I think this is a bit uncharitable in interpreting what some of these sentences mean. “I stopped being a libertarian because I realized culture matters” is usually an attempt to say “my belief in the relative importance of culture, vs other issues, increased significantly, and libertarianism is less plausible in worlds where culture is so relatively important.”
For instance, I used to think political outcomes were fairly low salience in terms of what I should worry about. Median voter theorem, constitutional rights, etc made it so. I didn't vote in most elections.
Then in 2020 I woke up one day and they told me I couldn't leave my house or breath the fucking air and riotous mobs were burning cities and people were blacklisted from the livelihoods over insanity and they were printing so much money over a fucking flu that prices skyrocketed.
SO I updated my assessment of the salience of politics.
You're hinting at some reasonable points, but your choice of the phrase "a fucking flu" suggests that you have been blinded by politics, and aren't particularly credible when it comes to appropriate responses to a new pandemic.
And the libertarians who do believe in open borders equally believe culture matters! In fact, our openness to immigrants reflects a part of the American culture we're so proud of.
When this country was founded, voting rights were limited to property-owners. The expansion of the franchise makes it subject to far more people, and government has grown along with that.
Sure, I don’t disagree with your object-level claim. I’m saying this is how that hypothetical person is reasoning. I’m making a meta-level point, not an object-level one.
It's not really just open borders. Libertarianism itself is fit only for people from a particular culture and for others it may be a much worse fit. It's not a universal solution. The problem with modern liberalism, libertarianism and communism of that the all have a kind of universalism built in. The conceive of themselves as optimal regardless of the particular history or culture of the people. They are to some extent globalist.
Every fiber of your being wants to talk about culture. It's more interesting and exciting to most others too. Not thinking about political structures or incentives. Culture is media and other stimuli too. Not pure abstraction, which seems to lack anything sexy.
If culture matters - and it does - then doesn't your open borders position clash with that, since importing other cultures into an existing culture changes and sometimes even overwhelms the native culture. See e.g. the recent mess in Cueta.
Acknowledging that culture matters (that is, that culture has effects on social dynamics) is a mere observation of reality, just as "sky is blue". It doesn't imply any value judgement on the positive or negative implications of those effects. You can as well be for or against immigration and acknowledge that culture matters.
I disagree. If persons in a particular country have established a culture with many traditions, rituals, language idioms, viewpoints, politics and much else, and some other alien culture invades and usurps it, that is close to the practical equivalent of a military invasion. For example, what would happen if large numbers of Somalis invaded Japan, with its history, culture, religion, politics and business practices all challenged by the invaders.
I disagree with Bryan’s position on open borders, but he has noted, e.g. that for Israel open borders would *not* make sense.
Because there the “cultural” implications are quite clear and the probability is overwhelming that the consequences would be bigly negative.
So while to repeat I disagree with his view on open borders, his basic claim is that it is not at all obvious that there would be negative culture changes so massive as to offset the to him massive benefits of the policy.
If Japan opened is borders and a whole bunch of somalis migrated there, it would greatly improve. It would be a needed injection of diversity into Japan's stifling monoculture. It would solve its aging population problem as well as its low tfr.
Bryan has something of a deontological view on immigration. He's support it even if it led to total destruction. Yeah, he tries to make some (mostly half assed and sometimes outright false) arguments as to why it it wouldn't be a disaster, but they mostly seem like trying to throw some empirical rationalizations on an already decided deontological choice.
Bryan not favoring it for Israel https://www.betonit.ai/p/i-stopped-being-a-libertarian-because/comment/309501637 would be inconsistent with an actual deontological view. I can't remember if Bryan actually did make that exception, although I know Richard Hanania has. Bryan claims to follow "common sense" rather than strict deontology much of the time. Personally, I think Steve Sailer's moderate approach on immigration is closer to what most would consider "common sense".
Yeah and he’s wrong. East Asia (ex China which is worse) has like 50-60% our total factor productivity, 1/30th our unicorn rate, and apocalypse level total fertility rates. The developed parts of east Asia like Japan have been in recessions for 30 years and we watching its carry trade blow up in real time.
These are inferior broken societies we should not emulate. This is an area we’re I would have shared garrets assessment in the 1990s but I’ve updated my views based on the last few decades of new data.
I don't understand how libertarians consistently lose the unassailable argument that libertarianism is the best form of political/social organization.
Look at the Cato Institute's freedom rankings for the world. The most free countries are the best to live in. The least free countries are the worst to live in. The countries in the middle in freedom are in the middle in terms of places to live.
The US should therefore be striving to get to the top of the freedom rankings (we're currently not even close). Then, we should strive to always distance ourselves from #2 and below.
In the Cato Institute's Human Freedom Index, even Singapore and Hong Kong are not high in the rankings. So we should not be emulating them, with the minor exceptions of where the do rank highly.
You need to explain how from "culture matters" follows that aggression against people who haven't violated or credibily threatened to violate anyone's (property) rights is justified.
Dude, just because the immigrants in question didn’t pass the laws which transfer money from existing taxpayers to them doesn’t mean that an influx of such immigrants does not “credibly threaten to violate anyone’s property rights”.
How so? If a German or Mexican moves to Texas and your government robs you, why you're mad at those foreigners and want to hurt them, and not at your own damn government that is aggressing against you?
I also grant that failing to permit him/her to move to Texas makes him poorer.
The fallacy in your claim is that I “want to hurt them”. Even as I acknowledge in the micro, that is the result.
However, in the real world, incentives matter, and actions have consequences. And yes, on the margin I prefer that government policy do less harm to existing citizens and legal residents (and longstanding illegal residents, in fact) than to noncitizens not yet domiciled or only recently domiciled here.
Then why are you advocating for your government assaulting them, kidnapping them, and sending them away from their homes for the "crime" of renting or buying a house from me and working at my factory?
Although one additional answer is that I think the rule of law is important. And incentives matter. Many illegal immigrants means we can’t have more legal immigrants, since the populace and so the politicians won’t go for it.
Why would someone continue to support free trade, property rights, and freedom of association for both immigrant and native alike, given that some immigrants will behave badly (such as vote for increased government spending, engage in grift and corruption, and commit crime)?
It's for the same reason that I think you should be free to live and work where you please, despite the fact that you hold views that I find repugnant and harmful.
For example, you want to the government bar people from exercising their freedom to live and work where they please, not because they committed any crime, but because they were born somewhere you don't like.
You want to dictate to me who I can hire, invite onto my own property, or otherwise associate with. You want the government to demand papers please from everyone who wants to travel in or out of the country. You want cops to raid my home and business to kidnap and deport people who I dared to hire without asking government permission first.
To my mind, these are all authoritarian police state policies.
However, I don't support depriving you of your liberties because I think that creating the police state that it would take suppress you and your views would be worse than allowing you the freedoms that you enjoy.
You don't avoid creating a socialist police state by creating a socialist police state.
And I think that's true of immigrants who hold repugnant views as well.
“For example, you want to the government bar people from exercising their freedom to live and work where they please, not because they committed any crime, but because they were born somewhere you don't like.”
This is a strawman argument, not a steelman one.
The steelman one is that open borders is incompatible with the very generous welfare state that we have. Which includes free K-12 education and free “emergency” healthcare, beyond any other benefits that might be legally or illegally obtained.
