gillespie, nick rzn
<div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">180?! 3/20</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://boingboing.net/2020/01/27/galt-underwater.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://boingboing.net/2020/01/27/galt-underwater.html</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Leading libertarian intellectuals are now disavowing the label (Tyler Cowan says he's now a "State Capacity Libertarian") thanks to the total failure of libertarianism to cope with climate change.</b></font></div><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">John Quiggin (<a href="https://boingboing.net/?s=%22john%20quiggin%22" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">previously</a>) explores how, at the start of the climate debate, libertarians advocated for "market based" solutions, like tradeable emissions credits, something dubbed "free-market environmentalism." The model had been used successfully to fight acid rain, and it was appealing to libertarians as it "would supply incentives to find the most cost-effective path toward reducing emissions."</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Climate activists weren't fond of the idea, favoring instead a limit on pollution itself (this traces a similar arc to the debate on smoking, which started with "sin taxes" on tobacco but really only made progress when these were augmented with absolute prohibitions on smoking in most places and strict curbs on the sale and marketing of tobacco products).</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>But once emissions credits became a reality, libertarians almost unanimously rejected them, and switched from "free market environmentalism" to straight-up climate denial. As Quiggin says, the problem with tradeable emissions is that it rebuts the core tenet of libertarianism: John Locke's idea that property rights arise spontaneously from nature, rather than being created by governments hoping to achieve specific policy goals.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But more deeply, "Affluent white men who don’t like being told what to do are by far the most important constituency for libertarianism. Such men would consider it a dreadful imposition to have to pay, whether directly or indirectly, for the right to drive a car or use air conditioning."</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This created a steady-state in which the climate steadily worsened and libertarians steadily denied that their cities were underwater, on fire, or gripped by pandemics, repeating expensive talking points about solar cycles or crooked scientists who were hoping to dismantle capitalism (IOW: "Reality has a well-known leftist bias").</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But Trump disrupted the steady state. When he took office, the libertarian frontrunners abandoned any pretense of commitment to anything except more power and money for people who were monied and powerful, leaving the few standards-bearers for the movement with no way forward.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> </span></b><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Even as the Cato Institute abandoned its climate denial stance, it still argued that the climate crisis couldn't be averted by state intervention, despite the fact that markets had totally failed to come to grips with it.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quiggin reckons with the incoherence of markets-only thinking in his masterful 2019 book <a href="https://amzn.to/2t1se61" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Economics in Two Lessons</a>, which explores the power, limitations and dangers of using markets to solve our problems in a thoughtful and clear way.</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; border-left: 4px solid rgb(153, 153, 153); padding-left: 1em; margin: 1em;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Having abandoned intellectual credibility in the fight to stop climate action, libertarianism has no future as a movement. Trumpism will soon swallow up what’s left of its organizational structure. Individuals have a number of choices available, from Niskanen-style “liberaltarianism” to the fantasy of “going Galt.” But the libertarian moment is well and truly over.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Global warming is the ultimate refutation of Lockean propertarianism. No one can pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while leaving “enough and as good” for everyone else. It has taken thirty years, but this undeniable fact has finally killed the propertarian movement in the United States.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 8px; box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/libertarianism-climate-change-environment-private-property" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Libertarians Can’t Save the Planet</a> [John Quiggin/Jacobin]</font></p><div class="share" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px 2em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; line-height: 1;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></h3><h3 class="thetags" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; line-height: 1; text-transform: uppercase;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/cap-and-trade" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">CAP-AND-TRADE</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/cato-institute" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">CATO INSTITUTE</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/climate" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">CLIMATE</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/climate-crisis" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">CLIMATE CRISIS</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/denialism-vs-nihilism" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">DENIALISM VS NIHILISM</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/free-market-environmentalism" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">FREE MARKET ENVIRONMENTALISM</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/liberatarianism" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">LIBERATARIANISM</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/peak-indifference" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">PEAK INDIFFERENCE</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/reality-has-a-well-known-lefti" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">REALITY HAS A WELL-KNOWN LEFTIST BIAS</a> / <a href="https://boingboing.net/tag/state-capacity-libertarians" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">STATE CAPACITY LIBERTARIANS</a></font></h3></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span id="more-765178" style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/libertarianism-climate-change-environment-private-property"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/01/libertarianism-climate-change-environment-private-property</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The decline of libertarianism — also known as propertarianism — has inspired a lot of discussion in the past couple of years. The economist Tyler Cowen recently disavowed the label, affirming his commitment to a modified version of the philosophy that he calls “State Capacity Libertarianism.”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cowen’s defection continues the exodus of intellectually serious figures from the libertarian milieu, most notably to the so-called liberaltarian Niskanen Center. Both Cowen and the Niskanen cohort have stressed the failure of mainstream libertarianism to formulate an honest response to the climate crisis.