What sort of libertarianism could I respect?

A good question often asked by skeptics is "What would it take for you to change your belief?

For example, asked of an atheist, the answer could be that a real god (or alien or advanced being) could compel change in belief, and would know whether evidence or intervention was needed.

My belief is that libertarianism in all its diversity is repugnant.

So what would a libertarian have to tell me about his most important beliefs so that I didn't think they were repugnant?  You folks go first: after a few days I'll post some of my ideas in the responses.

Then we can see if any libertarians out there fit.

What's new

The past month has been rather busy, so I have been adding at a slow rate.  But there are some gems...

 

NEW 5/19/2013: Self-interest vs. Greed and the Limitations of the Invisible Hand [More...]

"In order for greed to contribute to the economy positively, it is necessary not only to have rule of law but to have an ideal system of laws and enforcement. Given imperfections and uncertainties in the legal system, economic value and general well-being would be greater without greed." [more...]

NEW 5/19/2013: Greed Is Good

Libertarians like to think their greed is good, but think labor unionists are greedy and thus bad. Greed is different than desire for wealth: it is desire for wealth without enough regard for whether others are harmed. [more...]

NEW 5/17/2013: What about Marx? [More...]

Daniel Little examines a number of key theoretical frameworks that Marx advocated that still successfully challenge economic liberalism or capitalism. He concludes that there is much still of value, if you avoid the dogmatism of earlier Marxists. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: Rand Paul Email Touts False Gun Conspiracy About U.N. Treaty That Doesn’t Exist [More...]

Rand Paul shows some of the flakey, paranoid side his father is also famous for. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: The Tyranny of the Market [More...]

Angus Sibley's outline of the threats from libertarian (free-market) economics. "According to free-market dogma, we must accept passively the dictatorship of the market." [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: Review: Angus Sibley's "The 'Poisoned Spring' of Economic Libertarianism [More...]

Michael Sean Winters provides a good, terse summary in this National Catholic Reporter review. [more...]

NEW 5/12/2013: The "Poisoned Spring" of Economic Libertarianism: Menger, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard: A Critique from Catholic Social Teaching of the 'Austrian School' of Economics

Angus Sibley criticizes Austrian economics and resulting libertarianism both from the viewpoint of practical economics and from Catholic teaching. "[...] what neoconservatives call ‘freedom’ has turned out to be the liberty of wealthy capitalists to subvert the political process, to dominate economic decision-making, and generally to take advantage of everyone else." [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Libertarian Cowards Run from Own Words [More...]

"Only when he and his backers find the courage to appeal to Whites as Whites, rather than as individuals, will Ron Paul’s numbers climb into the double digits.” [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Rand Paul the Hypocrite [More...]

"Freedom does not only involve freedom from the government." [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Rand Paul is No Barry Goldwater on Civil Rights

Rand Paul has repeatedly said that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds: private businesses should not be forced to serve African Americans if they so choose. As opposed to Goldwater's supposed Constitutional concerns. [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds

Classic ideological one-sided story telling, to make the EPA and other government agencies into villains. Ignore the fact that the "victims" were convicted by juries of crimes. [more...]

NEW 5/05/2013: I don’t think the Swiss health care system is what they think it is [More...]

Aaron Carroll corrects notions that Swiss health care is more free-market and less socialized than Obamacare. [more...]

NEW 5/01/2013: Understanding Karl Marx [More...]

Brad DeLong's simple, clear overview of Karl Marx. He points out what has been historically falsified, and what is still of value. He also provides explanations of where Marx was coming from, where his mistakes originated, and why. [more...]

Common Fallacies Of Economics

Economics has its own styles of common fallacies. These are much loved by both pundits and highly qualified economists making partisan arguments.[more...]

Phlogistonomics

Coined by Matt Yglesias, this refers to explaining what is well known with standard economics, and explaining the remaining unknown part with hand-waving appeals to popular prejudices, usually supporting a right-wing moral argument. [more...]

Efficient Market Hypothesis

A major Chicago Economics hypothesis and precept, produced by Eugene Fama and eventually strongly questioned by him as well. The existence of speculative bubbles refutes all but the weakest forms of the EMH. [more...]

Interview with Justin Fox: The Myth Of The Rational Market

An overview of why markets are neither rational or efficient, and who has been influential in proposing and taking down these ideas. An interview with Justin Fox, author of "The Myth of the Rational Market". [more...]

The US Gov’t as Venture Capitalist: Why Go There? [More...]