Or the reality that one of the political parties would seek to make all residents citizens with voting rights for their political gain, but to the very likely detriment of the average person in the country today.
So if you are an anarchist, just say that, and the rest of us can know to ignore your views.
But arguing against a strawman is to commit the “sin” that BC warns about in his post.
Bryan does actually identify as an anarcho-capitalist. Since we are currently very far from anarchy, I evaluate policies on the margin rather than whether they'd make sense under anarcho-capitalism.
“I evaluate policies on the margin rather than whether they'd make sense under anarcho-capitalism.”
As do I.
Marginally I agree with Bryan that we should have much more legal immigration. Much.
But literally unlimited immigration - which is what his open borders proposal is - has massive downsides. And is the one case where marginal analysis is almost impossible to do.
And at best would be a game of Russian roulette. Not a chance I’m willing to take.
…and if you fix those, then you can reasonably talk about open borders.
I’ll still disagree, but it wouldn’t be insane.
[And I’m someone who would prefer a lot more legal immigration, including essentially unlimited high skill / wealth immigration. Just not full open unlimited immigration.]
Why push for *unlimited* open borders before getting people to agree to far more total legal immigration, in addition to essentially unlimited high skill / high wealth immigration?
What's the alternative to me as an American living where I please? Where would you deport me? Whereas, for an immigrant, the obvious alternative is to just not let them in.
Many (most?) nativists don't believe in birthright citizenship, so I don't to see why nativists couldn't be deported just as easily as the other people born in the US that nativists want "remigrated".
El Salvador seems like a good option, as it is ruled by a populist authoritarian strongman that nativists seem to love.
Kettling nativists onto reservations is another option, similar to the Gaza strip, Indian reservations, or South African bantustans.
You assume that culture is immutable, when it is much more fluid. Immigrant parents frequently complain about how "American" their US raised children have become. They complain that their children are only English speaking and can't speak the language of the origin country. The Great Assimilation machine still works, no matter how many people on the left and the right hate it.
Ceuta was an engineered attack on Spain that happened with the cooperation of the Moroccan government. Not the same as normal migration.
Depends where you live. Here in Hawaii you have 5th generation immigrants who still barely speak English and from their accents, you'd think they were fresh off the boat. I've seen similar in other nations and parts of America, especially the Mexican south west. It really depends on ghettoization.
Who in Hawaii and where? It's not that large of a state.
Isolated rural communities can hold on to their own languages for extended periods, like Pennsylvania German, Cajun French, or Native languages, but these are very small populations. I wouldn't be surprise if there were communities like this in the rural southwest, possibly dating back to before US Annexation.
As mass communication spreads, these local languages are dying out, even in rural areas. The world is becoming more American and more English-speaking, even if some holdouts remain.
Oddly the one language subgroup which died this generation, seen it with my own eyes, after maintaining 150+ years of identify, was Hawaiiam pidgen/moke. Social media killed it, like it's killing lots of localizations everywhere as it flattens that entire generation.
Also I'm not saying they don't speak English, I'm just pointing it's still their secondary language generations in. In the same way French Quebecoise know English.
Because it shows a resistance to assimilation. Also they don't just speak it at home, they speak it everywhere, English is the SECOND language. It's not about caring or not, you shifting goal posts, it's was in response to your point "The Great Assimilation machine still works, no matter how many people on the left and the right hate it.".
When my 5th generation Chinese boss still barely speaks English and when he does, it's heavily accented to the point it's worse than actual Chinese tourist's English, mostly communicates to every one in Chinese (but you as the only non-Chinese person in the office), and in a vacuum you wouldn't even know they were American that's not exactly "the Great Assimilation machine" working. Assimilation requires non-ghettoization, the fear with unlimited immigration is ghettoization becomes more prevalent, or wide enough it becomes the dominant culture.
He addresses it, but he doesn't address is satisfactorily. Like a lot of people we don't think Bryan's ideas on this matter are very good, and not because we haven't read them.
You say “we” - say “I”. The OP hasn’t necessarily read Bryan’s work. There is another commenter in this thread, for example, who says he has not read Bryan’s book.
If that's the graphic book, no. The graphics add nothing, the text isn't searchable, and the font isn't adjustable. It's a terrible format for people with fading eyes.
I've been watching this blog for years and have not seen any reasonable response. I haven't read the comic books. The most basic questions haven't been answered. (1) the culture one, (2) the takeover of our political system by people who don't share our values, (3) how to distinguish from an invasion, e.g. the Chinese gov't sends 100's of millions over on ships, (4) does this apply to Israel, South Africa and others? If not, why not? (5) Is what's happening in Western Europe an example of the positive outcomes we should expect?
Not disagreeing, but you mentioned incentives matter.
If we collectively declare that people that change their mind after some years are probably dumb/have poor judgement and therefore should be silent, we incentivize them to keep denying reality because people don’t like being seen as dumb and silenced.
I mean, this is just doubling down on the disrespect, by assuming the person is too stupid to recognize your patronizing tone or barely submerged disrespect.
An intellectually honest person who claims people are wrong will explain how and why they’re wrong, not spend paragraph after paragraph basking in their imagined superiority and enlightenment.
Er... I sincerely do not get the point of this post. Seems that everything that you get is obvious. What was the intent of this post? Culture matters and then? How does this impact Libertarianism? You didn't even discuss that. I feel as if there was some triggering event or activity that prompted this post, but after reading the entire post, I still have no idea what it is.
So says the man who is still unable to state said point.
I am curious about your end-game to begin with. What? You just wanna exchange meaningless insults with somebody? How pointless. I don't think I am unreasonable in claiming that you are unwell.
Columbus actually DID discover something. People starting sailing west across the Atlantic precisely because of what he discovered. And the people already living in the Americas didn't realize there was land east of the Atlantic (they hadn't even made the kind of ships to explore the coastline of their continent).
It's entirely plausible for a libertarian to underrate cultural differences to the extent that they would fail to anticipate how open borders could drastically change a government. Joe Henrich had to write "The WEIRDest People in the World" precisely because people kept underestimating how culturally unusual people in first world western countries are.
Personally, I stopped identifying as a libertarian because I had already been a consequentialist and realized that identifying as one was not "keeping my identity small" (as Paul Graham would put it) and could interfere with consequentialist reasoning. Once I ceased believing in God, I also ceased believing in things like "natural rights" or deontology, and came to consider decentralization as more "meta" than libertarianism https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/rhymes-with-shmashmortion/
The way I understand this article is that Bryan doesn't seem to have stopped being a libertarian. Instead, Bryan is equating those who abandoned libertarianism because they claimed to have finally realized that culture matters to a hypothetical person who abandons libertarianism because he has finally realized that the sky is blue. I suggest you read the final paragraph carefully.
Uh-oh. I don't know to what culture Bryan is referring when he says that people stop being Libertarian because culture matters. I'm keeping my damn mouth shut because I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.
I know it's tangential to the overall point of this post but I'm lost here on how culture matters in the context of libertarianism, or even socialism for that matter. Culture matters for a lot of things including how pleasant a libertarian society would be to live in, etc but it's completely irrelevant to the NAP. Likewise culture is completely irrelevant to the fact whether the workers own the means of production or not.
If I was a libertarian that would put me in your minority view but I just don't think I am here, I don't even see the relationship between the two hence curious.
One of the two most serious arguments against open borders is that having open borders will change the culture negatively of a successful country like the U.S.