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Free-Market Environmentalism: Theory and Practice</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the issue of climate change first received serious attention in the 1990s, for a time it looked set to establish common ground between environmentalists and libertarians. <b>There was much interest in the concept of “free-market environmentalism” or FME, </b>drawing upon the work of British economist Ronald Coase, who had suggested that environmental problems could be resolved through the proper allocation of property rights. Terry Anderson of Montana State University exercised a strong influence in these debates.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FME’s key proposal for addressing climate change was the creation of tradable emissions permits, a model that had been successfully deployed in the case of sulfur dioxide emissions. According to this view, a market in permits would supply incentives to find the most cost-effective path toward reducing emissions, as long as there were appropriate limits on the volume of permits.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Most environmental activists greeted the idea of “rights to pollute” with suspicion:</b> they argued for more direct controls, as part of a broader shift away from mass consumerism. But many were won over by the prospect of forming an effective coalition to press for decarbonization. By the time of the Kyoto conference in 1997, support for carbon prices as the most cost-effective long-term solution, to be implemented through internationally tradable permits, had become the dominant view. Twenty years later, this vision is finally being realized in the European Union, where high permit prices are driving coal-fired power out of existence.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trading Places</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But a funny thing happened on the way to Kyoto. Propertarians, who had often been keen on tradable permits as long as environmentalists opposed them, now rejected the idea with near unanimity, along with the rest of the political right. Since then, we have faced a paradoxical situation where they consider any kind of market-based solution to climate change unacceptable. Why did this happen?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The problem was to some extent philosophical. Propertarian thought relies heavily upon the Lockean fiction that property rights arise naturally, before the emergence of a state</b> (defined broadly to include any kind of authority within a group, tribe, or nation). Obviously, no such rights could have existed when it came to the atmosphere, so emissions permits would have to be the creation of national governments working through global agreements. Admitting that states define and enforce property rights was too big a pill for many propertarians to swallow.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But the cultural barriers standing in the way of free-market environmentalism were even greater</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Affluent white men who don’t like being told what to do are by far the most important constituency for libertarianism. Such men would consider it a dreadful imposition to have to pay, whether directly or indirectly, for the right to drive a car or use air conditioning. Environmentalists who insist that untrammeled individualism of all kinds has malign consequences lie at the opposite cultural pole.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, this created a dilemma for propertarians. Having rejected both state- and market-led solutions to climate change, their only remaining option was to deny that the problem existed at all. This required tremendous intellectual dishonesty, supplied in large measure by hired guns who had won their spurs in earlier fights over passive smoking and the ozone layer. This didn’t trouble the libertarian ground troops, who clung tenaciously to their baseless self-image as the smartest guys in the room. Lacking any scientific, economic, or statistical knowledge to back up their opinions, they seized upon the innumerable talking points that the denial industry churned out.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All-In for Trump</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then Trump came along. He grasped — indeed, embodied — the reality that abstract notions of personal liberty were not what really appealed to the conservative base. Rather, it was the conviction that well-off white men should be free to think, speak, and act as they pleased, while the state clamps down on everyone else when they step out of line.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, two decades of climate change denialism fostered a nihilistic and crudely partisan attitude toward basic questions of truth or falsehood among conservatives. Trump substituted barefaced lies for the ponderous apologetics of the intellectual right, starting with the claim that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">After Trump’s election, the “libertarian moment” so widely touted just a few years ago gave way to a sudden collapse, with most of the movement’s intellectual leadership shifting in the opposite direction. Republican politicians seen as potential leaders of the future, such as Rand Paul and Mike Lee, went all-in for Trump, along with advocacy groups like FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth. The only exception was Michigan’s Justin Amash, who quit the Republican Party in 2019 and now faces almost certain defeat, sharing the fate of a handful of state-level Republicans who departed to join the Libertarian Party.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The remnants, clustered around the much-diminished Cato Institute, have no obvious way forward. The institute finally abandoned climate denialism last year, but it still has no answer for the climate crisis. The last remaining cheerleader for the “libertarian moment,” Nick Gillespie, offered a rather slippery response to Tyler Cowen’s criticism:</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whatever your beliefs and preferences might be on a given issue, the scale (and cost) of addressing, say, climate change is massive compared to delivering basic education, and with the latter at least, there’s no reason to believe that more state control or dollars will create positive outcomes.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>On close inspection, Gillespie is just restating the standard libertarian view on education, while saying nothing at all about climate change, other than to acknowledge that it is a massive problem. He neither denies that “more state control or dollars” are needed, nor offers any alternative.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Having abandoned intellectual credibility in the fight to stop climate action, libertarianism has no future as a movement. Trumpism will soon swallow up what’s left of its organizational structure. Individuals have a number of choices available, from Niskanen-style “liberaltarianism” to the fantasy of “going Galt.” But the libertarian moment is well and truly over.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global warming is the ultimate refutation of Lockean propertarianism. No one can pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while leaving “enough and as good” for everyone else. It has taken thirty years, but this undeniable fact has finally killed the propertarian movement in the United States.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ABOUT THE AUTHOR</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Quiggin, an Australian economist at the University of Queensland, blogs at Crooked Timber.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div>