I wrote this in response to an awful piece of libertarian rhetoric parodying the same song. Actually, I've never heard the original, so my version's basically just a poem.

[ETA] A caveat I initially forgot to include: this isn't meant to be an attack on everyone with libertarian views, so much as on the kind of person for who libertarianism is an ethical philosophy in its own right (ie the type of person who would write the original!), and perhaps on certain traits that more casual libertarians often share. I wrote it with a libertarian friend of mine in mind, who took the second couplet as his 'political views' on Facebook

I'm still editing it now and again, but I've hopefully managed to avoid any unfinished sentences...

I am the very model of a modern libertarian;
With the texture of a strawman but the breeding of an aryan.
When empiricism fails I shall use the deadly ‘ought’:
‘We ought to ban each law that’s not protecting daddy’s yacht.’

I love to pick on hippies even more fervid than me,
Because I know my modus tollens – if not A then B.
So let’s imply that Leninism is the one alternative
And dodge the awkward questions like how we’re not Conservative

And dodge the awkward questions like how we’re not Conservative
And dodge the awkward questions like how we’re not Conservative
And dodge the awkward questions like how we’re not Conservative

My priorities are hazy; on ethics I’m at sea
But though I can’t say what it is, I do so value liberty.
Lament once lucky orphans / free shops in apartheid,
Now forced in education / now stuck with blacks inside.

Lament once lucky orphans / free shops in apartheid
Now forced in education / now stuck with blacks inside.

Hard scientists have rolled their eyes and left us to obscurity
Since fans of Rand and Hayek cry, ‘The facts have use iff they suit me.’
Indeed, we oft ‘doubt’ climate change; the Times editors’ desk is
Stuffed with branches of one theme: ‘ignore that damned Oreskes!’

You’ll see – one day we will ‘remove’ all violent coercion,
Like workplace health and safety laws. Destroy such vile perversions!
My faith is strong: I know for sure my social model’s viable
(Though – despite my love for Popper – not remotely falsifiable).

Despite his love for Popper it’s not remotely falsifiable.
Despite his love for Popper it’s not remotely falsifiable.
Despite his love for Popper it’s not remotely falsi-falsifiable.

My zeal’s truly catholic. My teen years were contrarian...
But thoughtful once, I now prefer the simple life sectarian.
In short, renounce nuance; what’s truly libertarian
(I had to get this in somewhere) is antidisestablishmentarian.

He’s long renounced all things latitudinarian,
(Please forgive this vain caprice) he’s just antidisestablishmentarian.

I’ve mastered economics, plain in its banality,
But tend to change the subject when you speak of ‘externality’.
So when I’ve scorned all social science disagreeing with me,
When I’ve come to see Atlas Shrugged as a double blind study,

When I’ve excised history ‘twixt Stalin and the Trias,
And when I’m sure just lefties suffer confirmation bias,
In short, when Penn & Teller’s Bullshit covers me,
You’ll say a better libertarian there never was than me.
You'll say a better libertarian there never was than he,
You'll say a better libertarian there never was than he,
You'll say a better libertarian there never was-than was-than he!
Please don’t think my bitter humour hides a lack of real compassion,
But my pity’s for myself – no other man deserves a ration;
For big business I despair, though (and for this poor coerced rhyme despair again).
I am the very model of a modern libertarian.

And though honest thinkers at his vision will despair again,
He is the very model of a modern libertarian.

burn.... especially the part about externalities. It's ok though, hopefully they will all be floating out into the ocean soon on their anti-democratic seasteads.

For the record, I'm a libertarian.

I admit the externalities are a problem. The only way I can think of to fix that is taxes and subsidies, but there's the question of who decides how much to make them.

In any case, I started a thread to discuss this sort of thing on.

For the record, I'm a libertarian.

We'd worked that much out

I think Ryan is broadly libertarian, too, and I don't actually want to offend either of you - see the caveat I've added to the OP (which I meant to write in the first place).