E.g. by importing a huge number of people who will then vote for socialism.
If libertarianism mandates policies that will destroy libertarianism, then libertarianism would seem to be self-defeating and therefore worth rejecting. While you can't derive an "ought" from an "is", "ought" implies "can", and therefore if "can" is false, then "ought" can't be true.
In some cases but not in philosophy, something is correct or it isn't, application is irrelevant. You aren't a libertarian because you think it will make the world a better place, you are a libertarian because you believe in libertarianism. Same as socialism etc. Otherwise you are just a utilitarian changing political veneers with the wind to suit your underlying utilitarian, not xyz, philosophy.
All moral beliefs are a suicide pact, at least ones of any worth, to butcher a famous SCOTUS quote.
If libertarianism can't be implemented because of secondary issues, the problem isn't libertarianism, it's simply it's time hasn't come yet hence you work on addressing the secondary issues. You can do that without apostasy.
It seems to me, and has for decades hence why I left big L long ago, to many libertarians are LINOs hence wear it only as a means to an ends, no actual belief. If BC is saying he abandoned libertarianism over an unrelated tangential issue, culture, I'm going to say he probably wasn't a libertarian in the first place, at best an "applied" libertarian, I.e. flag of convience.
If libertarianism dooms itself, then it follows one shouldn't believe in libertarianism or be a libertarian.
> All moral beliefs are a suicide pact, at least ones of any worth, to butcher a famous SCOTUS quote.
Bryan wouldn't seem to agree, given his emphasis on "common sense".
> If libertarianism can't be implemented because of secondary issues, the problem isn't libertarianism, it's simply it's time hasn't come yet hence you work on addressing the secondary issues.
How do you know those CAN be addressed while remaining libertarian?
> If BC is saying he abandoned libertarianism over an unrelated tangential issue, culture,
No, he's talking about other people that he's deriding.
I agree with you that strong Nozickian forms of libertarianism, which contain elements that doom itself, should be viewed more critically / less credibly than those that don’t.
Which is why I’m basically a Hayekian classical liberal, rather than an anarcho-capitalist or Rothbardian/Nozickian libertarian.
"[I]t is precisely because wisdom has to be accumulated in incremental steps that it cannot be centrally planned by any single political or religious authority, contrary to the aspirations of conservatives and collectivists alike. While the collectivists are indeed guilty of trying to rationalistically reconstruct society in defiance of tradition (a valid criticism of left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand are guilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place. Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdom accumulation is an on-going one, and instead have opted for the notion that some existing body of traditions (usually Judeo-Christian) already represent social perfection."
It's not simply that culture and tradition matter; individual liberty and private ownership are important in part precisely because culture matters; conservatives and progressives alike who attempt to use the state to impose their values on others harm the culture and spark politicized culture wars.
LIbertarianism isn't just about the economics; it's about the culture too. I've written an article expanding on this theme:
You need to expand on how all of this justifies institutionalized violation of (property) rights of innocents, which is what all non-libertarians are advocating for.
It is a property right of non-citizens to come to and live in a country in which they are not citizens, and work and draw taxpayer-funded government benefits in said country?
What a wonderfully Alice-in-Wonderland definition of property rights.
It's my right to rent or sell my property to whomever I wish, and the new tenants or owners by definition have the right to live there. Your relationship with your government you're begging to do this or don't do that is your problem.
“It's my right to rent or sell my property to whomever I wish…”
The fallacy here is that your rights are absolute.
No rights are absolute in the real world.
And this one clearly conflicts with other rights - most especially if you object to literal violence against others, and in particular literal violence by the state.
And perhaps this is the key disconnect in all your arguments: failing to recognize that rights are not absolute and do conflict.
The Non Aggression Principle you clearly are most fond of is just that - a *principle*, not an absolute right.
You continue making wild assertions without any argument. Try to explain how my property rights -- which means right to exclude others from my property -- violate anyone's property rights (to exclude others from their property).
It's an absolute right outside the margins such as punishment, as with any principle. You don't get to be pro-zoning and then claim "oh that's ok with libertarianism because it's not an absolute right". Zoning doesn't fall under the extremely niche marginal case.
What did your new knowledge of sexuality have to do with libertarianism? Are you talking about things like consent?
I used to be a Radley Balko reader https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/something-rotten-in-mississippi/ who would have said police are just the largest armed gang. Nowadays I'm still aware that police commit lots of crime and get away with it, but the 2014 Ferguson effect and its replication in the 2020 George Floyd effect have shown me how much worse things can get if that largest gang loses dominance. On a related note, one reason I don't favor entirely replacing the police with Robin Hanson's bounty hunters https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/who-vouches-for-youhtml is because I think such decentralization might be too weak to take on organized crime & gangs.
Are any of those in someway incompatible with libertarianism? They somehow require us to be in conflict with each other, rather than negotiate peacefully?
1) COVID raised the *salience* of politics. I used to not think it mattered much which party won elections or what the median voter believed. Afterwards I came to believe it mattered a lot.
I believe that the libertarian impulse to import bad voters will lead to much worse politics then I believed before COVID.
2) Living in the DC area near where Bryan Caplan lives, I got a close up view of how libertarian DC think tank/academic types responded to COVID/woke. It was immensely revolting.
They have this phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes." Well, there were no philosophical libertarians during COVID. Basically they either stood out of the way or actively engaged in persecution.
Because of their behavior during COVID, when they defended my basic freedoms, my respect for conservatives and small L vibes libertarians (Hank Hill types) went up and my views on philisophical libertarianism went down.
That COVID made you more in favor of “conservatives” relative to libertarians, I get and accept.
And perhaps the confusion is that you were referring sometimes to capital “L” libertarians even though you didn’t make that clear.
But it’s a very strange thing indeed to blame any small “l” libertarians for anything that went down during COVID. Those things were dont]e by leftists, and gone along with by some centrist and even center-right establishment elite types, not by “libertarians” of any stripe.
In addition to orange line libertarians performing poorly during the COVID/woke terror era, they support immigration. Immigrants vote for the left, and the left implemented the COVID/woke terror state.
I lived in nova during this period. Nova used to be a red state but became a blue state via immigration (mostly “high skilled” btw). Most of what I had to deal with was because we had a democratic governor. When youngkin eeked out a very narrow victory in nov 2021 it literally changed my life meaningfully overnight. A few more % immigrant in the voter pool and that doesn’t happen, and I don’t expect Virginia to ever sway from being deep blue again (I left).
I personally blame the supporters of immigration for the actions of immigrants. This is why I consider Bryan a leftist, he supports the importation of leftists and is personally responsible for how they act and vote.
I'm lost on what are you asking here. COVID, nor any action flowing from it, didn't effect my view of libertarianism at all, why would it? They aren't related.
Sir, hwhen reading this headline, I thot you stopped being libertarian! I was shocked! Instead, it seems to be a rant about some former libertarian hwho quit libertarianism because "culture matters". Garett Jones?
We all have our blind spots. I know I've missed things, before, that, in retrospect, seem totally obvious.
It's hard enough to admit publicly that you were wrong. It's even harder if there are people like you hwho think that if one admits they're wrong, it's likely because they missed some "obvious" fact and therefore are too stupid and we shouldn't listen to anything they say!
