How Libertarians Should — And Should Not — Approach Millennials

[StylesGrant]

 

In recent weeks both Thoughts on Liberty and Reason have published articles on the Millennial generation’s social and political attitudes, as they relate to libertarianism. One is a good example of how libertarians should approach Millennials. The other most decidedly is not.

Let’s start with how to. Rachel Burger, at Thoughts on Liberty (“Millennials And Left-Libertarianism Part 1: They Need Community,” May 29), does a great job of understanding the Millennials on their own terms. She starts out from the communitarian, cooperative values of the Millennial generation, and asks libertarians to tailor our vision of a free society to that value system. And that entails incorporating left-wing sensibilities into libertarianism.

Millennials, she says, form online communities and social networks at far higher rates than the previous generation, and see cooperation with their peers as a normal way of getting things done. They are not only more cooperative and community-oriented, but more tolerant and concerned about social justice issues like “race, gender, sexual identity and class.” So libertarians need to emphasize the values of community, cooperation, and social justice. That probably means a public face of libertarianism that’s not a white guy in Silicon Valley reflexively dismissing the “statism” of feminists and people of color.

I would add that the Millennial generation is far more open than its predecessors to the sharing of information, cooperative/peer production, horizontal or networked forms of organization, and prefigurative politics.

Unlike us older folks who adhere to the slogan “information wants to be free” as an ideological proposition that we at some point consciously adopted, most Millennials grew up accepting it as a fact of nature. For them Web filters and firewalls are something installed by clueless education bureaucrats, that they can circumvent in a matter of minutes. They’ve been sharing music files as long as they can remember, and laugh at RIAA “anti-songlifting” classes the way stoners of my generation laugh at Reefer Madness. Chelsea Manning, Aaron Swartz and Edward Snowden were Millennials, and members of that generation just assume that full transparency should be the norm and anything short of it serves corrupt power interests of some sort.

Millennials are used to networked collaboration. In the workplace they view such collaboration with their peers as the way to get things done, and see traditional corporate managerial hierarchies as a form of damage to be routed around.  The same ethos is reflected in the political models that have emerged in recent years — the Arab Spring, M15, Syntagma, Occupy — all reflect this.

Millennials favor horizontal, prefigurative politics over older models of working within the system for good reason. In the economic realm, they took out student loans and got good grades — followed all the rules for advancement under the old “meritocratic” system — and wound up working part-time for temp agencies (if at all) after moving back in with their parents.  In the political realm, enthusiastic 20-somethings turned out in record numbers to vote for Obama. And Obama, elected with the most left-sounding rhetoric, and the largest electoral and Congressional majorities in a generation, turned out to be every bit as much of a tool of the banks and the warfare and surveillance state as Bush had been.

As a result, Millennials have low levels of faith in old-style vertical hierarchies like the corporation or the state to mediate their vision of the good life. Instead, they see direct collaboration with each other to create the kind of life and counter-institutions they want, here and now, as the way to realize their ideals.

Because 20-somethings came of age during the Great Recession, they are unemployed or underemployed to a degree comparable to the Lost Generation in Japan, and consequently live in very large numbers in multi-generational households and meet a major share of subsistence needs through cooperation, bartering skills and self-provisioning outside the wage system and cash economy. James O’Connor, in Accumulation Crisis, argued thirty years ago, that in severe cyclical downturns it’s common for unemployed and underemployed workers to meet as many of their needs as possible outside the wage system, through self-provisioning and production for use within the household and informal sectors. As Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation observed, Web 2.0 was largely the creation of tech workers unemployed by the Dotcom bust.

Read the rest at http://c4ss.org/content/29297

[Magnus]

That's a great article. That kind of generational analysis is often dismissed out of hand, and treated like a pseudoscience, like handwriting analysis or dream interpretation (both of which I also find some value in).

 

The Millennials are definitely the children of the Boomers. They grew up in households that tolerated 60s ideas like free love and recreational drug use, and treated them in a way that reversed the previous social norm, which was to shame them.

 

The Millenials have definitely shifted the focus of their conformism from that of earlier generations. There's a lot of food for thought here.

[Andrew79]

It's just part of the ongoing attempt by the left to co-opt libertarianism.

[J. D. Stembal]

The contradictory concept of combining "left-leaning" & "liberty" reminds me of the racially harmonious cookie that gives Jerry Seinfeld a stomach ache after he eats it.

 

[Magnus]

No, Leftism and rational liberty can't be combined. But changing people's minds is, in large part, a matter of avoiding a reaction where you trigger their lizard-brain sense of revulsion.

 

Millennials have been steeped in an ethic of sharing and cooperation and anti-competition and forced equality. They literally do not recognize government action as a form of force. They see government as a reflection of their social values -- a government that forces certain wages for fast food workers is, to them, merely a reflection of the idea that no one should be poor.

