cash, or indirectly, by funding schools and media to persuade people of your beliefs.
Consequently, they argue, the only solution is a government of people who themselves have no desire for profit. These people can use the coercive powers of a government — its police, courts, and military — to prevent profit-oriented organizations from gaining power and changing society.
Moreover, they argue, it is very hard to choose who is safe. So rather than design a government that funds many different efforts, it is better to design a government that tries to pick the best single effort.
I agree that there is more to life than a desire for profit. I also agree that organizations that focus on profit are more likely to become powerful than those that do not.
However, I also agree with Douglass C. North1 that
... no one knows the correct answer to the problems we confront ... The society that permits the maximum generation of trials will be most likely to solve [them] ...
Hence, I think there must be multiple decision makers. But at the same time, I have learned from my studies of history that powerful organizations can indeed form a Mafia. They can influence a government to form an Interstate Commerce Commission and then `capture' that agency.
I expect large modern corporations to slow technological change. I expect them to do this directly by gaining extensions to the length of copyright or indirectly by influencing schools to hinder technological change.
The second similarity between some Libertarians and some Left-wing Democrats is a favoring of `liberal social values'.
Main stream conservatives argue that societies are complex and full of feedback loops about which we are ignorant. Consequently, it is safer to continue a social system that was developed after early humans filled their `ecological niches' and began to compete with one another. Thus, they favor a continuation of a `bronze age warrior' or patriarchal social structure that limits the opportunities for women and favors men readily able to kill others.
My left-wing Democratic friends argue that it is immoral to limit some people, that it is wrong to reward killer psychopaths, that modern technology and its side effects are dangerous as is, and, as a very practical matter, that a society that makes use of all its talent, including women and others who were excluded, is more likely to survive.
In this, I agree with both my Libertarian and left-wing Democratic friends.
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