Wired‘s Andy Patrizio has an interview with Libertarian Party candidate for president Harry Browne, Libertarian: Leave Tech Alone, which is pretty sympathetic to Browne (actually it reads like it was written by Browne’s campaign staff). Browne and Patrizio talk about a couple issues that are worth discussing further:
The Direction of the Libertarian Party. Browne notes that the Libertarian Party has doubled in size since 1996, and has a lot more money to spend thanks to that. A conservative Republican friend of mine was surprised to see a Harry Browne ad running on CNN. He found the message appealing, but realistically the Libertarian Party’s going to have to poll a lot more voters than the 500,000 Browne got in 1996 to convince free market types who usually vote Republican or Democrat to go with Browne.
It’s a shame Patrizio didn’t ask or didn’t report on what role Browne thinks the Internet has played in the increasing size of the LP. In 1994 or 1995 it was relatively difficult to find libertarian-oriented information — today thanks to the Internet, as both critics and supporters have noted, it’s almost impossible not to find libertarian sentiments and information.
Does Libertarianism Pay? The Public Choice Problem. Browne makes an argument he made in 1996 and that I’ve heard other libertarians make, though I wonder how convincing it really is. Browne told Patrizio,
When it is presented in combination with the benefits, where we show people how much better off their lives would be without having to pay income tax or to be free from (the) Social Security system, they realize what it’s costing them for these alleged benefits from the government.
This only works, of course, when you can convince people that the total net cost of government is greater than the total net benefit they are receiving. Of course one strain of libertarian-oriented economic theory is the public choice school which strongly implies, among other things, that it is extremely difficult to get rid of a government bureaucracy and program once it is in place precisely because the benefits it provides to a group of voters gives them a very high motivation to lobby for keeping that program, while the costs of the program are distributed so widely that it’s very difficult to get those who are paying for the program to get involved to get rid of it.
Having been involved in libertarian student groups, for example, if you talk to college students about doing away with Social Security or legalizing marijuana a lot of them are very anti-government, but the second you talk about getting rid of federally funded financial aid most of them suddenly find something good to say about the state. Not that you can’t sell them on the evils of federally funded student assistance, but it ain’t easy.
The Firestone Tire Issue. Browne uses the Firestone tire recall to push the fact that government regulators don’t really keep us safe, and calls for private safety agencies a la Consumer Reports. Browne could have buttressed his case by pointing out that it was private insurance companies, not the government or Firestone or Ford for that matter, who first found a statistical anomaly that indicated the problem.
On the other hand, I’m kind of flabbergasted at the attention the Firestone, and consumer product safety issues in general, receive from the media. I wish ongoing government actions that end up costing far more lives than the 80 to 90 people who have died due in Firestone-related coverage received the sort of night-after-night drumbeat of exposure that this story has received from the media.
Immigration and H1B Visas. Here Browne and other libertarians sorely misunderstand the issue. Browne thinks it’s all about the welfare state — people don’t want immigrants coming to the United States and then living off the dole. That might be a small part of the issue, but I think the bigger issue is a basic communitarian principle that if a job opens up, someone from the immediate community should be hired for that job.
This is really apparent in a lot of the wrangling over H1B visas for high tech jobs. High tech companies say there aren’t enough computers programmers, engineers, etc. to fill the jobs they have and so they want the number of visas greatly enlarged so they can bring in foreigners to do these jobs. Groups representing computer programmers, engineers, etc., claim this is a lie — there are plenty of people with the degrees who are eager to work. NBC actually ran a story a few weeks ago featuring a computer programmer who was homeless and claimed the only reason his life had taken a downturn was because he was downsized from a previous position and then no one would hire him at other companies because of his age. The appeal is clear — how can you say you need foreigners when you have all these out of work Americans with high tech degrees.
The thing nobody wants to say, of course, is that what companies want to do is hire extremely talented foreigners rather than merely competent Americans. Most of the anti-H1B rhetoric assumes that an engineer is an engineer is an engineer or that anyone with a degree in computer science who can program is just as good as any other person with those qualifications. That’s ridiculous of course — there’s a reason Transmeta brought in Linus Torvalds on a visa rather than hire some random American with similar educational background.
That is the real driver, in my opinion, behind anti-immigration sentiments. If I am in the middle of my field as far as competency goes and the government say doubles the size of the labor pool by allowing easy immigration of foreign tech workers, the number of people who are more qualified than me for a given position just increased substantially. Simple short term self-interest is what underlies anti-immigration efforts.
The Fascist Green Party. One thing I really did like was Browne mincing no words about the Green Party,
The Green Party platform is pure fascism and socialism. It’s either government regulation to the nth degree, or government taking over to the nth degree.
In fact, it’s been fascinating to watch Ralph Nader climb on board with the Republicans and Democrats in blasting the media for “targeting” children with sex and violence, especially since the Green Party platform essentially gives voters the right to outlaw entire industries they don’t like such as entertainment companies (and don’t think you wouldn’t see people trying to outlaw, say, Harry Potter books for “targeting” occult works at children).
All in all, Browne did an excellent job of presenting himself and the Libertarian Party, but I still have strong doubts if it is really possible to create a mass movement out of an ideology that is so individualistic. It’s hard to get people involved in a political movement whose main message is “leave us alone.”