 

To these people, "The Rich" is an all-purpose bogeyman enemy who can afford all of their utopian agenda items, if only their corrupt stinginess can be defeated at the polls.

 

I think it's interesting to consider how to appeal to people who begin with this particular collection of bad ideas.

[DaVinci]

No, Leftism and rational liberty can't be combined. But changing people's minds is, in large part, a matter of avoiding a reaction where you trigger their lizard-brain sense of revulsion. Millennials have been steeped in an ethic of sharing and cooperation and anti-competition and forced equality. They literally do not recognize government action as a form of force. They see government as a reflection of their social values -- a government that forces certain wages for fast food workers is, to them, merely a reflection of the idea that no one should be poor. To these people, "The Rich" is an all-purpose bogeyman enemy who can afford all of their utopian agenda items, if only their corrupt stinginess can be defeated at the polls. I think it's interesting to consider how to appeal to people who begin with this particular collection of bad ideas.

I'm right there with you. I've been running into this problem a lot recently where someone will claim that government is not force because of the reasons you listed. I've found the "against me" argument somewhat effective, but often times the discussion ends at that point as the person with the leftist views decides that "you don't get it." So I am open to listening to ideas on how to work through this issue.

[Magnus]

I'm right there with you. I've been running into this problem a lot recently where someone will claim that government is not force because of the reasons you listed. I've found the "against me" argument somewhat effective, but often times the discussion ends at that point as the person with the leftist views decides that "you don't get it." So I am open to listening to ideas on how to work through this issue.

My general approach to social life, and the inevitable confrontation of ubiquitous irrationality, is not to evangelize for anarchism. I consider my "outreach" strategy to be more a matter of sending up a signal flare, and seeing if any intelligent life spots it.

[StylesGrant]

 

Five Libertarian Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For

Kevin Carson | January 13th, 2014

 

Millennials are disgruntled, and it’s no wonder. In 2008 they turned out in record numbers in support of a presidential candidate who used the most leftish-sounding rhetoric of any Democratic candidate since McGovern. This president came into office with a seemingly filibuster-proof Democratic majority, by the largest Democratic majority since LBJ beat Goldwater. He came into office faced with the biggest meltdown since FDR was inaugurated in 1933, and could have mustered overwhelming support for radical change. Instead he governed as a moderate Republican, continuing the Paulson TARP program with a few cosmetic modifications, bailing out the largest “too big to fail” industrial corporation in America, and implementing a national healthcare “reform” first proposed by Richard Nixon and implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney.

In the meantime, twenty-somethings face a situation much like that of Japan’s “Lost Generation” after the ’90s meltdown. About half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, and a similar portion have moved back in with their parents.

Not surprisingly, this generation is completely disillusioned about the system — representative democracy, capitalism, the American Dream — that was sold to them. After sweeping Obama into office in 2008, they stayed home in droves in 2010 — the main factor behind the GOP sweep of Congress. They were the backbone of the Occupy movement, a movement founded on the assumption that representative democracy and the political process were worthless, and the only alternative was to build a new system outside the existing one. In polls, this demographic is split three ways between those who would prefer what they call a “socialist system,” those who prefer capitalism, and those who aren’t sure.

The reforms I propose below are all free market libertarian reforms, but they’re also essentially socialist or anti-capitalist in that they shift wealth from rentier classes to the people who actually produce it, break the power of giant corporations, and create a fairer system with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.

http://c4ss.org/content/23685

 

 

A Left-Libertarianism I Don’t Recognize

Jeff Ricketson | July 12th, 2014

 

This series at Thoughts on Liberty shows just how poorly understood left-libertarianism is, even among those who would claim to know enough about it to laud it as ​”the future of libertarianism.​” Rachel Burger begins her “defense” of left-libertarianism by conflating it with liberaltarianism. Left-libertarianism is a body of outlooks within libertarianism wh​ich see leftist concerns about problematic social arrangements as legitimate but also recognize that existing institutions of power are not likely to be helpful in solving these social woes. We see corporate power and the boss-worker relationship as stifling, and we don’t want the most hierarchical institution of all, government, trying to do anything about it. Liberaltarians have the opposite view about power, and, as Roderick T. Long points out, they tend to see their left-leaning concerns as being moderating influences where left-libertarians see the two as reinforcing each other or even radicalizing one another.

The article goes on to delve into a topic that seems as abused as it is popular: millennial libertarianism. News sources as disparate in ideology as the Huffington Post and Town Hall (which, unfortunately, are not disparate enough) have published articles in praise of it. With some questionable sociological claims about the way Millennials have grown up, Burger comes to the conclusion that “Millennials are all about community, not individualism.” This claim is entirely unclear, even from the data Burger cites. The Pew Research Center study to which the article links says, “Millennials have emerged into adulthood with low levels of social trust.” But also, “They are about as likely as their elders to have a favorable view of business, and they are more likely than older generations to say they support an activist government.” Burger further claims that Millennials “are the least narcissistic generation in decades.” This is a controversial assertion that may not even be using the proper definition of narcissism. Burger ​goes so far as to​ claim that Millennials tend to live with their parents because of this supposed community-oriented thinking, completely ignoring the fact that anyone born after 1986 would have graduated high school or college into one of the worst job markets in American history.

