LIBERTARIANISM IS DEAD, LONG LIVE LIBERTARIAN PATERNALISM

The movement's time has come and gone, sort of, argues NY Times columnist David Leonhardt:

Libertarianism has now arrived at an interesting juncture. The moment for its grandest ambitions seems to have passed. President Bush is no longer talking about privatizing Social Security, and his free-market approach to rebuilding Iraq has proven disastrous. The libertarians at the Cato Institute, meanwhile, are struggling to persuade people that global warming — the archetypal free-market failure — is a hoax. Yet in an irony worthy of [Ayn] Rand’s collective, the solution to climate change will probably have a libertarian tinge. The global warming debate is coalescing around a "cap and trade" solution in which energy-efficient companies would be rewarded by the market. In fact, across a range of major issues — energy policy, health care, retirement savings — a hybrid form of laissez-faire capitalism and collectivism seems to be ascendant. The market will be allowed to work its efficient magic, but government will step in to correct the market’s failures.

Is Iraq really an example of the free market in operation? One for the faithful to argue over.

Comments

[Johnathan Pearce]

I would not say that global warming is the "archetypal" freemarket failure. The former Communist bloc had horrendous pollution, such as East Germany, etc. Pollution happens in any significant industrialised nation, not just one practising laissez-faire. It is a good point, however, that markets also provide some of the solutions to so-called man-made global warming.

The tragedy of the commons is in fact an example of what happens when you do not have property rights.

[Mark Holland]

Global warming is the archetypal free-market failure? What rot.

State run industry's pollution is non-polluting is it? News to the Elbe and the Ukraine and the Aral Sea and so on. I wonder why Volkswagen even bothered to build new plants in Dresden if the old Trabant works were so delightful.

[dearieme]

I'd have thought that libertarians would point to Iraq as a classic case of the awfulness of governments - Saddam's as evil, W's as incompetent, foolish and rash.

[Johnathan Pearce]

There is a good shredding of the NYT review of Brian Doherty's excellent history of American libertarianism here. Judging by that article, the Leonhardt review was a piece of sloppy work albeit with some good points. Well, it is the NY Times, after all.