Besides, if someone says that they are no longer libertarian because "culture matters", they probably don't mean: "Before, I thot culture didn't matter, at all. Put someone from a culture hwhere they're lazy af and smoke weed, drink and beat their wives all day and they're just gonna thrive in a culture that values temperance, productivity and non-violence!"
hWhat they prolly mean: "Of course, I always knew that culture mattered, but I've come to realize that it mattered more than I originally thot. I used to think that institutions mattered a lot more than culture: Hence why South Korea does so much better than North Korea, despite both countries being populated by Koreans. Put someone in a free-market environment and the incentive structure will push them towards being productive. And if you take most people from third-world countries and put them in first-world countries, their incomes will increase so much and they will be a net benefit on their new countries. They will pay more in taxes than they consume in services, etc.
But I've come to realize that a lot of poor countries are poor because of the people. They have low IQs, they are lazy, they are criminals. Put them in a country like the US and they'll still be dumb, lazy and criminal. And so will their kids. They won't be a net benefit. They'll go on welfare, they'll go to jail (which costs taxpayers even more than welfare!) They will be a net drain on taxpayers.
Obviously, I knew that _some_ people would still be dumb, lazy and criminal in 'the land of opportunity', but they would be overhwhelmed by those hwho aren't. But now, after reading 'Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids' by Dr. Bryan Caplan, I'm not so sure... It seems like maybe maybe of these traits are heritable and they'd follow them and their children hwherever they go. To quote Sts Brooks and Dunn: 'You can take the girl out of Honky Tonk, but you can't take the Honky Tonk out of the girl!'
So, we can't have open borders. And open borders are such an integral part of libertarianism. Without open borders, you don't have freedom of movement, freedom of association, etc. I know there are a lot of 'bordertarians' out there, but they are a bunch of hypocrites! I can't, in good conscience, still call myself 'libertarian' if I no longer support open borders. Therefore, I no longer call myself 'libertarian'."
Orrr... In short: "I stopped being libertarian because I realized 'culture matters'." It's not really that they didn't realize the obvious fact culture mattered, before. They just now realize it matters more than they initially thot. But it's just... "shorthand". It makes a snappy little soundbite for the preview of the podcast as opposed to the long-winded explanation above that you would have to listen to the hwhole podcast to hear, in detail. It's not lying, it's not "missing an obvious truth", it's not SDB. It's just shorthand.
Note: This doesn't represent my own view. I never fully "embraced" libertarianism, for different reasons. But with regards to culture, my own view remains that most people are productive and law-abiding enough, that, even if they come from a poor country, most will thrive in a country that values temperance, productivity and non-violence. Most will be net contributors. As per Dr. Bryan Caplan's book: Open Borders. In fact, that book made me less libertarian! I used to think maybe a welfare state, ANY welfare state, was incompatible with open borders. And so, unfortunately, we'd have to completely dismantle the welfare state to allow open borders. But it'd be worth it. But now, thanks to Dr. Caplan, I have come to realize that a US-style welfare state is compatible with open borders. That being said, there would be a few lazy people. But the productive would not be affected by their lazy culture. The lazy would suffer the consequences of their own laziness: less money. The productive would be minimally impacted. Welfare is not that much so it doesn't cost taxpayers all that much. And if it does, just lower welfare. So, if somebody is lazy because of "culture". OK, fine. But, that has nothing to do with you. Even if they're in your country.
With regards to my own reasons for not fully embracing libertarianism, let's just say: I call myself 'libertarian~ish' because I care aboot absolute poverty and I'm not 100% sure that libertarianism is the best way to minimize absolute poverty. That's the snappy shorthand soundbite version. The detailed 3-hour-podcast version might come later, on my own Substack.
> Without open borders, you don't have freedom of movement, freedom of association
No, you can have such freedom WITHIN a territory. That was the original idea with the EU. Immigration from outside the EU helped cause Brexit, and now Spain being excluded.
I’ve changed my mind on a few things in the last few years.
I confidently predicted that Covid wouldn’t be a big deal based on the works of contrarians like Michael Fumento, the reported declines in fatalities from China, and the apparent difficulty of spreading COVID outside of densely packed spaces. Also, people predicting catastrophe had been consistently wrong in my lifetime. Killer bees, y2k, acid rain, etc. I thought it would be like a bad flu season.
I later realized that Fumento and others had their own biases, China was lying about fatalities, and people congregate in tight spaces despite warnings not to.
I deserved criticism for going outside my field of expertise. Nevertheless, I don’t consider myself a fool for thinking what I did. I did give a mea culpa and admitted I was wrong.
I also changed my mind on immigration thanks to Bryan Caplan. I just hadn’t studied the data carefully enough.
Maybe not consider yourself a fool, but, with Caplan, it does diminish the reliability of statements you make. His point is that if you can make statements while being so casual with data or speaking about things outside your field of expertise, then people should rationally not pay as much attention to your views. Afterall, time is scarce. Speaking of which , have to cut this short.... 😉
You've deliberately chosen a bunch of stupid reasons for someone to have changed their mind and then point out at length how stupid they are. This is a classic Straw Man argument. (Or maybe a Straw Man Straw Man Straw Man.)
I subscribe to no ism. But how the f$&@ are libertarians denying “culture” whatever that means? “Culture” as you use it is a subjective argument that contradicts your opening arguments. This article never really makes any objective argument whatsoever. It reads like AI clickbait. If a human actually wrote this, please humbly take your own advice and read more before writing more.
I think this is a bit uncharitable in interpreting what some of these sentences mean. “I stopped being a libertarian because I realized culture matters” is usually an attempt to say “my belief in the relative importance of culture, vs other issues, increased significantly, and libertarianism is less plausible in worlds where culture is so relatively important.”
Right.
For instance, I used to think political outcomes were fairly low salience in terms of what I should worry about. Median voter theorem, constitutional rights, etc made it so. I didn't vote in most elections.
Then in 2020 I woke up one day and they told me I couldn't leave my house or breath the fucking air and riotous mobs were burning cities and people were blacklisted from the livelihoods over insanity and they were printing so much money over a fucking flu that prices skyrocketed.
SO I updated my assessment of the salience of politics.
You're hinting at some reasonable points, but your choice of the phrase "a fucking flu" suggests that you have been blinded by politics, and aren't particularly credible when it comes to appropriate responses to a new pandemic.
“…libertarianism is less plausible in worlds where culture is so relatively important.”
Except it’s not.
Anarchism is less plausible, sure.
But classical liberalism is surely no less plausible, and even minarchism is only marginally less plausible.
Libertarianism <> Open Borders supporter, despite the fact that *some* libertarians are for completely open borders.
And the libertarians who do believe in open borders equally believe culture matters! In fact, our openness to immigrants reflects a part of the American culture we're so proud of.
When this country was founded, voting rights were limited to property-owners. The expansion of the franchise makes it subject to far more people, and government has grown along with that.
Sure, I don’t disagree with your object-level claim. I’m saying this is how that hypothetical person is reasoning. I’m making a meta-level point, not an object-level one.
It's not really just open borders. Libertarianism itself is fit only for people from a particular culture and for others it may be a much worse fit. It's not a universal solution. The problem with modern liberalism, libertarianism and communism of that the all have a kind of universalism built in. The conceive of themselves as optimal regardless of the particular history or culture of the people. They are to some extent globalist.