I'm halfway through writing an extended post that I might put in your politics thread when I have a chance, but I'm moving more and more towards the view that the most utilitarian way of approaching politics is to abandon it completely and focus on less controversial issues. Meanwhile, I definitely don't think we have anything to gain (excepting possibly personal satisfaction) from posting social theory on here - what both you and EU post about politics always sounds initially compelling but ultimately it feels hollow to me. It needs empirical verification and very rarely has it...

I think both Daniel's and my claims are verifiable, as long as they are ultimately based on utilitarian grounds. Granted, it is quite hard to quantify anything in utilitarian terms, and one can come to many repugnant conclusions, but I am assuming those aren't dealbreakers for you, or you wouldn't be here.

My own worldview has been explained in the greatest depth here and here. If there is anything which isn't verifiable about any of this, I would very much like to know.

As for Daniel's views, libertarianism is rather easy to refute on utilitarian grounds. Most happiness scholars have actually concluded that social democracies rank higher than more laissez-faire economies as far as happiness goes. The most prominent libertarian argument against the consensus within Happiness Studies was a piece by Will Wilkinson which condemned any attempts at quantifying happiness (though, in a colbert-esque manner, tried to simultaneously argue that America is quantifiably happier).

Though I think setting aside the consensus of happiness research, it is just blindingly obvious that volatile boom and bust cycles and atomized dog-eat-dog mentality causes all sorts of mental problems, unhappiness being the most widespread among them.

More verifiably, we must also factor in that because of the "hedonic treadmill" people naturally gravitate towards a natural equilibrium happiness set point, and that people tend to judge their own happiness and success in a relativistic fashion. Thus, it is Hedonistic Imperative type stuff which is actually necessary to maximize happiness, and the way to prove which mode of production is superior is to rate how likely it is at achieving the aims of the Hedonistic Imperative.

Considering that the market only can provide the profit motive, it cannot account for other goals or for externalities. Luckily, new communications technologies allow for different modes of production which allow for other motivations, can account for externalities, and can simultaneously be cheaper and more efficient.

How can the market achieve the aims of the Hedonistic Imperative, when there are currently no incentive structures to support the rights of animals, and strong incentives to create artificial scarcities. Not to mention perverse incentives along the lines of the Military-Industrial Complex which actually make war and disease profitable. True, there are incentives to at least treat animals just well enough to continue to produce quality products, but what about the even more urgent case of Wild Animals.

There are virtually no incentives to treat wild animals with any respect whatsoever. They are seen by the market either as pests or game, but never as intrinsically valuable beings, and incentive structures will always override a minority of activists and ethical consumers... thus, the market must be out-competed and made irrelevant to the largest extent possible by Open Source methods in order to abolish suffering from all sentient life.

Perhaps this isn't the best way to make my Felicifia debut, but I believe in the aims of the Hedonistic Imperative and I also believe a more libertarian society is the only way it can be accomplished (both through more technology and the fact that many incremental aspects of it would be immediately banned in our current society, like smart drugs).

I would read the OP's poem, but I stopped at the part where it said I, as a libertarian, have the "breeding of an Aryan." Just offends me too much to continue, and not justified at all.

Actually most true nootropics (aka little to no side effects) are legal in the US. I know because I have used half of them, but haven't found much benefit. I have a feeling the same would be true of other smart drugs which are relatively free of side effects.

While I agree that having a society which takes at least a prudent stance towards enhancement technologies is a pre-requisite for achieving the Hedonistic Imperative, it is far from the most important factor. What is most important is the mode of production, since that is what guides the technological development of the society.

What types of technologies are we seeing developed now? Are we any closer to solving the Hedonistic Imperative from a quantitative perspective? Actually we have more suffering now than ever. We are causing ecological destruction which arguably harms wild animals, we have a vast increase in factory farmed animals which indisputably harms animals, and we have billions of starving, depressed, or diseased people. Free market reforms in the Periphery of the world-system have shown themselves to be almost universally a complete disaster, whereas protectionist countries like China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Korea have comprised the majority of the countries that have risen up from poverty, though with each leaving significant segments of their populations behind as market economies of any type are inherently prone to do (and consequently why people like Hayek supported a Basic Income).

