Malcolm Turnbull a Libertarian?

I hate so-called social conservatives, people who go around telling you how to pray, how to have sex (or not have sex), what you can look at on the Internet, and so on.

After the 2007 Election, the Liberal Party was annihilated by a rejuvenated Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd. Liberal leader John Howard was beaten in his own seat of Bennelong. Peter Costello, who was expected to take over, refused to lead the party. Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, and Brendan Nelson have all expressed interest in the job. I don't know anything about Nelson, so I won't say anything. Tony Abbott unfortunately is a social conservative, a hard-core Catholic (aka the "mad monk") who has tried to prevent abortion pill RU486 from being available. Malcolm Turnbull, on the other hand, seems to be admired by the LDP, Australia's libertarian party:

John Quiggin is predicting the end of the Liberals. While it would certainly be interesting to see a new party form out of the ashes of the old, I don’t think that is likely. I think they will continue, but the bigger question is which direction they will take. Will they continue with Howard conservativism (Abbott, Downer), shift towards the libertarian position (Turnbull) or take the UK Tories approach of going moderate (Nelson, Bishop)? How much influence will the religious right have in the new party? I don’t know… but it will be interesting to watch.

John Humphries from the CIS says the following: "Turnbull has consistently called for lower tax and was apparently a fan of my 30/30 paper. He is friends with libertarians (Peter Saunders, David Russell) who sugget [sic] to me that he is one of the good guys (relatively speaking). He also apparently agrees with gay marriage."

There seems to be some more evidence on the Internet that Turnbull is a libertarian. On his blog he says the following: "I have a little bit of the inner libertarian dog in me."

Further Reading: Liberals and the LDP

How Immigration Can End African Poverty

Jeffrey Sachs believes the reason why Africans are so poor is because of their unfortunate climate. The country is hot, and this causes problems with malaria, etc. There are also very few coastlines compared to land area, which means most Africans cannot trade with the outside world via ships.

Others believe the problem lies in the lack of institutions, like courts, police, etc. The governments presently in Africa are accused of corruption.

Either way, the libertarian/capitalist ideology provides a solution to the problem. The problem is that the African people are living in an area that is not good. If immigration were completely free then the African people can move to better climates where there may be better institions, e.g. to Europe or to Asia via land or to America via sea. The decrease in the number of people in Africa will lower land prices. Industries will then move into Africa to exploit not only natural resources but also cheap land prices. Africa then will become a new industrial continent, specializing in that area in which it has a comparative advantage, i.e. producing materials.

The essense of libertarianism or capitalism is that there is freedom for economic inputs like labor or capital to move to where it is most productive. Freedom of immigration then is not only an essential Human Right but an important prerequisite for economic efficiency.

Asian Gender Imbalance Not a Problem

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a9R.dwXkar1U&refer=home

The guys at Bloomberg are claiming that the surplus males in India and China will have terrible effects on the economy. Normally there are more females than males because men tend to die off. This is what we see in most countries like America and Australia. However, in India and China, for whatever cultural reasons, parents prefer males over females, and so it is estimated that in China alone there soon may be 20 million men who won't be able to find a wife.

This all assumes that women will only have one husband, which may be a reasonable assumption. The article also assumes that these Chinese men who are likely to be very rich in the future, won't be able to find wifes overseas. China, after all, is right next to Russia, where many mail-order brides are. Chinese men could find wifes or girlfriends from Japan, Thailand, Australia, or anywhere.

Some might argue that Chinese men will not want non-Chinese women because of cultural differences. But all individuals have different ways of behavior and unless you marry your sister your girlfriend or wife is not going to be very similar to you. But there's nothing wrong with differences. In fact, most people like differences. Nobody wants to marry their sister (almost nobody).

If there is a scarcity of females then the price of females will go up to reflect this scarcity. If we are to apply libertarian policies to address this issue, we should simply allow the marriage market to freely operate and to make it more dynamic and competitive the Chinese government should open its borders and allow for free immigration and emigration, which will correct any excess supply or excess demand of women around the world. Females will move from one country to another to arbitrage their sexual and non-sexual services.