Every fiber of your being wants to talk about culture. It's more interesting and exciting to most others too. Not thinking about political structures or incentives. Culture is media and other stimuli too. Not pure abstraction, which seems to lack anything sexy.
thats all well enough, but laggards are not leaders
If culture matters - and it does - then doesn't your open borders position clash with that, since importing other cultures into an existing culture changes and sometimes even overwhelms the native culture. See e.g. the recent mess in Cueta.
Acknowledging that culture matters (that is, that culture has effects on social dynamics) is a mere observation of reality, just as "sky is blue". It doesn't imply any value judgement on the positive or negative implications of those effects. You can as well be for or against immigration and acknowledge that culture matters.
I disagree. If persons in a particular country have established a culture with many traditions, rituals, language idioms, viewpoints, politics and much else, and some other alien culture invades and usurps it, that is close to the practical equivalent of a military invasion. For example, what would happen if large numbers of Somalis invaded Japan, with its history, culture, religion, politics and business practices all challenged by the invaders.
I disagree with Bryan’s position on open borders, but he has noted, e.g. that for Israel open borders would *not* make sense.
Because there the “cultural” implications are quite clear and the probability is overwhelming that the consequences would be bigly negative.
So while to repeat I disagree with his view on open borders, his basic claim is that it is not at all obvious that there would be negative culture changes so massive as to offset the to him massive benefits of the policy.
If Japan opened is borders and a whole bunch of somalis migrated there, it would greatly improve. It would be a needed injection of diversity into Japan's stifling monoculture. It would solve its aging population problem as well as its low tfr.
All the raping would help with that last part.
Bryan has something of a deontological view on immigration. He's support it even if it led to total destruction. Yeah, he tries to make some (mostly half assed and sometimes outright false) arguments as to why it it wouldn't be a disaster, but they mostly seem like trying to throw some empirical rationalizations on an already decided deontological choice.
Bryan not favoring it for Israel https://www.betonit.ai/p/i-stopped-being-a-libertarian-because/comment/309501637 would be inconsistent with an actual deontological view. I can't remember if Bryan actually did make that exception, although I know Richard Hanania has. Bryan claims to follow "common sense" rather than strict deontology much of the time. Personally, I think Steve Sailer's moderate approach on immigration is closer to what most would consider "common sense".
Yeah I'd like to hear BC clarify that, I.e. good for thee not me. I'd find it odd if he did make that exception but not surprising given his peers.
Garett Jones argues that we should encourage Chinese immigration precisely because their culture is better!
Yeah and he’s wrong. East Asia (ex China which is worse) has like 50-60% our total factor productivity, 1/30th our unicorn rate, and apocalypse level total fertility rates. The developed parts of east Asia like Japan have been in recessions for 30 years and we watching its carry trade blow up in real time.
These are inferior broken societies we should not emulate. This is an area we’re I would have shared garrets assessment in the 1990s but I’ve updated my views based on the last few decades of new data.
I don't understand how libertarians consistently lose the unassailable argument that libertarianism is the best form of political/social organization.
Look at the Cato Institute's freedom rankings for the world. The most free countries are the best to live in. The least free countries are the worst to live in. The countries in the middle in freedom are in the middle in terms of places to live.
The US should therefore be striving to get to the top of the freedom rankings (we're currently not even close). Then, we should strive to always distance ourselves from #2 and below.
In the Cato Institute's Human Freedom Index, even Singapore and Hong Kong are not high in the rankings. So we should not be emulating them, with the minor exceptions of where the do rank highly.
Freedom of association also means freedom of exclusion, my guy.
You need to explain how from "culture matters" follows that aggression against people who haven't violated or credibily threatened to violate anyone's (property) rights is justified.
Dude, just because the immigrants in question didn’t pass the laws which transfer money from existing taxpayers to them doesn’t mean that an influx of such immigrants does not “credibly threaten to violate anyone’s property rights”.
Because it quite obviously does.
How so? If a German or Mexican moves to Texas and your government robs you, why you're mad at those foreigners and want to hurt them, and not at your own damn government that is aggressing against you?
But I am “mad” at my government.
And I’m not mad at the German or Mexican.
I also grant that failing to permit him/her to move to Texas makes him poorer.
The fallacy in your claim is that I “want to hurt them”. Even as I acknowledge in the micro, that is the result.
However, in the real world, incentives matter, and actions have consequences. And yes, on the margin I prefer that government policy do less harm to existing citizens and legal residents (and longstanding illegal residents, in fact) than to noncitizens not yet domiciled or only recently domiciled here.
"I’m not mad at the German or Mexican"
Then why are you advocating for your government assaulting them, kidnapping them, and sending them away from their homes for the "crime" of renting or buying a house from me and working at my factory?
I have answered your question repeatedly.
You just don’t like my answer.
Although one additional answer is that I think the rule of law is important. And incentives matter. Many illegal immigrants means we can’t have more legal immigrants, since the populace and so the politicians won’t go for it.
Why would someone continue to support free trade, property rights, and freedom of association for both immigrant and native alike, given that some immigrants will behave badly (such as vote for increased government spending, engage in grift and corruption, and commit crime)?
It's for the same reason that I think you should be free to live and work where you please, despite the fact that you hold views that I find repugnant and harmful.
For example, you want to the government bar people from exercising their freedom to live and work where they please, not because they committed any crime, but because they were born somewhere you don't like.
You want to dictate to me who I can hire, invite onto my own property, or otherwise associate with. You want the government to demand papers please from everyone who wants to travel in or out of the country. You want cops to raid my home and business to kidnap and deport people who I dared to hire without asking government permission first.
To my mind, these are all authoritarian police state policies.
However, I don't support depriving you of your liberties because I think that creating the police state that it would take suppress you and your views would be worse than allowing you the freedoms that you enjoy.
You don't avoid creating a socialist police state by creating a socialist police state.
And I think that's true of immigrants who hold repugnant views as well.
“For example, you want to the government bar people from exercising their freedom to live and work where they please, not because they committed any crime, but because they were born somewhere you don't like.”
This is a strawman argument, not a steelman one.
The steelman one is that open borders is incompatible with the very generous welfare state that we have. Which includes free K-12 education and free “emergency” healthcare, beyond any other benefits that might be legally or illegally obtained.
Or the reality that one of the political parties would seek to make all residents citizens with voting rights for their political gain, but to the very likely detriment of the average person in the country today.
So if you are an anarchist, just say that, and the rest of us can know to ignore your views.
But arguing against a strawman is to commit the “sin” that BC warns about in his post.
Bryan does actually identify as an anarcho-capitalist. Since we are currently very far from anarchy, I evaluate policies on the margin rather than whether they'd make sense under anarcho-capitalism.
“I evaluate policies on the margin rather than whether they'd make sense under anarcho-capitalism.”
As do I.
Marginally I agree with Bryan that we should have much more legal immigration. Much.
But literally unlimited immigration - which is what his open borders proposal is - has massive downsides. And is the one case where marginal analysis is almost impossible to do.
And at best would be a game of Russian roulette. Not a chance I’m willing to take.
Very good arguments against welfare state and against allowing people to vote for the violation of (property) rights of others.
…and if you fix those, then you can reasonably talk about open borders.
I’ll still disagree, but it wouldn’t be insane.
[And I’m someone who would prefer a lot more legal immigration, including essentially unlimited high skill / wealth immigration. Just not full open unlimited immigration.]
