1

I read Matt's post, and it does not sound as though he understands Christian Libertarianism OR its motivations.

...and the comments that followed his post were so convoluted, they gave me a splitting headache.

2

Joe:

What Yglesias is supporting is simple socialism, and as usual it sounds warm and fuzzy. The problem is that it takes away men's freedom, under the guise of 'helping' others. You are exactly right to conclude that such thinking ends in economic tyranny. It also ends, as seen in Scandinavia, moral and ethical vacuity.

As I write in this post, I think that Scandinavia is a prime example of what state-enforced 'giving' results in. The state churches all receive tax dollars from most citizens - everyone who is a member of whichever Lutheran church pays it - and advances its own agenda. The state co-opts that free choice all men must make: to live with virtue or not, which is to know God or not. Our Creator made us to be free so that love for Him and for others could actually exist. When the state makes that choice for us, we are more incapable of true love.

3

Good proposal Joe.

This reminded me of a topic from J. Budziszewski's book The Revenge of Conscience. I just posted it on it at my site. Title - Expropriationism.

4

I've suspected that liberals believed in selfishness -- the evidence: their having arranged for taxation to fall heavily on nonliberals and government spending to be given largely to liberals. But I've never heard a liberal admit openly that universal selfishness is his "ideal set-up." Thanks for a good find.

5

But I've never heard a liberal admit openly that universal selfishness is his "ideal set-up."

Actually, I think this has been the liberal consensus since at least Adam Smith, and it's not so much an "ideal set-up" as an "ideal set-up, given that individual human nature is what it is"

6

Nick,

But most liberals woudl deny that there even is such a thing as "human nature." How do you explain the liberal fascination with utopianism (esp. Marxism)if it is assumed that most people are selfish?

7

But most liberals would deny that there even is such a thing as "human nature."

I'll have to take a straw poll amongst my (much more liberal than I) friends, but I suspect most wouldn't call it that, but they believe in something like it (a human predisposition to act certain ways in certain situations).

And I'm not sure utopianism creates a problem with a view that humans are selfish--there's an element of utopianism in every political ideology (there's certainly one, for example, in libertarianism), because it seems necessary as part of creating an explanatory picture of where we ought go to, given where we are now. Selfishness seems supportable, if we assume that there's some desirable state of affairs we can't get to due to humans being a certain way--so then having to reformulate the desired goals to be in line with the ideal goals and the idea of human nature.

8

Nick -

Adam Smith didn't think that people were or should be selfish - read the Theory of Moral Sentiments, or the rest of his oeuvre - but pointed out that even if they were, they would be led to serve others in order to gain income. (Someone who never serves others, never transacts, and thus must have zero income.) So even a selfish baker makes bread, and a selfish butcher makes meat. But Smith emphatically thought better people would make a better society.

For neoclassical economics, self-interested people ("Homo economicus") are an assumption, because that makes modeling society easier. If people base their decisions on effects on others, economics would be very complex to model. But this unrealistic simplification is a scientific model, not a moral norm or ideal. I'm not aware of economists who have said that self-interestedness improves the functioning of the economy.

9

I'll have to argue with Yglesias's views based on a somewhat different perspective (which I put on my own blog):

God is capable, pretty much all monotheists agree, of solving all the world's problems. Well, why doesn't He? Why does He let people suffer? Why let them doubt when He can prove his existence? Why act out His compassion through the church, through fallible, corruptible human agents rather than doing the job Himself? In Reaching for the Invisible God, Philip Yancey expresses his belief that it is because God is more concerned with our faith than our happiness. He is more interested in our relationship with Him and with each other than in making sure all our physical wants are met. What Matthew Yglesias is proposing would deny people the need for each other, and the opportunity to serve that need. I think that his "ideal set-up [where] everyone would just act selfishly and the mechanisms of the state would ensure that our selfish behavior winds up serving the general interest" is the opposite of what God sees as ideal.

