collapsedsquid:
So, in today’s “things that annoy me.” and possibly why I’ve gotten so short with some people. Sorry about that.
In this grand comparison of markets vs governments, socialism vs capitalism, there are recurring themes and arguments.
One of them is “look at North Korea and Venezuela.“ And that’s a fair point. I would like to point out some Libertarian societies that failed. But I can’t, and there’s a reason for that.
Basically, “socialism” as a word can mean nothing more than the idea that the government has a role to play in the economy, and should make sure the worst off are taken care of. That’s a vague criterion. We can argue over whether something is “true socialism,“ nobody’s opinion will be changed, it’s meaningless.
Libertarianism is different. It’s a set of rules on what is and is not allowed. It’s not like it’s totally definitive, some people could argue that a minarchist state is libertarian, some would demand full anarcho-capitalism. But in principle, it’s based on a few rules.
The thing about a libertarian society is that, as is argued and asserted here, by an actual libertarian, it has not been tried. There’s a bunch of discussion there, but I think there’s a crucial reason for that.
That reason is that it’s unstable, and anyone who actually tries it gives up. Libertarianism fails in such a way that it’s easy to call the results non-libertarian. If you try to enforce a regime based on strict property rights, I will predict one of two results. You could get overthrown, in which case it didn’t count, libertarianism wasn’t given a chance. Or you could get repressive, in which case it’s not libertarian because the government is oppressing people. Either way, the libertarians can say it “doesn’t count.“ It can’t fail, it can only be failed etc.
So, I want to say this. If your political theory fails in such a way that failures can be defined as not “true“ versions of your political system, you’ve got a problem. You have established an unfalsifiable position.
And just as I finished writing it, I find this blog post that says basically the same thing. Oh well, I’m posting it anyways.
EDIT: and to be clear, when I counted Saudi Arabia or the antebellum US south as “libertarian,” what I’m doing is basically trying to put them on the same page as “socialism” Both are based on the primacy of property rights.
There are a number of other explanations for the absence of libertarian societies - public choice problems, anti-market views in the voting public, etc - most of which add up to there not being enough political power to
try establishing libertarianism. So we’ve never gotten to the point at which it could fail in the way you describe - not only have we not tried it, we haven’t even tried to try it.
If socialists want to provide principles that define it more restrictively, like libertarianism is, they’re welcome to do so, even if it excludes currently existing regimes that call themselves socialist. I can’t speak for others, but I’m open to “socialism has never been tried” arguments. Then they could be vulnerable to a “socialism is unstable” argument similar to yours, but on the other hand it’d give them an out to the “actual socialist regimes are terrible” argument.
Nor is an ideology unfalsifiable because there aren’t any instances of it in practice. We can analyze the arguments for and against the position, look at the real-world instances of practices similar to those the ideology advocates using more broadly (and maybe somewhat differently), and so on. Arguments against socialism are older than socialist failures, and there are many arguments against libertarianism that aren’t reliant on evidence from actual libertarian societies.
This argument also proves too much. A country could try to establish any ideology until whoever controls the tanks says “We’re not doing that anymore, (but maybe we’re still going to say we’re practicing it)”. I don’t think the mere possibility of this happening is a strong mark against an ideology, because it could happen to almost all of them. For example, “socialism is bad because the CIA is likely to overthrow it” would be a bad argument. Or an attempt to establish an ideology might end early because it proves unpopular among the general public, but that obviously doesn’t mean it’s bad - the public could be wrong. The unpopularity of an ideology is a very weak reason to reject it.