The Bloomberg article claims that sexual frustration from Chinese males will harm the economy. I disagree. If anything, I believe it will improve the economy. Why? Most people (most men at least) work and make money only for the sake of sex. Men make money so they can invest in status symbols like luxury cars or imported watches. With status symbols the men signal to females their reproductive fitness. Suppose females are scarce. This scarcity means they will demand a higher price. Instead of each Chinese female demanding her man drive a Ford, she may want a man who drives a Mercedes. This increases competition among men, which means more work, which means more economic growth.

The Libertarian Schism

There seems to be a shift in libertarianism caused by the War on Terror. Paleolibertarians oppose the war while Neolibertarians favor the war.

The biggest paleolibertarian is Lew Rockwell who has said the following: "Paleolibertarianism holds with Lord Acton that liberty is the highest political end of man, and that all forms of government intervention — economic, cultural, social, international — amount to an attack on prosperity, morals, and bourgeois civilization itself, and thus must be opposed at all levels and without compromise." He then goes on to say, "What's more, paleolibertarianism distinguishes itself from left-libertarianism because it has made its peace with religion as the bedrock of liberty, property, and the natural order."

Paleolibertarianism has made peace with religion? The question that comes to my mind is: which religion? Christianity, Islam, Satanism, Scientology? What does it mean that paleolibertarians have made peace with religion? Do they favor theocracy? If so, that is a contradiction because theocracy is inherently anti-freedom. Many religious people are happy to ban pornography and censor the Internet in the same way the Chinese Communist Party censors the Internet. If paleolibertarians make peace with religion, will they allow this? If they do, how can they claim that "all forms of government intervention - economic, cultural, social, international - amount to an attack on prosperity, moral, and bourgeois civilization itself"? How?

Neolibertarianism on the other hand makes more sense. According to the Wikipedia article on neolibertarianism,

Neolibertarians generally believe that the drawing of an arbitrary boundary such as a border does not exclude those outside of it from the inalienable human right of liberty. They believe that if someone truly believes that Liberty is a self-evident, inalienable right, that it is immoral to deny it to those who fall outside the jurisdiction of arbitrarily-drawn borders.

Some neolibertarians consider themselves extremely idealistic - holding deep convictions about the inalienability of liberty across borders. This branch generally believes that no country has a right to vote or mandate against liberty in the public sector, and that those who believe that the right to liberty ends at borders are no better than those who believe that only some WITHIN a country have a right to it; they believe that convictions about the importance of liberty holds no value unless it is applied to every human being on earth, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or nationality.

Libertarianism values freedom from the tyranny of the state as well as tyranny from other members of society. If rights are only endowed on those within an artificial border draw by the state, then big government once again determines who has right and who doesn't based on the stroke of a pen.

Incest and The Libertarian Question

Stanley Kurtz wrote a piece titled The Libertarian Question in which he attacks polygamy, incest, and homosexuality. His title refers to the question that libertarians ask about polygamy, homosexuality, and incest, that if these minority sexual practices are legalized, how does it harm those with normal sexual practices? There is no harm in a physical sense. A gay couple having sex in the house next door does not affect me in the same way that a murderer stabbing me in the chest with a knife does. Even though fringe consensual sex doesn't physically harm other people, Kurtz is still critical of the practices. He begins by looking at incest.

The deeper problem, of course, is the sexual abuse of children by older family members. The impossibility of real consent, as well as the potential psychological damage in cases of incestuous child abuse, are matters of very serious concern.

Even if a libertarian wants to spread freedom, the ability to consent is assumed to come about with sufficient maturity. This means that usually libertarians will not advocate total freedom for children simply because they are too young to make decisions for themselves. Most libertarians then would not advocate sex between children and adults even if both parties consent. However, if it can be argued that child sex does not harm children, as some pedophiles like Lindsay Ashford claim, then things may be different. If a father or mother decides to have consentual sex with his or her daughter or son who is above the age of consent, what is the problem? One argument that can be made is that incest increases the odds of genetic diseases in offspring, which can be seen as harmful to future generations. Kurtz doesn't use this argument though. He claims that if sex between fathers and mature daughters is allowed, this makes sex between adult and children more tempting.