Can't we all agree that we should be admitting far more of the world's best and brightest?
Why squabble about unlimited immigration until we're allowing in far more of the best and brightest?
I go further than that.
Why push for *unlimited* open borders before getting people to agree to far more total legal immigration, in addition to essentially unlimited high skill / high wealth immigration?
"I won't support kicking you in the nuts if Mr Government won't hit me in the face"
🙄
Cool story, mister anarchist.
Nice strawman.
But the better way to put it is that I don’t want to give more bullets to the folks who intend to further strangle the golden goose.
Which is the very likely outcome of fully open borders without other major changes.
What's the alternative to me as an American living where I please? Where would you deport me? Whereas, for an immigrant, the obvious alternative is to just not let them in.
If exiling/transporting criminals elsewhere was an option, I think we should do that. https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/consider-exilehtml
Many (most?) nativists don't believe in birthright citizenship, so I don't to see why nativists couldn't be deported just as easily as the other people born in the US that nativists want "remigrated".
El Salvador seems like a good option, as it is ruled by a populist authoritarian strongman that nativists seem to love.
Kettling nativists onto reservations is another option, similar to the Gaza strip, Indian reservations, or South African bantustans.
No
You assume that culture is immutable, when it is much more fluid. Immigrant parents frequently complain about how "American" their US raised children have become. They complain that their children are only English speaking and can't speak the language of the origin country. The Great Assimilation machine still works, no matter how many people on the left and the right hate it.
Ceuta was an engineered attack on Spain that happened with the cooperation of the Moroccan government. Not the same as normal migration.
You surely haven't read Garett Jones on assimilation.
Depends where you live. Here in Hawaii you have 5th generation immigrants who still barely speak English and from their accents, you'd think they were fresh off the boat. I've seen similar in other nations and parts of America, especially the Mexican south west. It really depends on ghettoization.
Who in Hawaii and where? It's not that large of a state.
Isolated rural communities can hold on to their own languages for extended periods, like Pennsylvania German, Cajun French, or Native languages, but these are very small populations. I wouldn't be surprise if there were communities like this in the rural southwest, possibly dating back to before US Annexation.
As mass communication spreads, these local languages are dying out, even in rural areas. The world is becoming more American and more English-speaking, even if some holdouts remain.
Chinese mostly and everywhere here.
Oddly the one language subgroup which died this generation, seen it with my own eyes, after maintaining 150+ years of identify, was Hawaiiam pidgen/moke. Social media killed it, like it's killing lots of localizations everywhere as it flattens that entire generation.
Also I'm not saying they don't speak English, I'm just pointing it's still their secondary language generations in. In the same way French Quebecoise know English.
If they can speak fluent English, who cares what they speak at home?
Because it shows a resistance to assimilation. Also they don't just speak it at home, they speak it everywhere, English is the SECOND language. It's not about caring or not, you shifting goal posts, it's was in response to your point "The Great Assimilation machine still works, no matter how many people on the left and the right hate it.".
When my 5th generation Chinese boss still barely speaks English and when he does, it's heavily accented to the point it's worse than actual Chinese tourist's English, mostly communicates to every one in Chinese (but you as the only non-Chinese person in the office), and in a vacuum you wouldn't even know they were American that's not exactly "the Great Assimilation machine" working. Assimilation requires non-ghettoization, the fear with unlimited immigration is ghettoization becomes more prevalent, or wide enough it becomes the dominant culture.
Bryan has addressed your objection in his book and many of his blog posts. I would recommend starting with the book.
He addresses it, but he doesn't address is satisfactorily. Like a lot of people we don't think Bryan's ideas on this matter are very good, and not because we haven't read them.
You say “we” - say “I”. The OP hasn’t necessarily read Bryan’s work. There is another commenter in this thread, for example, who says he has not read Bryan’s book.
If that's the graphic book, no. The graphics add nothing, the text isn't searchable, and the font isn't adjustable. It's a terrible format for people with fading eyes.
To each their own. I found it digestible.
Nice for you with your excellent eyesight. Doesn't address my problems of unsearchable text and fixed font.
I've been watching this blog for years and have not seen any reasonable response. I haven't read the comic books. The most basic questions haven't been answered. (1) the culture one, (2) the takeover of our political system by people who don't share our values, (3) how to distinguish from an invasion, e.g. the Chinese gov't sends 100's of millions over on ships, (4) does this apply to Israel, South Africa and others? If not, why not? (5) Is what's happening in Western Europe an example of the positive outcomes we should expect?
BC has addressed Israel (and acknowledged it wouldn’t apply there). This is searchable.
Where did he address Israel?
The book is a big load of cope.
Not disagreeing, but you mentioned incentives matter.
If we collectively declare that people that change their mind after some years are probably dumb/have poor judgement and therefore should be silent, we incentivize them to keep denying reality because people don’t like being seen as dumb and silenced.
He acknowledges that several times throughout the post:
"Strategically, you might want to condescendingly praise such concessions as “courageous” and “mature.”"
"you might humor the speaker to be polite, or to encourage others like him to admit that the sky is blue"
My bad, missed it. I am dumb and should be silent.
I mean, this is just doubling down on the disrespect, by assuming the person is too stupid to recognize your patronizing tone or barely submerged disrespect.
An intellectually honest person who claims people are wrong will explain how and why they’re wrong, not spend paragraph after paragraph basking in their imagined superiority and enlightenment.
Er... I sincerely do not get the point of this post. Seems that everything that you get is obvious. What was the intent of this post? Culture matters and then? How does this impact Libertarianism? You didn't even discuss that. I feel as if there was some triggering event or activity that prompted this post, but after reading the entire post, I still have no idea what it is.
Wow, really missed the point. Read it again--he was giving examples to make a bigger point.
And what is the point? Duh. That is precisely my question.
Very sad.
That you are mentally ill?
So says the man that cannot figure out a simple point all by himself.🤣
You have recovered then, after taking your meds for your mental illness?
So says the man who is still unable to state said point.
I am curious about your end-game to begin with. What? You just wanna exchange meaningless insults with somebody? How pointless. I don't think I am unreasonable in claiming that you are unwell.
In all fairness, I also don't understand the point. Primarily because I was not aware that libertarianism was a rejection of culture.
Columbus actually DID discover something. People starting sailing west across the Atlantic precisely because of what he discovered. And the people already living in the Americas didn't realize there was land east of the Atlantic (they hadn't even made the kind of ships to explore the coastline of their continent).
It's entirely plausible for a libertarian to underrate cultural differences to the extent that they would fail to anticipate how open borders could drastically change a government. Joe Henrich had to write "The WEIRDest People in the World" precisely because people kept underestimating how culturally unusual people in first world western countries are.
Personally, I stopped identifying as a libertarian because I had already been a consequentialist and realized that identifying as one was not "keeping my identity small" (as Paul Graham would put it) and could interfere with consequentialist reasoning. Once I ceased believing in God, I also ceased believing in things like "natural rights" or deontology, and came to consider decentralization as more "meta" than libertarianism https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/rhymes-with-shmashmortion/
The way I understand this article is that Bryan doesn't seem to have stopped being a libertarian. Instead, Bryan is equating those who abandoned libertarianism because they claimed to have finally realized that culture matters to a hypothetical person who abandons libertarianism because he has finally realized that the sky is blue. I suggest you read the final paragraph carefully.
