Maybe libertarian theory isn't quite dead yet

[nancylebov]

A minimal libertarian government would focus on protecting its citizens from force and fraud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/washington/19fbi.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Interviews and internal records show that F.B.I. officials realized the growing danger posed by financial fraud in the housing market beginning in 2003 and 2004 but were rebuffed by the Justice Department and the budget office in their efforts to acquire more resources.

“The administration’s top priority since the 9/11 attacks has been counterterrorism,” Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, said. “In part, that’s reflected by a significant investment of resources at the F.B.I. to answer the call from Congress and the American public to become a domestic intelligence agency in addition to a law enforcement agency.”

From 2001 to 2007, the F.B.I. sought an increase of more than 1,100 agents for criminal investigations apart from national security. Instead, it suffered a decrease of 132 agents, according to internal F.B.I. figures obtained by The New York Times. During these years, the bureau asked for an increase of $800 million, but received only $50 million more. In the 2007 budget cycle, the F.B.I. obtained money for a total of one new agent for criminal investigations.

Link thanks to malibrarian.

Comments

[fengi.livejournal.com]

Since when is supporting an increase in big government oversight and expenditures libertarian (http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker35.html)?

In a free market, what a person is is determined by how well a person does. But it's different in state-controlled professions. You can be a great doctor but without the license to practice, you are guilty of a serious crime. The same is true in aviation and law. It is not enough to be good at what you do. You must jump through hoops held by politicians and bureaucrats. The fraud at the heart of pretending to be a lawyer is not that you are not a good one but that you have not obeyed the regulations that govern who is in and who is out.

When the state defines who is rich and who is poor, who is a lawyer and who is not, who is a criminal and who is a criminal catcher, we enter into a world driven by the arbitrariness of power, and that power has real and shocking effects on people's lives: making and breaking the human will itself.

It seems libertarianism boils down to the argument government and taxes are bad and wrong, unless a given libertarian's own butt is on the line, in which case there's suddenly complicated reason why a particular intrusion or expenditure is just great.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Concurred. When I was in the LP, I heard various proposals for:

* privatized police
* private courts- quite literally justice to the highest bidder
* complete and total repeal of all regulations on commerce- basically, a "we know fraud when we see it" system
* zero involuntary funding of government, including funding through government-owned enterprise. Essentially government would be funded solely through donations... and the LPers refused to recognize that those who donated the most would have de facto control over what the government could and couldn't do.

In the current environment- and less than a year after I quit the LP- I wouldn't trust a libertarian government with the economy any farther than I could juggle the Pentagon, the Capitol, and the Washington Monument.

[bruceb.livejournal.com]

Well, a libertarian government might well set out with good intentions on force and fraud, but it's not like it'd be bribe-proof, immune to conflicts of interest among engaged appointees and hires, or any of the rest of that stuff.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Certainly. And I think one place that libertarianism has fallen down so far as I know, is in not taking a serious look at what it would take to offer reasonable levels of anti-fraud enforcement.

Any sort of government is made of people (and as a science fiction fan, I'm obligated to note that a government which isn't made of people will probably have worse failure modes), and vulnerable to bribery and so on. Still, part of the mess we're in is the results of theories.

I've been contemplating Rand's hatred of libertarians for being too unphilosophical, and the Republican anti-governmentism which is even less philosophical than libertarianism.

Three options

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

What we are discussing this month is really that garden variety fraud: management defrauding the owners.

Adam Smith saw two options for corporations: either limit them to a business, like running a turnpike, that can be done entirely by routine, enforced by audits by the owners; or watch them go bankrupt. Either the management will be incompetent, because they don't have the interest in keeping an eye on things that owner-managed companies do; or they will steal the owners blind.

There may be a third option: transparency laws and insider-trading regulations, continually updated to fill new loopholes. But we haven't tried that long enough to see if can work in the long haul; and the libertarian state probably can't do it at all.

Re: Three options

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

They were defrauding the customers on a huge scale, too.