To see the mechanism of our incest taboo at work, imagine a world in which consensual adult incest was legal. Once we see or hear of couples — even a relatively small number — who engage in legal, consensual, adult incestuous relationships, the whole idea of incest with minors becomes thinkable.

Pretty much, because you see the act happening around you, you are more likely to do it yourself. But if we are to take this idea and apply it to other aspects, then we would have to ban all violent movies because people might think it's okay to murder. We'd have to ban driving because driving under the speed limit might make it too tempting to drive over the speed limit. We'd have to ban mobile phones because their existence makes it too tempting to use these mobile phones as timing devices in bombs used for terrorist attacks. The list goes on. Any politician can claim this causes that causes this. In this complex world, just about everything causes everything.

Kurtz says the following: "The reason we need an incest taboo is because there is no effective way for the state to protect children from sexual abuse by family members. Children are essentially at the mercy of the adults who care for them." He is pretty much saying that a ban of incest is needed because if you don't ban sex between children and their parents, they will do it anyway. But if he thinks that a ban on child sex is insufficient to stop parents from abusing their children, what makes him think parents are going to stop having sex with their children after incest is banned?

[O]nly by building into adults a psychological mechanism of disgust and horror at incest can society protect children from the psychological harm of abuse by close relatives.

Why can't a psychological mechanism of disgust and horror at pedophilia be established to protect children from psychological harm? Why attack something more general and therefore forbid harmless and innocent acts? For example, let's take the act of having adult sex in general. Adult sex can be classified as consensual sex or non-consensual sex. Using Kurtz's arguments, I could argue that there needs to be a psychological mechanism of digust and horror at all sex (even consensual sex) so that victims of rape can be protected. Why not just condemn rape specifically in stead of targeting sex in general? By targeting sex in general you forbid both consensual adult sex as well as rape. If nobody can have sex then the human race will be extinct in the long run. Likewise, why forbid all incest when incest between father and mature daughter is harmless and incest between father and immature daughter is assumes to be harmful?

The rest of the article is very long and he talks about homosexuality, polygamy, as well as many other abnormal sexual practices. But I will restrict this post to the topic of incest.

What annoys me most about this piece is that the author Steven Kurtz is a member of the Hoover Institution, an institution that claims the following in its mission statement: "[T]he Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system."

Personal freedom? Why then does this guy condemn homosexuality, incest, and polygamy?

Libertarianism and Bestiality

I want to look at a piece titled Liberating Libertarianism from the Lunatics by Rich Powers. He says the following:

I...had the pleasure of hearing a Libertarian Party speaker earlier this year. Before he even arrived, the room was abuzz about this chap. You see, he is known the county over for speaking to high school seniors and using bestiality - yes bestiality - to illustrate libertarianism. "You can have sex with a horse and, so long as you don't infringe on anyone's rights, you can go ahead and do it." Never mind that animals can't give consent, but the fact is that's the worst possible way to spread your ideology...period. Instantly, you lose prospective voters who might otherwise agree with you.

Libertarianism can be summed up in the following statement: "You are free to do whatever you want so long as you don't reduce other people's freedom to do whatever they want."

Here is an argument that some (maybe most) libertarians use to promote bestiality. According to them, libertarianism holds that pursuit of happiness is moral. Sex in pursuit of happiness is selfish and also moral. Sex between humans and non-human animals is also moral under libertarianism.

Sex between humans and non-human animals or any trans-species intercourse has the benefit of zero risk of pregnancy, meaning there is no worries about having to rush to the abortion clinic the day after.

Some people criticize bestiality, saying that non-human animals cannot consent to sex and therefore sex with animals goes against their freedom. This may be true, but if we uphold this idea then killing animals for food would be immoral as well and we should all be vegetarians. When humans kill animals for food the animals certainly don't consent to being killed. Killing an animals is done at the expense of the animal's will and for the pleasure of meat-eating humans.