Uh-oh. I don't know to what culture Bryan is referring when he says that people stop being Libertarian because culture matters. I'm keeping my damn mouth shut because I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.
I know it's tangential to the overall point of this post but I'm lost here on how culture matters in the context of libertarianism, or even socialism for that matter. Culture matters for a lot of things including how pleasant a libertarian society would be to live in, etc but it's completely irrelevant to the NAP. Likewise culture is completely irrelevant to the fact whether the workers own the means of production or not.
If I was a libertarian that would put me in your minority view but I just don't think I am here, I don't even see the relationship between the two hence curious.
BC is for open borders.
One of the two most serious arguments against open borders is that having open borders will change the culture negatively of a successful country like the U.S.
E.g. by importing a huge number of people who will then vote for socialism.
That’s the gist of the argument.
I get that but once again, nothing to do with the NAP ergo libertarianism. Libertarianism doesn't depend on as applied as a belief.
If libertarianism mandates policies that will destroy libertarianism, then libertarianism would seem to be self-defeating and therefore worth rejecting. While you can't derive an "ought" from an "is", "ought" implies "can", and therefore if "can" is false, then "ought" can't be true.
In some cases but not in philosophy, something is correct or it isn't, application is irrelevant. You aren't a libertarian because you think it will make the world a better place, you are a libertarian because you believe in libertarianism. Same as socialism etc. Otherwise you are just a utilitarian changing political veneers with the wind to suit your underlying utilitarian, not xyz, philosophy.
All moral beliefs are a suicide pact, at least ones of any worth, to butcher a famous SCOTUS quote.
If libertarianism can't be implemented because of secondary issues, the problem isn't libertarianism, it's simply it's time hasn't come yet hence you work on addressing the secondary issues. You can do that without apostasy.
It seems to me, and has for decades hence why I left big L long ago, to many libertarians are LINOs hence wear it only as a means to an ends, no actual belief. If BC is saying he abandoned libertarianism over an unrelated tangential issue, culture, I'm going to say he probably wasn't a libertarian in the first place, at best an "applied" libertarian, I.e. flag of convience.
If libertarianism dooms itself, then it follows one shouldn't believe in libertarianism or be a libertarian.
> All moral beliefs are a suicide pact, at least ones of any worth, to butcher a famous SCOTUS quote.
Bryan wouldn't seem to agree, given his emphasis on "common sense".
> If libertarianism can't be implemented because of secondary issues, the problem isn't libertarianism, it's simply it's time hasn't come yet hence you work on addressing the secondary issues.
How do you know those CAN be addressed while remaining libertarian?
> If BC is saying he abandoned libertarianism over an unrelated tangential issue, culture,
No, he's talking about other people that he's deriding.
I agree with you that strong Nozickian forms of libertarianism, which contain elements that doom itself, should be viewed more critically / less credibly than those that don’t.
Which is why I’m basically a Hayekian classical liberal, rather than an anarcho-capitalist or Rothbardian/Nozickian libertarian.
A culture-related remark I made decades ago has long been featured in Bryan's Anarchist Theory FAQ ( https://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm#part11d ):
"[I]t is precisely because wisdom has to be accumulated in incremental steps that it cannot be centrally planned by any single political or religious authority, contrary to the aspirations of conservatives and collectivists alike. While the collectivists are indeed guilty of trying to rationalistically reconstruct society in defiance of tradition (a valid criticism of left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand are guilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place. Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdom accumulation is an on-going one, and instead have opted for the notion that some existing body of traditions (usually Judeo-Christian) already represent social perfection."
It's not simply that culture and tradition matter; individual liberty and private ownership are important in part precisely because culture matters; conservatives and progressives alike who attempt to use the state to impose their values on others harm the culture and spark politicized culture wars.
LIbertarianism isn't just about the economics; it's about the culture too. I've written an article expanding on this theme:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/debunking-myth-market-fundamentalism
I stopped being a libertarian when:
1) I learned about The Bell Curve/Genetics
2) I had spent enough time dating to draw some different conclusions about things like sexuality
3) I lived in an urban environment and developed a better understanding of human dysfunction
4) COVID era dramatically raised my opinion of the importance of political externalities
Basically, I had one big change in my outlook in my late 20s (related to 1-3) and another after COVID.
You need to expand on how all of this justifies institutionalized violation of (property) rights of innocents, which is what all non-libertarians are advocating for.
It is a property right of non-citizens to come to and live in a country in which they are not citizens, and work and draw taxpayer-funded government benefits in said country?
What a wonderfully Alice-in-Wonderland definition of property rights.
It's my right to rent or sell my property to whomever I wish, and the new tenants or owners by definition have the right to live there. Your relationship with your government you're begging to do this or don't do that is your problem.
“It's my right to rent or sell my property to whomever I wish…”
The fallacy here is that your rights are absolute.
No rights are absolute in the real world.
And this one clearly conflicts with other rights - most especially if you object to literal violence against others, and in particular literal violence by the state.
And perhaps this is the key disconnect in all your arguments: failing to recognize that rights are not absolute and do conflict.
The Non Aggression Principle you clearly are most fond of is just that - a *principle*, not an absolute right.
You continue making wild assertions without any argument. Try to explain how my property rights -- which means right to exclude others from my property -- violate anyone's property rights (to exclude others from their property).
It's an absolute right outside the margins such as punishment, as with any principle. You don't get to be pro-zoning and then claim "oh that's ok with libertarianism because it's not an absolute right". Zoning doesn't fall under the extremely niche marginal case.
You are welcome to hold your views, that fine.
But for most of the rest of us, even those extremely sympathetic to libertarianism, there is nothing that is an absolute right.
Most obviously - quite independent of any moral positions - because sometimes rights conflict.
What did your new knowledge of sexuality have to do with libertarianism? Are you talking about things like consent?
I used to be a Radley Balko reader https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/something-rotten-in-mississippi/ who would have said police are just the largest armed gang. Nowadays I'm still aware that police commit lots of crime and get away with it, but the 2014 Ferguson effect and its replication in the 2020 George Floyd effect have shown me how much worse things can get if that largest gang loses dominance. On a related note, one reason I don't favor entirely replacing the police with Robin Hanson's bounty hunters https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/who-vouches-for-youhtml is because I think such decentralization might be too weak to take on organized crime & gangs.
Are any of those in someway incompatible with libertarianism? They somehow require us to be in conflict with each other, rather than negotiate peacefully?
The rest is fine, but how could COVID not making you a lot *more* directionally libertarian, rather than less?
1) COVID raised the *salience* of politics. I used to not think it mattered much which party won elections or what the median voter believed. Afterwards I came to believe it mattered a lot.
I believe that the libertarian impulse to import bad voters will lead to much worse politics then I believed before COVID.
2) Living in the DC area near where Bryan Caplan lives, I got a close up view of how libertarian DC think tank/academic types responded to COVID/woke. It was immensely revolting.
They have this phrase "there are no atheists in foxholes." Well, there were no philosophical libertarians during COVID. Basically they either stood out of the way or actively engaged in persecution.
Because of their behavior during COVID, when they defended my basic freedoms, my respect for conservatives and small L vibes libertarians (Hank Hill types) went up and my views on philisophical libertarianism went down.
That COVID made you more in favor of “conservatives” relative to libertarians, I get and accept.
And perhaps the confusion is that you were referring sometimes to capital “L” libertarians even though you didn’t make that clear.