Jared Bernstein writes: "The question of should the government backstop investments in new areas of research is actually an odd one, because it’s been doing so since before we were even a nation [...]" [more...]

Things Government Should Do

There are plenty of ideas of what governments should do born out by long history of where governments have been successful and where markets have failed. Not just defense, but things like basic research, infrastructure, social insurance and a host of other practical needs. [more...]

The Failures Of Milton Friedman [More...]

With classic objectivist zeal, Slade Mendenhall is affronted because Milton Friedman criticized fellow libertarians Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. His solution? Criticize Milton Friedman, with extra bonus points for strawmen and misrepresentation. [more...]

Fraudulent Controversial Books

Part of the propaganda program of libertarianism has been a steady flow of books based on fraudulent claims that take months or years to debunk. Some are directly produced or financed by libertarians, others by academics or conservatives are heavily endorsed by libertarians. [more...]

The Bitcoin Bubble and a Bad Hypothesis [More...]

"Bitcoin is perhaps the finest example of a pure bubble. [...] The closest parallel is the fictitious dotcom company imagined in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, whose only product was its own stock." [more...]

Game Theory

Simple game theory such as the Prisoner's Dilemma shows that many situations can be improved by government interference. [more...]

The correct way to argue with Milton Friedman [More...]

[...] listen out for the words “Let us assume” or “Let’s suppose” and immediately jump in and say “No, let’s not assume that”. [more...]

Libertarian Framing

A 24 word statement demonstrates 7 libertarian framing tricks. "Why on earth are you in favor of giving the state any more governmental power than is absolutely unavoidable? It'll just be abused." [more...]

Framing

Framing is a classic rhetorical technique that attempts to sneak in assumptions. Control the assumptions, and you shape the discussion. If your opponent disagrees, he is either distracted from making his own argument to attack the assumptions or he is put on the defensive. The classic framing example is Groucho Marx's "when did you stop beating your wife?". So why are you in favor of coercive government? [more...]

A new page at my site; I need more suggestions for it.  They're just not at the top of my head right now.

Fraudulent Controversial Books

Part of the propaganda program of libertarianism has been a steady flow of books based on fraudulent claims that take months or years to debunk. Some are directly produced or financed by libertarians, others by academics or conservatives are heavily endorsed by libertarians.

All of these tend to go directly to print without peer review. They all tend to appeal to conservative (including libertarian) gut feelings.

Here's a partial list: see how many you have heard of.

2009 "This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff.

Endorsed heavily by Cato and Mercatus, this has been the major academic work backing the claims that austerity is the way out of the great recession. It took 4 years to debunk decisively, when the spreadsheet was finally examined. The important false claim was that when debt exceeded 90% of GNP, growth was sharply reduced.

1998 "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws" by John Lott.

The polite way to say it was that their statistical conclusions were "not robust": more data or slightly different coding collapse their results.

1994 "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein.

The argument was based on numerous faulty assumptions, statistical monkey business and appeal to racist inclinations. Not peer reviewed before publication. No support for the genetic claims made in this book has ever been found.

1977 "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" by Robert Nozick.

A major libertarian text. Two major frauds, brilliantly concealed: (1) it denies, yet resorts to consequentialism and (2) it completely fails to justify initial acquisition, needed for property rights.

1944 "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich von Hayek.

Another fundamental libertarian text. A comically failed prediction of the coming totalitarian socialist state in western nations. Important in the Thatcher and Reagan administrations.

Please suggest more!

What's New...

NEW 4/18/2013: Bibliography on Methodological Individualism [More...]

A critical, extended bibliography. [more...]

NEW 4/18/2013: The Strange Case of Dr Hayek and Mr Hayek [More...]

An excellent overview of Hayek's life and career, giving good weight to his failures and inconsistencies. There is also a long appendix about the socialist calculation debate. [more...]

NEW 4/18/2013: Socialist Calculation Debate

A debate about how a socialist economy would be able to allocate resources between goals without resort to capitalism. The debate tends to ignore the fact that Communist and wartime command economies did very well with centralized planning. Not to mention Walmart. [more...]

NEW 4/17/2013: 12 Rules of Goldbuggery [More...]

"Ignore the risks of being a gold bug at great peril to your portfolio..." [more...]

NEW 4/15/2013: Libertarian And Objectivism Are Both Stolen Terms

Libertarianism has been used by philosophers about free will for 200 years. Libertarian was used by anarchists for roughly 100 years before it was recently co-opted by right-wing American libertarians. Objectivism was used by Gottlob Frege for his philosophical realism decades before Rand's adoption. The Objectivist Poets also used the term before Rand did.[more...]