10

Joe:
Who needs to cultivate personal virtue when you have the state Bible to make more moral decisions for you?

See how easy it is to turn that argument into a case for the Bible being a detriment to personal virtue? I don't need to think for myself, because the Bible tells me exactly what to do!

We should have the government confiscate all property and income of recent Harvard graduates in order that it may be better distributed in the public interest.

Nice bit of non-sequitur there. Progressive taxation != confiscation of all property. Not even close. Under Clinton, the highest marginal tax rate was 39.5% of adjusted income (after deductions), and wealth such as capital gains were taxed at a lower (28%) rate.

I'll be the first to admit that "by hook or by crook" is not exactly how I would put it, but your counterexample swings way too far in the other direction.

Of course nobody likes to pay taxes, but they're necessary in a civil society. Of course, if you don't like that, you could always go to a low-tax or tax-free libertarian paradise like post-soviet Russia, or maybe Haiti or the Dominican Republic, where you don't have to pay for those pesky social services. I'm sure you'd much rather live there than here.

Just my $.02 ($0.0121 after taxes in the highest Clinton-era bracket).

11

T.,

See how easy it is to turn that argument into a case for the Bible being a detriment to personal virtue? I don't need to think for myself, because the Bible tells me exactly what to do!

I don't follow your argument. The Bible is the Word of God and is a legitimate source of authority for what constitutes virtue. The State, on the other hand, is simply the aggregate will of the people. If at the individual level people are all "self-interested" then how do they gain virtue simply by forming a group?

Progressive taxation != confiscation of all property.

I wasn't making that comparision. Instead I was taking it further and following Ygelisias statement that whatever is necessary (by hook or by crook) should be allowed. Why does it swing too far? That is what Yglesias said.

I have no problem with taxes (they do, after all, pay my salary) but with confiscatory taxation and the tax-the-rich-but-leave-my-middle-class-welfare-benefits alone hypocrisy.

12

The biggest reason socialist projects fail is that they create a new god that will provide for your every need. Where the capitalist state says "provide for yourself", the socialist one says "we shall provide for you". As usual, this idol is made by men and is as such powerless.

The socialist state assumes there will always be plenty, and their subjects believe them, even though it is only the LORD that provides, making gardens out of desert and turning the gardens back into deserts at His Good pleasure.

"I was once young, but now am old, yet I have never seen the righteous foresaken or their children begging for bread." - King David of Israel

13

Joe:
The Bible is the Word of God and is a legitimate source of authority for what constitutes virtue.

If you presume that the Bible is, in fact, the inerrant, unaltered Word of God, then that would follow, yes. But even many Christians don't make that presumption. Once you acknowledge that corrupt human hands could very well have corrupted the scripture, you no longer have that to fall back on. Plus there's the question of specific moral issues that the Bible doesn't address.

The underlying (flawed) logic is the same, however: some higher authority of some sort spelled out the rules for me, so I can just follow those rules without having to think for myself. There's no need to "cultivate personal virtue" if it has already been spelled out for you, whether it's been done by God or by government or by the Keebler Elves.

If at the individual level people are all "self-interested" then how do they gain virtue simply by forming a group?

Because in any group, there are more of them than there are of me. It's in my personal best interests to have the group follow certain rules (e.g., don't kill me, don't steal my stuff), and it would be hard for me to get them to follow those rules if I don't do the same. By making those "sacrifices," I gain the protection of the group, which is in my overall best interests. Simple, really. Golden rule ring a bell?

I have no problem with taxes (they do, after all, pay my salary) but with confiscatory taxation and the tax-the-rich-but-leave-my-middle-class-welfare-benefits alone hypocrisy.

1. Who's suggesting that we only tax the rich?
   
2. I wasn't aware that the middle class received welfare benefits.
   
3. What about corporate welfare?
   
4. Why isn't it equally hypocritical to shift more and more of the tax burden to those least able to pay for it, as the GOP has been working toward for years?

14

Plus there's the question of specific moral issues that the Bible doesn't address.