Article in Psychology Today trashing Libertarians

[Omega 3 snake oil]

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fair-society/201108/what-s-the-matter-libertarianism?tr=MostViewedI don't see much of an argument being presented: 

"Indeed, libertarians generally have no model of society as an interdependent group with a common purpose and common interests.  For instance, the canonized conservative economist Friedrich Hayek posited a stark choice between two alternative models - either a "free market" of atomized individuals rationally pursuing their self-interests in transactional relationships or an authoritarian, coercive "state" that seeks control over us. In Hayek's words, "socialism means slavery."

 

The libertarian novelist Ayn Rand went even further.  As she saw it, there is a perpetual class war going on between the "creators" and "producers," on the one hand, and the great mass of "parasites" and "moochers" who use government to steal whatever they can from the deserving few.  One of Rand's heroes, the defiant architect Howard Roark in her novel The Fountainhead, tells us:  "All that proceeds from man's independent ego is good.  All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil...The egotist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices for others....Man's first duty is to himself...His moral law is to do what he wishes, provided his wish does not depend primarily upon other men....The only good which men can do to one another and the only statement of their proper relationship is - hands off!"

 

The benign free market model of society is equally deficient.  Many libertarians seem to be myopic about the prevalence of self-interested "organizations" in the marketplace, from the many millions of mom-and-pop businesses with only a few employees to mega-corporations with hundreds of thousands of workers (whose freedom they may severely restrict). These "corporate interests" sometimes oppose the common interest and perpetrate malfeasance. (Do we need to rehearse the recent examples of Enron, Capital Management, Countrywide, Goldman Sachs, BP, Massey Energy and other disasters?)  So-called free markets are routinely distorted by the wealthy and powerful, and the libertarians' crusade for lower taxes, less regulation and less government plays into their hands.  Perhaps unwittingly, anti-government libertarians would have us trade democratic self-government for an oligarchy.

 

A more serious concern is that the libertarian fixation with individual freedom distracts us from the underlying biological purpose of a society.  The basic, continuing, inescapable problem for humankind, as for all other living organisms, is biological survival and reproduction.  Whether we are conscious of it or not, most of us spend a large majority of our time and energy engaged in activities that are directly or indirectly related to meeting no fewer than 14 domains of "basic needs" - biological imperatives ranging from such commonplace things as food, clothing and shelter to physical and mental health and the reproduction and nurturance of the next generation. 

 

In a very real sense, therefore, every organized economy and society represents a "collective survival enterprise" - an immensely complex "combination of labor" (a term I prefer to the traditional "division of labor") upon which all of our lives literally depend.  And our first collective obligation is to ensure that all of our basic needs are met.  If there is a "right to life," as our Declaration of Independence and pro-life conservatives aver, it does not end at birth; it extends throughout our lives, and it imposes on all of us a responsibility for ensuring the "no-fault" needs of others, when they cannot for various reasons provide for themselves. 

 

So why is libertarianism unfair?  It rejects any responsibility for our mutual right to life, where we are all created approximately equal.  It would put freedom and property rights ahead of our basic needs, rather than the other way around.  It is also oblivious to the claims for reciprocity, an obligation to contribute a fair share to support the collective survival enterprise in return for the benefits that each of us receives.  And it is weak on the subject of equity (or social merit) as a criterion for respecting property rights.  It presumes a priori that property holdings are deserved, rather than making merit a precondition.  Imposing a test of merit would put strict limits on property rights.  Finally, it is anti-democratic in that it rejects the power of the majority to restrain our freedom and limit our property rights in the common interest, or for the general welfare.  

 

[Bedouin]

Obviously a stupid article. The author talks about how everybody deserves basic needs (which aren't freedom and property (???)) one minute and then states that property isn't 'deserved' and assumes that merit doesn't hold water within the marketplace.

 

As somebody who completely loves psychology it's a massive bee in my bonnet that nigh on every psychologist ever seems to be a socialist. It's problematic when, despite being the best tool for the healing of the collective psychosis that some call civilisation, so many professionals in the field love to lick the boot of power (ofc without knowing it, it's all about helping the poor and needy after all.)

[Kevin Beal]

So, libertarianism is bad because it's not socialism?

 

What sloppy, intellectually lazy nonsense.

 

There are some straight up lies in here too. Like:

 

"It presumes a priori that property holdings are deserved, rather than making merit a precondition.  Imposing a test of merit would put strict limits on property rights."

 

If anything, there is way too much debate about what constitutes valid property rights among libertarians. The author may be referring to something very specific that bears mentioning explicitly, but as stated, it's completely false.

