Those Classy Classical Liberalists

Work Harder. For Freedom, of Course.

YouTuber Sargon of Akkad has launched "The Liberalists" as a means of reviving classical liberal thought - the finer points of which he finally got around to hashing out on a livestream, which he'd postponed for a day due to having committed himself to dungeons and dragons. Good for him. I admire his sense of priorities. D&D is good fun, though I've had my fill of it since I first started playing the game back in the days of Reagan and Thatcher. My character was a thief - well suited to the era.  Anyway, I digress.

Liberalist-ism, if you can call it that, boils down to seven principles that would be familiar to anyone knowledgeable on classical liberal thought.  They are: individual rights, democracy, economic freedom, freedom of speech, self reliance, blind justice and secularism.  These ideas are fleshed out somewhat on the Liberalist Society blog. 

I do like classical liberalism, and think it one part of the foundation for the alt left.  One half of the equation - social democracy or democratic socialism being the other half.  So I joined the Liberalists Facebook group, of which Sargon himself is a member.  I'd encourage realist alt-leftists to do likewise.  Not as part of a group takeover but because, as I've said, classical liberalism is an important ingredient in realist alt-left thinking.  But, as I've detailed elsewhere, I also have some misgivings about what some of my fellow realist leftists have termed 'Sargonism.' 

While I think classical liberalism has many key insights regarding the nature of liberty and how polities are best constituted to protect individual rights, I likewise have misgivings about classical liberal takes on economics.  Not much liberty in a sweatshop or a workhouse, I hate to point out.  While I thought the liberalists would be good allies in the realist/alt-left's struggle to reclaim civil liberties as a center-left cause, I feared what I'd get at the Liberalists is a whole lot of the gospels of Milton Friedman, Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises.  

There is some of that, of course.  But a whole lot of Liberalists did a good job passing their intelligence checks when this question was posed:

Opinions, privatization or publicly owned services? Police, fire, ems, public transport?

Most of the answers this question got were damn near enough to restore my faith in humanity. The best news I've had in awhile.

• Public. Privatisation of essential services just leads inexorably to abuse of power.
• Too many externalities not be public, IMO. If your house burns down, there's a good chance of the fire spreading to the next house, then the next (eventually reaching mine). Or, at minimum, it creates a neighborhood blight, hurting me economically. You don't have to abandon all rational self interest to support public goods and services.  If you have the option of making it private, those who don't opt in will require some sort of free-rider carrier. So, no.  Also, the idea of private police is just... alarming.
• Privatisation will always mean that the main goal of the service will be money. How to produce more money, how to save money. Publicly funded means the main priority will be to serve the people. Ofc i believe if you can have private management to achieve the same goal, example publicly funded hospitals but private management, is the best way to go.
• It all depends on how it is done. For instance, Sask and Alberta are very similar jurisdictions, but one has government car insurance and the other uses private. The private insurance is basically twice as much with worse customer service and more inefficient administration. The government run insurance is cheaper, easier to manage, and more effective.
• All of these need to be public services.
• (my own answer)  Keep core infrastructure and essential services public. Oftentimes, they are services that are not easily provided as commodities for a profit: barriers to entry and capital requirements are high, earning potential limited, deterring investment. If there's not a sufficient market to bear numerous competitors, then the competition that is supposedly privatization's biggest advantage becomes null. Plus, does universal access to essential services not simply make for a better, more inclusive polity for all?
• So private police? so would you need insurance to be able to call the cops? what happens if you cant pay, "I'm sorry you were raped ma'am but your credit sucks, have a nice day."
• I don't think that's a good idea for essential services. Certain services shouldn't have a profit motive factored in, for moral reasons.
• The idea of private fire ems or police terrifies me, it should be a responsibility, not a business decision whether your house fire is put out or the burglary investigated or the ambulance takes you to hospital.
• From an economic perspective privatizing some services creates wasteful an redundant infrastructure so it is more efficient to keep them public. Think about the multiple fire departments in early New York. What if one has it's own set of hydrants that only one department can use, so the other departments install there own hydrants so now we have multiple hydrants on every block.
• This is why we only have one provider for certain services here in the US, like water of gas, because installing multiple pipes underground for every house is terrible wasteful. This solves one problem but creates another, a captive market. This allows the utilities to price fix. Making these public and thus removing the profit motive would fix this, but it would add more bureaucracy which might be a net bad.
• The privatization of essential services is always exploitative to citizenry. The government has a responsibility to ensure basic protections and freedoms of it's citizens. Police, Fire departments, health, incarceration, all of these should not be designed for profit.

There were, quite naturally, some dissidents:

• Imo, looking at the handling of other services compared to government run programs I think privatization could lead to streamlining of a lot of these things. It may then come with a price tag. Especially public transport and the police force.
• University libraries vs public libraries is the only one that comes to mind right off. But as it stands, government run services are kind of beyond the law. Given infrastructure status and water treatment. I feel that If these were taken over by a company that is trying to make a profit, the motivation to do it properly to turn the dollar would be higher. As it is now, the taxes are already paid up-front, so there's no drive to do the jobs in a timely manner or with any form of quality.
• It comes down to how its done. Voluntarism and small government sound nice.
• As individualists it would be hypocritical to deny an individual the freedom to start their own security, transport, fire service etc. Or force that individual to pay for such services through force (taxation)

Admittedly, privatization isn't always bad.  Stopped clocks are right twice a day.  My home province privatized its liquor stores (why they were state run to begin with, I'm not sure) and the results weren't bad.  But privatization more often than not tends to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

The responses to this question were positive and hopeful, but the Libearlists and the broader cultural libertarian movement remains a lightning rod for the Von Mises fan club, which has been a powerful force on the internet almost since its inception. Libertarianism is not liberal; it is essentialist and dogmatic to the core. It sees liberty entirely in terms of the absence of government, and ignores or rationalizes away the very real capacity for private sources of power to tyrannize over individuals, especially if joined to a laissez faire capitalist system.  

The millennials in particular will not be drawn away from the excesses of intersectional social justice by those who take a devil-take-the-hindmost attitude towards economics and inequality more generally.  Moreover, being made to choose between freedom of speech and social security is a choice no one should have to make.

Libertarianism has as firm a grip on the young male mind as feminist theory has on the young female mind, especially on social media. It is a toss-up as to which doctrine is more harmful. Both dragons need slaying, and the campaign promises to be a long one. 

Arm yourself with the facts. Powerful arguments against SJW and Libertarian excesses
Social Democracy for the 21st Century

Additional Commentary from the Alternative Left
Beware Sargonism
The Theory of Surplus Value
Do You Even Socialist, Bro?

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