NEW 4/14/2013: Freedom in the World [More...]

A respectable index of freedom, and a good alternative to libertarian, neoliberal and corporatist indexes. Produced by Freedom House. Based on 10 political rights questions and 15 civil liberties questions. [more...]

NEW 4/14/2013: Free, Free at Last [More...]

"An "Economic Freedom Index" that tells us little about economic growth or political freedom is a slipshod measure that would seem to have no other purpose other than to sell the neoliberal policies that stand in the way of most people gaining control over their economic lives and obtaining genuine economic freedom in today's global economy." [more...]

NEW 4/14/2013: The Questionable Record of Neoliberalism [More...]

"I’ll take a brief look at [...] the US & UK, Chile, Hong Kong & Singapore, and Scandinavia. I believe that in none of these instances do we get a clear example of neoliberal policies succeeding economically." [more...]

NEW 4/14/2013: Bitcoin is ludicrous, but it tells us something important about the nature of money [More...]

Bitcoin's inelasticity of supply means it would have the same macroeconomic problems as gold, causing deflation. [more...]

NEW 4/14/2013: Adam Smith Hates Bitcoin [More...]

"[...] people think it’s smart, nay cutting-edge, to create a sort of virtual currency whose creation requires wasting real resources in a way Adam Smith considered foolish and outmoded in 1776." [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Why should anyone have to read your goofy holy book? [More...]

If you are arguing against a libertarian position, you don't need to have read "collections of rationalizations, inconsistent and incoherent" to take an opposing position. All you need is to identify where the position is wrong. [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Criticisms of the Non-Libertarian FAQ

Over 20 years, numerous libertarians have criticized A Non-Libertarian FAQ. Their criticisms are surprisingly lame, with rather obvious errors. [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Gish Gallop [More...]

The debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood in real time.[more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: The Courtier’s Reply [More...]

PZ Meyers' description of how "The Emperor has no clothes!" is defended by sycophants, and why that defense is fallacious. You don't have to be an expert in libertarianism to know it is baseless. [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Libertarian Apologetics

Libertarians have standard techniques for defending their absurd ideas that overlap strongly with the techniques employed by religious believers. [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Libertarian Experiment in Iceland Fails [More...]

"In fact, economists are already using Iceland as a textbook case of how to ruin a nation's economy. As Paul Krugman recently noted, there is an "almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today." " [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Modern Iceland

Iceland's Independence Party made radical reforms inspired by and praised by Milton Friedman. These ended with a spectacular banking crash in 2009. [more...]

NEW 4/13/2013: Polycentric Law

Non-monopolistic, competing law. We actually already have that, with federal, state, and local law plus commonlaw. Some libertarian academics have made careers describing historical examples. Polycentric Law tends to be supplanted by more centralized law. [more...]

NEW 4/12/2013: Is Medieval Iceland an example of "anarcho"-capitalism working in practice? [More...]

An anarchist rebuttal: "Ironically, medieval Iceland is a good example of why "anarcho"-capitalism will not work, degenerating into de facto rule by the rich." [more...]

NEW 4/12/2013: Medieval Iceland

Many libertarians, reading David Friedman's paper on medieval Icelandic institutions, consider them to be an example of how anarcho-capitalism could work. [more...]

NEW 4/12/2013: Free Banking in Scotland [More...]

Supposed examples of free banking turn out to have other agencies acting as lenders of last resort. [more...]

NEW 4/12/2013: Free Banking

The idea of replacing central banks by allowing banks to issue their own currencies, with or without various backings. An idea revived by Friedrich von Hayek, with a literature of supposed historical examples. Free banking has many problems. [more...]

NEW 4/09/2013: There is no such thing as redistribution [More...]

"There is no default distribution. All distributions are the consequence of any number of institutional design choices, none of which are commanded by the fabric of the universe."[more...]

NEW 4/07/2013: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Explains the socially constructed nature of "free markets", as opposed to "spontaneous order". A major work of economic history. [more...]

NEW 4/07/2013: Ten Modes of Individualism-- None of Which Works-- And Their Alternatives [More...]

Individualism comes in at least 10 modes, with flaws and merits for each. It is argued that systemism has all the virtues and none of the defects of individualism and holism. [more...]

NEW 4/07/2013: Philosophical Individualism

Individualism is merely one viewpoint in an enormous hierarchy of viewpoints ranging from Planck length to the universe. Individualism as a tenet of a philosophy transforms that philosophy into a Procrustean bed that cannot model the real world well, because the real world is not based on individuals. [more...]