 

This is also a lie:

 

"Indeed, libertarians generally have no model of society as an interdependent group with a common purpose and common interests"

 

That's entirely the point of a free market is to best facilitate trade among individuals. I mean, that's so obvious that I can't imagine how the author can say this with a straight face.

 

And as mentioned already, there are no real arguments here. The author completely skips over what is supposedly deficient about Hayek's and Rand's statements with the blanket statement "The benign free market model of society is equally deficient", and goes on to support this with examples of rent seeking behavior and corporate subsidies. Every libertarian has heard this tired clichéd argument over and over again that to pull it out so casually is to suggest that they have never actually talked to a libertarian about this topic or they have and they are knowingly misleading the reader.

 

Everything "seems to be the case" and we are argued by adjective to death: "myopic", "fixation with individual freedom", "canonized conservative economist Friedrich Hayek", "deficient", "oblivious", "unfair", etc etc. And all of the vague implications of libertarians as anti-social, uncaring, unwise, selfish (in the bad sense) and all of this.

 

The author is projecting. He has given us the permission to dismiss his entire approach with adjectives, and so that's what I'm going to do.

 

He is being unfair in his writing here, and is oblivious, myopic and deficient in his characterization of libertarians.

[J. D. Stembal]

I was going to post this the other night but I couldn't get past the second or third paragraph, and mentally discarded it. I shouldn't have proceeded past the writer's bio.

 

Peter Corning, Ph.D., taught in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University for many years and is the long-time director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems. He is the author of several recent books, includingThe Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice, as well as more than 150 professional journal articles in the biological and social sciences, and he is widely known for his work on the role of synergy as a causal agency in evolution.

[jacbot]

Nothing new here. from Rothbard speach at mises , recorded back in 1984 "The history of the federal reserve"

 

fragment quote on "intellectuals and the state"

"the ideology was pushed by intellectuals who were rising up, throughout history statism has been imposed by 2 groups, the state itself, and the opinion molding groups, the intellectuals. wich in most cases in history was the church, the function of the church was to tell people to obey the state. "the state is god, the king is god"

 

"After seperation of church and state, in the progressive period, they began to refrom the old alliance 'intellectuals and big government' forming the court apologist for the "new empire".

The intellectuals were ready for this alliance because a lot of them were comming up since the late 19th century when the Phd program was introduced the intellectuals were seeking privileges

security the state could provide".

 

 

Well, seems Dr Peter Corning was just doing nothing more then provide services he was payed for by the states gravy train.

 

No need for wasting argumentation other then calling a spade a spade. /Judas/ Whore. /poverty pimp.

 

 

Some info on the culprit

Peter Corning, Ph.D., taught in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University for many years and is the long-time director of the Institute for the Study of Complex Systems. He is the author of several recent books, including The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice, as well as more than 150 professional journal articles in the biological and social sciences, and he is widely known for his work on the role of synergy as a causal agency in evolution.

[J. D. Stembal]

Thanks for the post and the video, jacbot. I recall when my ex and I were reading Rothbard's For a New Liberty, she started to lose interest at about the point he starts exploring the role of the intellectual as an agent and advocate of big government. Being a PhD, she also has a vested interest in the continuation of the close relationship between the academic and politician, analogous to the former relationship between the priesthood and the monarchy. Not coincidentally, she also had a habit of emailing me links to Psychology Today.

 

Returning to the PT article, I am extremely weary of people conflating social Darwinism and free market theory. It's the same faulty mode of thinking that says anarchism must be bad because without a government, the world would devolve into sectarian or tribal warfare, which is an argument that completely disregards that this is exactly what we have today with the blessing of the state.

[Omega 3 snake oil]

The problem with psychology is, a lot of things can pose as it. And the things that do are usually bad things. Here we have socialism masquerading as psychology, in the way racism did in the 1800s (think phrenology). You have pseudoscience using sparse, subjective facts to derive arguments that are often barely logical, and "science" being wielded for authority.

[Magnus]

libertarians generally have no model of society as an interdependent group with a common purpose and common interests. 

 This Ph.D. manages to recycle every strawman, cliche and falsehood about voluntarism.  You can find this Stanford-level academic's quality of thought on Yahoo Answers, the Huffington Post, or YouTube comments.  You see, Doctor, we libertarians (though I prefer the term "voluntarist" to describe the political dimension of social organization) believe wholeheartedly in interdependence and common purpose and common interest.  They're downright awesome! 

 

The only feature we insist on is that everyone refrain from attacking everyone else when the decline an offer to cooperate in some manner.  See, that's what "voluntary" means -- you don't attack me if I refuse to do what you ask of me.  It's not looking good for Doctor Smarty Pants. 

