Among the most dangerous and cripplingly destructive political philosophies of our time is libertarianism. Libertarians distrust government and claim to love liberties and personal freedoms. They claim that government does not work, and when libertarian candidates take office, ensure that it doesn’t.
The irony is not lost on me that government gridlock occurs when those who don’t believe in the effectiveness of government hold office. This sort of self-fulfilling prophecy would almost be funny if it were not so frustrating.
Libertarians claim that less government is better: fewer regulations, more freedoms, fewer people controlling you as an individual. Taxation is “theft,” after all. However, there has never once existed any precedent of the type of society that libertarians espouse. No taxations, no regulations, no government control, with everything being balanced by the free market.
We have been close, though. There was a time when the U.S. government didn’t outlaw slavery and child labor; when the government didn’t mandate minimum wage laws, the five day workweek, etc. There was a time when workers, children, the indigent, and the ethnic minorities of the United States lacked protections. When the government didn’t protect the people who need to be protected the most, there was slavery, there was child labor, people were, in fact, exploited. What caused these changes was not the mandate of the free market, but government mandates.
Libertarians respond to this argument by retreating to the realm of historical revisionism.
“Actually, if you look at history, it really was the free market after all.”
Only the gnosis given by libertarianism can let one see it this way. However, there isn’t any evidence supporting this view. Show me one single scrap of evidence and I might take libertarianism seriously. Show me enough, and I just might believe you. However, Libertarians stick to conjecture and hypotheticals. They rely solely on what goes on in their minds, which oftentimes directly contrasts with the objective, physical world and hard evidence. Historical counterfactuals are easy to contrive, but impossible to prove.
On an added note, scientists make hypotheses on a regular basis. It is their job, and it is how they spend most of their lives. Scientists’ hypotheses are often wrong when tested. If people who spend their lives testing hypotheses consistently are surprised by the casino online real world, what gives a Libertarian the gall to believe that his or her untested claims are necessarily true?
On the other hand, before government regulation, we have plenty of examples of how the free market did not create ideal situations: the disgusting nature of the meat-packing industry (as explored in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”), the formation of monopolies, Rockefeller’s manipulation of the market for his own personal benefit, the Triangle shirtwaist fire, etc. The free market did not fix these problems; it actually created them. Government mandate solved these problems. In other words, laws did.
The federal government provides a sense of legitimacy and offers protection to those who need it most. The free market has never provided either of these. The government is the representative body of the people, and without it, powerful members of society can shape the world to benefit themselves at the expense of others.
Perhaps, hypothetically, greater personal freedom is desirable, but it isn’t worth having compared to the benefits taxes, regulation and government in general provide the U.S. citizen. And if one tries increase “freedom” by following Libertarian ideology, by slashing regulations and essentially removing the protections put in place for the safety of the people, most people suffer while the ones on top revel in the profits gained from cutting regulations for safe food, cars, medicines, etc.
Is the “freedom” you seek worth living in a world of chaos and suffering? Or would some of this “freedom” be worth giving up to live in a safe world with access to education and healthcare paid for by taxes (taxes themselves being more efficient than the free market due to the fact that the money is aggregated)?
When one thinks about who has the most to gain from no regulations, no taxes, and small, powerless government, the answer is quite clear: the people who already have the most money and power, people like the Koch brothers, who support a multitude of Libertarian organizations. Don’t be a pawn. And don’t campaign against your own interest. Contemporary libertarianism is simply the powerful attempting to convince the powerless to campaign against their own interest. But of course, something has to be wrapped up in the flag, with patriotic use of the phrases “liberty” and “freedom” for the American people to embrace it. A large government with oversight, regulation and responsibility is preferable to a weak, powerless one, and the intellectual knows this, while the anti-intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals embrace libertarianism.
Chris Sahlen is a junior chemistry and Chinese major from Fort Collins, CO.