When you kill an animal for food, the animal almost certain doesn't consent to being killed because by the laws of evolution all animals try to live and not die.

Animals gain pleasure from sex because sex as a behavior is favored for in human evolution. Most animals gain pleasure from sex although many may not enjoy it if they do not consent.

The bottom line is that when an animal is killed there is almost a zero percent probability that the animal consented to being killed. However, when an animal is the victim of sexual intercourse, there is a positive probability that it consents and enjoys the sex.

Therefore, based on expected probabilities alone, raping an animal is likely to do more to increase the animal's welfare than killing it for food.

If pleasure if the basis of morality (e.g. if we adopted a utilitarian system of morality) then if killing animals is moral then it follows that raping animals is also equally moral if not more moral because the animal victim of rape is more likely to enjoy being raped than being killed.

Criticism of Marxism of the Right

Firstly, what is libertarianism? The Wikipedia article on Libertarianism says "Libertarianism is a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, provided they allow others the same liberty." In other words, do as you wish, so long as you allow others to do the same. Hence, having gay consensual sex is okay because the two parties to the sexual act consented. By having sex in private they are not harming anyone else. But if a man rapes another man then this is not okay because by raping you are not asking for the consent of the rape victim. Taking drugs is likewise okay under libertarianism because the person who takes drugs chooses to do so himself and because his action harms no one else. However, taking drugs like tobacco and then puffing the smoke onto an innocent bystander (passive smoking) is not okay because the bystander never consented to having smoke in his or her face.

Robert Locke wrote a criticism of Libertarianism in The American Conservative titled Marxism of the Right. I will criticize his criticism.

Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens.

It may be difficult to draw a line between where some free act impedes upon other people's freedom, but just about every theory has difficulty once we apply it. For example, suppose we are building a door and wanted to make it two meters tall. We may measure this height using a ruler and then cut the wood, but how do we know we are getting precisely 2 meters? How do we know that when we cut the wood we are not achieving 2.00001 meters or 1.99999 meters? Libertarianism's strength is its logical consistency. What is commonly known as Left-wing or Right-wing has no logical consistency.

Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

The reason why this is so is because by choosing to live in a pornless culture you are imposing your culture on others, which goes against the freedoms of others. This is like saying, "The problem with Libertarianism is that it claims to promote freedom and choice, yet someone who wants to murder in a Libertarian society can't choose to murder." Locke forgets that although Libertarianism allows freedom it places a limit on freedom because too much freedom can reduce other people's freedom.

Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate.

Locke has no evidence for this. Earlier he says "libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation." In other words, he criticizes theorists who have no empirical evidence to back up their claims. Yet he gives not empirical evidence to support his assertion that libertarians flout drug laws and collect government welfare.

Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free?

If the society were libertarian then drafting is forbidden. If this means the country descends into dictatorship, then that is what will happen. Is this good? That depends on whether you are a consequentialist or not. As Wikipedia says, "Broadly speaking, there are two types of libertarians: consequentialists and rights theorists."

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians.

This is wrong. Locke claims people choose not to be free, but libertarianism suggests that "people" don't exist. We are all individuals. Instead of saying "people don't choose absolute freedom" he should say "most people in America don't choose absolute freedom." This is because there are people who want absolutely freedom (libertarians).

The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us.

This is actually wrong. Locke claims "no electorate will support libertarianism." It all depends on how you define the electorate. If you take an electorate that consists of only libertarians then if the political system used to elect leaders is, say, pure democracy then a libertarian government will be established.

Locke claims that even if a libertarian government were established non-democratically, libertarianism would be a contradiction because most people choose not to have the freedom forced upon them. However, even if freedom were forced upon people, they have the freedom to reject the freedom. Hence, they are no worse off than they were before.

Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false.

Not really. Some people think non-coercion is a moral universal, yet others (like me) just find it aesthetically pleasing.

There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises.

Here Locke confuses libertarianism with anarchy. Libertarianism wants government to protect rights, property, etc while anarchism wants government to do nothing at all.