Moving on to the recommendations for spreading libertarianism to​ her communitarian, family-dependent​ Millennials, Burger’s first point is to play down individualism. Instead, she says, libertarianism needs to address identity politics. This dichotomy is very strange. Identity politics seeks to understand the ways in which socially contrived groups of individuals live among each other. Most often, it seeks to understand implicit social dynamics that put some groups in positions of social inferiority with respect to some other group. In other words, those of us who are interested in identity politics want to free individuals from the groupings they are assigned by others. We seek to free people in a radically more individualistic way than ​do ​adherents to thinner libertarian ideologies wh​ich​ see the government as the only social ill oppos​able​ on libertarian grounds.

In fact, what left-libertarianism has as its central tenet is that every individual should have complete control over their life and no one else’s. Misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and the myriad other bigotries that can haunt the lives of underprivileged individuals ​are​ social power structures. Burger deserves applause for pointing out that left-libertarians and liberaltarians seem to be the only libertarians grappling with these collectivistic problems, but she is completely backwards in saying that this means collectivistic rhetoric will win Millennials (or, more meaningfully, anyone with concerns about the socially oppressed) to libertarianism. This is the mistaken liberaltarian interpretation of identity politics’ success. Instead of presenting bad ideas (like communitarianism) as a front for libertarianism, left-libertarians want to show how identity politics is intensely focused on the identity of individuals.

http://c4ss.org/content/29301

[StylesGrant]

 

Competition is Theft

Kevin Carson | September 1st, 2010

 

In one of Nina Paley’s cartoons (she wrote the song “Copying is Not Theft,” which you should look up at YouTube just as soon as you finish reading this), Eunice says “Copying a song instead of buying a copy is stealing!” Mimi says “Doing  for yourself what you could pay someone else to do is stealing!”  Together:  “Competition is theft!”  That’s pretty much the actual operating philosophy of capitalism as we know it.

Capitalism is commonly defined as being about “private property.”  And it is — but not in the sense that “property” would be used in a genuinely free market (i.e., property resulting from the products of our own labor and peaceful exchange).  “Property rights” under capitalism, as we know it, are about the right to control access to natural opportunities.

The Marxist Maurice Dobb, in “Theories of Value and Distribution,” raised the hypothetical example of the state granting an exclusive right to erect toll gates across highways and thoroughfares — not to fund the operation of the roads, mind you, but simply to pocket the tolls in return for letting people pass.  By the standard rules of J.B. Clark’s marginal productivity theory, whatever the cost of tolls added to the final price of finished goods would be the “marginal productivity” of the toll gates, and that portion of the price of goods would reflect the toll gate owner’s “contribution” to production.  As John R. Commons observed in “Institutional Economics,” many of the “productive services” for which the rentier classes exact tribute consist of not obstructing the production of others.

The main effect of patents and copyrights, as well as business licensing, local “safety” codes and zoning, is to erect a toll gate in the way of your ability to transform your energy and skills directly into use-value.

Consider local zoning and “safety” laws that require a seller of baked goods to rent expensive commercial property instead of operating out of their home, and to use standard industrial-sized ovens and dishwashers instead of the spare capacity of their regular household appliances.  The only way to amortize that cost is by operating on a scale that requires several employees, lots of hours of paperwork, extensive remodelling to meet local code and ADA requirements, and so forth.

From the consumer standpoint, a major part of the price of the baked goods you buy is the embedded cost of that expensive rent, the cost of servicing the loans, and other overhead. And from the producer standpoint, all possibilities of starting out small with minimal capital outlays and overhead, and expanding incrementally with minimal risk, are foreclosed.

In every case, the effect is to require more hours of labor, more capital expenditures, and more overhead to be serviced, than a given unit of output would require for purely technical reasons.

Most of the hours we work, far from being required to produce the value we consume, go to feeding useless eaters or to the equivalent of digging holes just to fill them back in.  The holders of artificial property rights are thereby  able to protect themselves against competition from overly efficient production, and collect rents from artificial scarcity.  The managers who control the economy, from the $50 million/year CEOs on down, are protected against the possibility of defection by people producing a major part of their needs in the informal sector, outside the control of bosses — escaping the plantation, so to speak.

In legal terms, transforming your labor directly into use-value, without paying tribute to those who hold property rights in access to natural opportunities, is theft.

It’s time for every honest person to be a criminal.