While capitalism is a decentralized mode of production, as Hayek showed, it is not the most decentralized since huge concentrations of zero-sum wealth still prevails, and there remains incentives to turn nonzero situations into zero-sum ones (artificial scarcity).

The internet has shown the amazing power of open source, open standards, and so forth. If it weren't for HTML and TCP/IP, there would be no Internet. If we never utilized free collaboration, we wouldn't have had Wikipedia or Creative Commons. The debate in the software world is over, and Open Source is universally considered a huge success. Closed competitors like Microsoft are forced to expend enormous amounts on research and practically give away their software in order to keep up. Yet, decentralized production will quickly be expanding out from the world of bits into the world of atoms with the rise of 3D desktop manufacturing (RepRap) and other decentralized productive technologies made especially possible through open source development methods.

As a libertarian, there is no way you can oppose Open Source on philosophical grounds. To refute my claims you must argue that it is impractical or not likely to be resilient despite all the evidence to the contrary, and that simultaneously the Market will somehow provide for the elimination of suffering despite it being an entirely external consideration as far as the profit motive is concerned. Note: AGI will save us all is not an acceptable answer to me.

Nootropics and other such drugs are ones I often read about various governments taking a look at and considering banning. I hope it doesn't happen, but in a society that will ban harmless drugs such as amineptine, I have a tendency to think that no smart drug will be spared from banning to "protect" us.

"whereas protectionist countries like China, Russia, Brazil, India, and South Korea have comprised the majority of the countries that have risen up from poverty"

That is just in recent times. Many other countries had already long ago risen from a standard of life which would be considered poverty today due to capitalist systems. China, and especially Hong Kong, is actually much freer economically than many countries at the current moment (including the United States).

All of the problems you lay out in your third paragraph are problems in our current society, which is decidedly not libertarian, so if anything that is a criticism of the current system and the status quo rather than a problem with libertarianism. "Free market reforms in the Periphery of the world-system have shown themselves to be almost universally a complete disaster" -- please outline some of these. They were probably not actual free market reforms.

It's interesting that you mention that "protectionist" countries are successful, and imply that somehow the free market has caused many suffering and dying people, when in fact many "first-world" countries including the United States and all of the European Union exhibit highly protectionist farming policies that continue to keep people in places like Africa in poverty. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to buy crops from someone in Africa at my American grocery store and help Africans relieve themselves from poverty, but I'm prevented from doing so for the most part due to subsidies for American farmers and tariffs on non-American farmers. In the European Union, it's the same story.

I would love to purchase sugar ethanol from Brazil, but I can't because the United States Congress blocks it with a special exemption. These "protectionist" countries would be greatly helped by free market reforms instituted by larger countries-- they often provide a superior product that I would like to compensate them for but am simply barred from doing so by my government.

There's no barrier between libertarianism and open standards or open collaboration. I wonder why you would make that connection. Wikipedia is a private project that any libertarian would find worthy, where you're allowed to do what you want as long as you're not causing harm. In fact, I have over 7,000 edits there, so it seems to have this libertarian's full support! Creative Commons is also a libertarian notion-- an agreement between private parties, not based on coercion or force. Wikipedia is actually a bit of a libertarian success story.

Actually, your example of open source vs. closed source such as Microsoft is a perfect example of the market at work. People like open source, so open source rises to the top. The government didn't mandate that everything had to be open source or that everything had to be closed source, it is just the best way to go and therefore is chosen by more people and is successful in the end. The Internet itself is pretty libertarian in nature, and I think that's worked out pretty well overall.

There is no reason that eliminating suffering cannot be part of a profit motive, as it has been in many cases. How have we developed aspirin, Prozac, Zoloft, transcranial magnetic stimulation, anesthesia, electricity, Provigil or anything else? I have seen these products come into fruition, but I see no reason why a top-down, centralized government would say its main goal is eliminating suffering or implementing the Hedonistic Imperative, from what I've seen of both governments and people.

I started a thread to contain these tangents. I would appreciate it if you posted there.

