The left is wrong on it’s face, because of the problems of incentives and economic calculation. The left is wrong on it’s perceptions: the pie isn’t fixed and people are not even closely equal in ability. The left is wrong on it’s sentiments: they are universalist and familial rather than group and political. They are wrong in their anti-sentiments: Care and Fair are only possible if first there is Order, and Group Persistence. The left is wrong on it’s logic: value is subjective, value is marginal, value is not determined by labor in, but by value out – and factor prices are determined by market prices of the end good. THe left is wrong on very purpose of society: it is a market first, and a society second. A society is it’s market and it’s market principles – everything else is an artifact of that market. THe left is wrong on diversity: people are demonstrably more charitable in the absence of diversity. The left is wrong in everything but it’s ambition – individual happiness in the absence of stress for the purpose of a happy family, rather than individual success for the purpose of group competition. The left is right that people at the bottom most likely have a claim on some amount of the profits of the market in which they participate, and that declining prices and increasing standard of living, and public services, and freedom from consumption taxes are to some degree justifiable.
[callout:More Right Than Wrong]Everyone is a little bit right.Everyone is a whole lot wrong. But libertarians are more right and less wrong than everyone else — assuming that is, that we seek prosperity, safety, health and choice for the maximum number of people at the minimum cost, at the lowest risk.[/callout]
But the right is wrong on rhetorical debate – the republican model breaks at scale – instead we would need economic democracy. It is wrong on monetary policy.
The right is right on all of those things that the left is wrong on. Most importantly it’s right on group persistence, obligatory group identity. They are right on military dominance of the seas and trade, and the trade system, and of the expansion of a monetary empire. They are right on intolerance of extra-market orders. They are right on meritocratic rotation of the elites through market or military acts.
The libertarians (the middle) are wrong on many of their principles. They are wrong on immigration. Immigration of an underclass that speaks a different language, and observes a different cult is demonstrably detrimental to a civilization. THey are wrong on free trade. They are wrong on intellectual property. They are wrong on the origins of society and market. They are wrong on forgone opportunity costs. They are wrong on equality – libertarianism is as beneficial to the intelligent, and totalitarianism is to the strong, and communism is to the weak. They are wrong on redistribution – precisely because they are wrong on the origin of markets. THey are wrong on empire and military. They are wrong on private courts. THey are wrong on private police.
But the libertarians are right on monetary policy, on economic calculation and incentives, on rule of law, on small government, on privatization, on economic democracy.
Everyone is a little bit right.
Everyone is a whole lot wrong.
But libertarians are more right and less wrong than everyone else — assuming that is, that we seek prosperity, safety, health and choice for the maximum number of people at the minimum cost, at the lowest risk.
