I Can’t Wait To Hear What a Terrible Person I Am!

I think I make my libertarian politics abundantly clear. I discuss policy, offer arguments and evidence, and try to have intelligent discussions (which almost never seem to materialize). So it is tremendously annoying when a libertarian-ish policy proposal seems within arms reach, and it gets idiotically denounced within the framework of petty partisan politics. Recent examples involve the tax bill, Betsy DeVos' appointment as education secretary, and Republican-proposed "healthcare" bills.

My take on education is that there should be a total separation of education and state. I've argued my position here. Also here. Much more recently, here. In addition to these blog posts, maybe every month or so I'll post a link to Facebook that supports my position. Usually this is a well-argued post by someone else. And 99% of the time these are completely ignored. But then people scream bloody murder when an education secretary gets appointed who is sympathetic with school choice. (It's particularly ridiculous considering that education is mostly funded and administered by state and local governments; a pro-choice education secretary really can't do very much.) I'm left thinking, "Hey, guys, I brought this all up before and you didn't have anything to say about it then. Did you have to wait until everyone was frothing at the mouth before we discussed? Couldn't we have had a civil discussion when heads were cooler?" Apparently not.

I have a similar position on healthcare. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Everything that the government does to regulate the supply of medicine or the health insurance industry backfires tremendously and saddles us with problems. We have nothing to show for all the money we waste on subsidized medicine. But once again, expect people to wax wroth and froth at the mouth when a mild retreat from the existing level of government regulation is actually within arms reach. It's another example of, "Gee, we could have talked about it sooner. Remember when I brought this up? Couldn't we have discussed this reasonably before tempers were hot?" Some topics just don't register unless they are stated in starkly partisan terms. And once you manage to operate within this extremely narrow bandwidth, a sensible proposal for a good policy gets bogged down with all the partisan (even personal) baggage of the coalition that proposed it.

I could go on. Immigration. Drug legalization. The minimum wage. Inefficient taxes on capital. I've shared opinions on all of these topics. Nobody wants to read and discuss a book or white paper on the economics of the minimum wage. But the moment it turns into party-versus-party sloganeering, people pipe up and start spewing the shallowest arguments in their arsenal. If some libertarian politicians come to power and start implementing libertarian policy proposals, I'll get to hear what horrible people they are for wanting poor children to suffer (from malnutrition, lack of healthcare, insufficient schooling, or whatever). And I'll think, "Wait a minute, that proposal is far milder than my favored policy. Am I a horrible person for believing these things? If I surveyed the evidence on health/education/drug/labor policy and came to different conclusions, does that make me a horrible person? I wish we could have had a conversation about this when I brought it up years ago, rather than having a 'my coalition is bigger and angrier' shouting match." Non-libertarians are wrong about the likely effects of non-interventionist (even less-interventionist) policy in all these areas. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong and a civil discussion would reveal a flaw in how I think about these things. Unfortunately, that civil discussion isn't on anyone's radar until an actual policy change is within striking distance (debated in congress, proposed as part of a bill, etc.). And at that point it's almost impossible to keep that discussion civil. There are some exceptions; a few rare corners of the internet are good at staying on topic and adding light rather than heat. I hope this blog is one of them.