Daniel,

I will respond to the arguments regarding neoliberal trade reforms in your thread

BM,

There's no barrier between libertarianism and open standards or open collaboration.

I never said there was.

Actually, your example of open source vs. closed source such as Microsoft is a perfect example of the market at work. People like open source, so open source rises to the top.

Precisely, except there are a lot of corporatist public policies and tyrannical "intellectual property" laws which stifle open innovation, and Open Source is only succeeding despite this... imagine what could be achieved when we knock down these barriers.

http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.ph ... 20Monopoly

Furthermore, even if you do think Open Source will naturally tend to rise to the top, that doesn't mean you should sit on your ass and hope for the best. We need to be actively pushing toward open source, since it is so much better, and we need to break down the legal barriers to open innovation.

There is no reason that eliminating suffering cannot be part of a profit motive, as it has been in many cases. How have we developed aspirin, Prozac, Zoloft, transcranial magnetic stimulation, anesthesia, electricity, Provigil or anything else? I have seen these products come into fruition, but I see no reason why a top-down, centralized government would say its main goal is eliminating suffering or implementing the Hedonistic Imperative, from what I've seen of both governments and people.

This is a false dichotomy. Just because I argue that the profit motive runs counter to the Hedonistic Imperative, which is deductively true, doesn't mean I support any statist policies to achieve this. I argued explicitly for open source models.

I suppose I should respond to that comment here.

Furthermore, even if you do think Open Source will naturally tend to rise to the top, that doesn't mean you should sit on your ass and hope for the best. We need to be actively pushing toward open source, since it is so much better, and we need to break down the legal barriers to open innovation.

The key here is that if Open Source is better, it will rise to the top. It's not a given that it's better.

It is better for virtually all things. I do admit that certain very capital intensive industries like microprocessors are currently so difficult that the trade-offs are fine. Same with certain other advanced technologies.

However other advanced tech like biotechnology has shown amazing potential under DIYbio, that I think we could probably shift to open biotech and open pharmaceuticals in the near future.

There are some other extreme exceptions for security reasons.

Example: nuclear weapons

Though the rationale is different there, obviously. It isn't that open source would be an ineffective way to innovate nuclear weapons, but rather we cannot risk the dissemination of this knowledge.

That said, we shouldn't let these extreme exceptions reduce our passion for promoting Open Source in the vast sectors of industry which could be greatly improved.

DanielLC wrote:The key here is that if Open Source is better, it will rise to the top. It's not a given that it's better.

It's not a given that better things will rise to the top, either.

That's my problem with all these claims - we want them to be falsifiable/verifiable, which is a good start, but it's not at all clear that they actually are. If you run a test to see whether privatising a river results in more utilitarian distribution of its contents than government administration, you still don't know whether a similar decision about another river will have the same results (nor is it easy to know what the results are). You can look at context, but there're always counter-examples coming from deeper context. So to really understand what's happening, you have to model it from the fundamental level upwards, which means simulating unimaginable numbers of interactions... which we can't possibly do.

And that's just for one policy. When you're talking about classifying the whole legal system of a nation into something that you can describe in one word (be it socialism, libertarianism or other), you're being hopelessly imprecise. Even supposedly key concepts like 'private', 'public', 'open source', 'coercion', 'liberty' are usually too ill-defined to be at all scientific.

Arepo,

Induction is imperfect by definition, and perhaps your test for verifiability is stricter than ours? Perhaps you want 99.9 percent certainty, despite the steep diminishing marginal returns of acquiring such precision, whereas Daniel and I are satisfied with 99% or 90%.

To be honest, I don't find much ambiguity in the definitions of libertarian concepts or the post-scarcity concepts which I was advocating. Each are well defined and internally coherent, but the question is which results in higher utility.

Now I may disagree with many of the underlying premises of most forms of libertarianism, such as free will, but that doesn't mean that the system which they ultimately intend to implement isn't well defined. I might argue that it would be impossible to construct such a society, given the very nature of the profit motive which they are seeking to maintain, but that doesn't mean there is no blueprint there.