In a very real sense, therefore, every organized economy and society represents a "collective survival enterprise" - an immensely complex "combination of labor" (a term I prefer to the traditional "division of labor") upon which all of our lives literally depend. And our first collective obligation is to ensure that all of our basic needs are met.

I prefer to think of society as a "cooperative survival enterprise." 

 

Our first cooperative obligation is not to harm others.  That's what enables, you know, the cooperation to occur. 

[J-William]

Oh good, I was about to write an article in "Libertarianism Today" trashing psychology, but I think I now shan't bother.

[AustinJames]

Wow, this is even worse than Bloombergview's recent article, Libertarians Are the New Communists.  If you liked that one, you'll love this:

 

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-09-05/libertarians-are-the-new-communists

 

To their credit, the author starts off with definitions.  The problem is, the definition they provide for libertarianism is unlike anything I've ever read in libertarian literature, or heard from any libertarian.  They don't bother to say where they got their definition, because they simply made it up.

 

 

 By radical libertarianism, we mean the ideology that holds that individual liberty trumps all other values.

 

I know it hardly seems possible, but it just gets worse from there.  Articles like these are so bad, I can't even justify taking the time to criticize them.  They only exist for people seeking to reinforce their confirmation bias.

 

I think it's more worth our time as a community to rectify honest misunderstandings and misconceptions, rather than defend against willfully ignorant slander.  I'm fairly certain there's nothing can be said to the authors of these articles that would change their view on the matter, or that of their readership, but perhaps there is a place in our movement for pointing out the fallacies in articles such as these... I'm just not sure I have the energy for it, personally.  It's as easy as shooting fish in a bucket, but I come out of it feeling all wet and slimy.

[Eternal Growth]

The author of the article seeks to define society as an arrangement in which some individuals steal from and legislate regarding the lives of the rest, while the impoverished and exploited basically have to put up with it. His argument comes down to: unless you accept this arrangement, you against "group interdependence", "reciprocity", "basic needs", "biological survival and reproduction", "common interest", "general welfare", "right to life" and "self-government."

 

And yet, all of these are virtues that CAN ONLY come about to the extent to which people are able to engage in voluntary interactions. It is when there is a state denying property rights and individual liberty that the ability of a person to satisfy their basic needs, survive and reproduce, contribute to the general welfare and co-operate with others in reciprocal relationships is destroyed. 

 

What is happening here is easy to see: this social sciences academic knows that in a statist society he will be in close proximity to the ruling class who will provide him with a very comfortable material lifestyle in return for endless verbiage that has the vague appearance of being an intellectual justification (expropriating virtues that can only exist in the absence of coercion) for their coercion against the host population. In a free market, if he wanted to keep his high social status and economic reward, he would have no option but to find a way to provide value to people who had no stolen money to pay him with. Expressed concisely: he is a prostitute of the ruling class, probably knows it, and those looking back at the 21st century in the future definitely will.

[In the belly of the beast]

The quote below struck me as particularly appropriate in the context of the above article.  

 

The rest can be found at this link:

 

http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/

 

Gaining acceptance into graduate school or medical school and achieving a PhD or MD and becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist means jumping through many hoops, all of which require much behavioral and attentional compliance to authorities, even to those authorities that one lacks respect for. The selection and socialization of mental health professionals tends to breed out many anti-authoritarians. Having steered the higher-education terrain for a decade of my life, I know that degrees and credentials are primarily badges of compliance. Those with extended schooling have lived for many years in a world where one routinely conforms to the demands of authorities. Thus for many MDs and PhDs, people different from them who reject this attentional and behavioral compliance appear to be from another world—a diagnosable one.

I have found that most psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals are not only extraordinarily compliant with authorities but also unaware of the magnitude of their obedience. And it also has become clear to me that the anti-authoritarianism of their patients creates enormous anxiety for these professionals, and their anxiety fuels diagnoses and treatments.

 

[JSDev]

The evidence about human evolution indicates that our species evolved in small, close-knit social groups in which cooperation and sharing overrode our individual, competitive self-interests for the sake of the common good. (This scenario is reviewed in my books The Fair Society and Holistic Darwinism.)  We evolved as intensely interdependent social animals, and our sense of empathy toward others, our sensitivity to reciprocity, our desire for inclusion and our loyalty to the groups we bond with, the intrinsic satisfaction we derive from cooperative activities, and our concern for having the respect and approval of others all evolved in humankind to temper and constrain our individualistic, selfish impulses (as Darwin himself pointed out in The Descent of Man). 

 

 

I almost died laughing... "cooperation" "empathy" "reciprocity" are key elements of free markets, not government. What an idiot.