But it’s a very strange thing indeed to blame any small “l” libertarians for anything that went down during COVID. Those things were dont]e by leftists, and gone along with by some centrist and even center-right establishment elite types, not by “libertarians” of any stripe.
In addition to orange line libertarians performing poorly during the COVID/woke terror era, they support immigration. Immigrants vote for the left, and the left implemented the COVID/woke terror state.
I lived in nova during this period. Nova used to be a red state but became a blue state via immigration (mostly “high skilled” btw). Most of what I had to deal with was because we had a democratic governor. When youngkin eeked out a very narrow victory in nov 2021 it literally changed my life meaningfully overnight. A few more % immigrant in the voter pool and that doesn’t happen, and I don’t expect Virginia to ever sway from being deep blue again (I left).
I personally blame the supporters of immigration for the actions of immigrants. This is why I consider Bryan a leftist, he supports the importation of leftists and is personally responsible for how they act and vote.
I'm lost on what are you asking here. COVID, nor any action flowing from it, didn't effect my view of libertarianism at all, why would it? They aren't related.
Sir, hwhen reading this headline, I thot you stopped being libertarian! I was shocked! Instead, it seems to be a rant about some former libertarian hwho quit libertarianism because "culture matters". Garett Jones?
I think you are being a lil uncharitable, here. Smart people can be really stupid sometimes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeTNDEqf6Fs
We all have our blind spots. I know I've missed things, before, that, in retrospect, seem totally obvious.
It's hard enough to admit publicly that you were wrong. It's even harder if there are people like you hwho think that if one admits they're wrong, it's likely because they missed some "obvious" fact and therefore are too stupid and we shouldn't listen to anything they say!
Besides, if someone says that they are no longer libertarian because "culture matters", they probably don't mean: "Before, I thot culture didn't matter, at all. Put someone from a culture hwhere they're lazy af and smoke weed, drink and beat their wives all day and they're just gonna thrive in a culture that values temperance, productivity and non-violence!"
hWhat they prolly mean: "Of course, I always knew that culture mattered, but I've come to realize that it mattered more than I originally thot. I used to think that institutions mattered a lot more than culture: Hence why South Korea does so much better than North Korea, despite both countries being populated by Koreans. Put someone in a free-market environment and the incentive structure will push them towards being productive. And if you take most people from third-world countries and put them in first-world countries, their incomes will increase so much and they will be a net benefit on their new countries. They will pay more in taxes than they consume in services, etc.
But I've come to realize that a lot of poor countries are poor because of the people. They have low IQs, they are lazy, they are criminals. Put them in a country like the US and they'll still be dumb, lazy and criminal. And so will their kids. They won't be a net benefit. They'll go on welfare, they'll go to jail (which costs taxpayers even more than welfare!) They will be a net drain on taxpayers.
Obviously, I knew that _some_ people would still be dumb, lazy and criminal in 'the land of opportunity', but they would be overhwhelmed by those hwho aren't. But now, after reading 'Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids' by Dr. Bryan Caplan, I'm not so sure... It seems like maybe maybe of these traits are heritable and they'd follow them and their children hwherever they go. To quote Sts Brooks and Dunn: 'You can take the girl out of Honky Tonk, but you can't take the Honky Tonk out of the girl!'
So, we can't have open borders. And open borders are such an integral part of libertarianism. Without open borders, you don't have freedom of movement, freedom of association, etc. I know there are a lot of 'bordertarians' out there, but they are a bunch of hypocrites! I can't, in good conscience, still call myself 'libertarian' if I no longer support open borders. Therefore, I no longer call myself 'libertarian'."
Orrr... In short: "I stopped being libertarian because I realized 'culture matters'." It's not really that they didn't realize the obvious fact culture mattered, before. They just now realize it matters more than they initially thot. But it's just... "shorthand". It makes a snappy little soundbite for the preview of the podcast as opposed to the long-winded explanation above that you would have to listen to the hwhole podcast to hear, in detail. It's not lying, it's not "missing an obvious truth", it's not SDB. It's just shorthand.
Note: This doesn't represent my own view. I never fully "embraced" libertarianism, for different reasons. But with regards to culture, my own view remains that most people are productive and law-abiding enough, that, even if they come from a poor country, most will thrive in a country that values temperance, productivity and non-violence. Most will be net contributors. As per Dr. Bryan Caplan's book: Open Borders. In fact, that book made me less libertarian! I used to think maybe a welfare state, ANY welfare state, was incompatible with open borders. And so, unfortunately, we'd have to completely dismantle the welfare state to allow open borders. But it'd be worth it. But now, thanks to Dr. Caplan, I have come to realize that a US-style welfare state is compatible with open borders. That being said, there would be a few lazy people. But the productive would not be affected by their lazy culture. The lazy would suffer the consequences of their own laziness: less money. The productive would be minimally impacted. Welfare is not that much so it doesn't cost taxpayers all that much. And if it does, just lower welfare. So, if somebody is lazy because of "culture". OK, fine. But, that has nothing to do with you. Even if they're in your country.
With regards to my own reasons for not fully embracing libertarianism, let's just say: I call myself 'libertarian~ish' because I care aboot absolute poverty and I'm not 100% sure that libertarianism is the best way to minimize absolute poverty. That's the snappy shorthand soundbite version. The detailed 3-hour-podcast version might come later, on my own Substack.
How would you shrink our current government while importing voters who disagree with that?
> Without open borders, you don't have freedom of movement, freedom of association
No, you can have such freedom WITHIN a territory. That was the original idea with the EU. Immigration from outside the EU helped cause Brexit, and now Spain being excluded.
I’ve changed my mind on a few things in the last few years.
I confidently predicted that Covid wouldn’t be a big deal based on the works of contrarians like Michael Fumento, the reported declines in fatalities from China, and the apparent difficulty of spreading COVID outside of densely packed spaces. Also, people predicting catastrophe had been consistently wrong in my lifetime. Killer bees, y2k, acid rain, etc. I thought it would be like a bad flu season.
I later realized that Fumento and others had their own biases, China was lying about fatalities, and people congregate in tight spaces despite warnings not to.
I deserved criticism for going outside my field of expertise. Nevertheless, I don’t consider myself a fool for thinking what I did. I did give a mea culpa and admitted I was wrong.
I also changed my mind on immigration thanks to Bryan Caplan. I just hadn’t studied the data carefully enough.
Maybe not consider yourself a fool, but, with Caplan, it does diminish the reliability of statements you make. His point is that if you can make statements while being so casual with data or speaking about things outside your field of expertise, then people should rationally not pay as much attention to your views. Afterall, time is scarce. Speaking of which , have to cut this short.... 😉
These are not necessarily ridiculous things to have been wrong about. A rational person should temper their judgement accordingly.
You've deliberately chosen a bunch of stupid reasons for someone to have changed their mind and then point out at length how stupid they are. This is a classic Straw Man argument. (Or maybe a Straw Man Straw Man Straw Man.)
I stopped being a libertarian because of BlueSky has a different meaning tho…
I subscribe to no ism. But how the f$&@ are libertarians denying “culture” whatever that means? “Culture” as you use it is a subjective argument that contradicts your opening arguments. This article never really makes any objective argument whatsoever. It reads like AI clickbait. If a human actually wrote this, please humbly take your own advice and read more before writing more.