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So this is another one of those weird videos where I'm going to tell you how great this
guy is and you should go subscribe to his channel, while at the same time debunking
one of his videos. But you all should be used to that by now; I'm just that kind of guy.
Anyway, his name is Steve Shives and I've been a fan of his YouTube channel ever since
it was brought to my attention by a video from DarkMatter2525, another great channel
you should all go subscribe to. I think one of the shining features of his channel is
his Atheist Reads series, where he goes through popular books of Christian apologetics like
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," and just goes through chapter by chapter ripping
their arguments to shreds. As I make this video, he's in the middle of "An Atheist Reads
The Reason for God," and I have to say, I'm hooked. I find his arguments lucid, his points
spot on, and the whole thing completely destructive to the sloppy thinking presented in these
books.
Another series he has I quite enjoy is his Five Stupid Things series. Unlike An Atheist
Reads, this is intended to be satire, and it's usually quite funny. And I'm not just
saying that about when he goes against stuff I don't like; he's gone against stuff I like
before, like Star Trek and Harry Potter, and I found those to be quite enjoyable, even
if I didn't agree with the points he was making.
And yet, his recent video, Five Stupid Things About Libertarianism, I just can't feel the
same way. First of all, it just doesn't seem to be as funny as other videos in this series,
and I can forgive a lot if you're funny. But that's not my real problem with this. You
see, in many of the other Five Stupid Things videos, he's insightful and brings up points
and aspects that people might not have ordinarily thought about. It's because he really does
seem to understand at least to some level what he's criticizing. But in this case, I'm
sorry, Steve, but it's just one more case of someone trying to criticize libertarianism
when he just doesn't understand the first thing about it.
And this is clear right off the bat with his first point: "It's selfish."
"For the purposes of this video, I'll be limiting myself to libertarianism as it is most commonly
found in American politics today: consequentialist, capitalist, and individualist in character.
The defining characteristic of this form of libertarianism is selfishness."
Come on, people, how many times do we have to tear this claim to shreds before you'll
stop making it? He even goes so far as to call it the "defining characteristic" of American
capitalist individualist libertarianism. No, the defining characteristic is the Non-Aggression
Principle, which he never even MENTIONS.
"It all reduces to this: I want to be left alone, and I want things my own way. Just
think how many resentful 5-year-olds are libertarians without even realizing it!" And this is one
of the saddest things about a culture where people have been raised to basically worship
the state: like those brought up with religion, they don't recognize the glaring contradiction
here. "I want to be left alone" means "Don't use force to stop me living my life the way
I want to." Whereas "I want things my own way" is what libertarianism is AGAINST: using
force to get things done your way. "My way or the highway," as a movie that doesn't at
all deserve to be popular once said. See, libertarianism isn't just "I want to be left
alone," it's "I want YOU to be left alone, too."
And of course, people try to spin this into something anti-social. As if libertarians
want to build a cabin in the woods and live off the land, completely isolated from all
other human beings. Maybe there are a few libertarians who would like to do that, but
if nothing else, it doesn't at all square with its being capitalist: the essence of
capitalism is two people coming together and engaging in a peaceful, voluntary transaction--which
does NOT have to have money involved, by the way, it could be anything, even just enjoying
each other's company--and both of them leaving the transaction better off than when they
started.
So, no, it's the statist position that's "I want things my own way," and then using force
to try and get it, as opposed to trying to convince us peacefully to go along with it.
It's really no different than his Atheist Reads series: he's doing this to try and convince
people to abandon religious apologetics, and maybe even religion itself. He's NOT picking
up a gun to FORCE people to stop being Christian (even if such a thing were possible), nor
is he going to the state to have them use the gun for him. So why does he make those
videos? Because he wants things to be a certain way, and to that end he's engaging in peaceful,
voluntary transactions with every video he makes and every single person who watches
them.
His second point is, "It alienates people from the government."
"Most if not all libertarians view the government as the enemy of the people, and it's written
and spoken of as though it were some malevolent alien that has attached itself to our civilization,
from whose tentically clutches we must all constantly struggle to escape."
Actually, no, in fact, it's a HUGE point of ours that government is NOTHING BUT a group
of people. They don't have any abilities that the rest of us don't have, they don't have
any moral imperatives that the rest of us don't have, they're just people. If it's illegal
for us to do something, it should be illegal for a Congressman to do that same thing. If
it's immoral for us to do it, it's immoral for the President to do it. And if something
can't be done by any other group of people, even that vague and elusive group of people
known as "the market" (which is just you and me and the other 300 million people in the
country), then government can't do it, either. They have no supernatural powers, they're
not omnipotent, they're CERTAINLY not omnibenevolent, and this once again is why we libertarians
have the phrase the Cult of the Omnipotent State. People in government aren't saints
and angels, they aren't faith healers who can fix our health care system by writing
down the right incantation on paper and putting it with these other incantations called "public
law," and that's the very idea we refute.
So why do we so often speak of government as a separate, malevolent group? Because it
IS. It is the ONE group in our society that claims to have the moral legitimacy to use
force against peaceful people who are no threat to anyone. It claims the moral legitimacy
to bust down your door and shoot your dog in case you might be in possession of a certain
plant. It claims the moral legitimacy to shut down your kid's hot dog stand and relegate
your entire family to homelessness. It claims the moral legitimacy to snoop on your phone
records and emails and grope your junk at airports. It claims the moral legitimacy to
interfere in health care for almost half a century, and then turn around and blame the
free market for the problems IT caused, problems that DIDN'T exist before they started meddling,
and then come up with a solution that's nothing but more of the same: things that are great
for the profits of insurance companies and the AMA, but not so good for you and me.
Worst of all, it claims the moral legitimacy to wage war. While our government has over
5000 nuclear warheads, it wages war and threatens other countries they CLAIM is trying to develop
ONE. And even when the case is laughable at the time, as it was with Iraq, as it is now
with Iran, they can still wage a decade-long war where thousands of Americans and tens
of thousands of foreigners get senselessly slaughtered, and not one single person involved
is held accountable for it. Meanwhile, you and I are under an even GREATER threat because
of all the terrorists created by these actions: people who wouldn't have cared the first thing
about us one way or another now hate us and want to kill us, because our government went
over there supposedly to protect and defend us. Can it possibly get any more insane than
that?
And hey, if you're going to use Gary Johnson in a graphic and say, "Government is the problem,
now elect me to lead it," why don't you first look at what Gary Johnson did as governor
of New Mexico, and how he got government OUT of people's lives, and became one of their
most popular governors ever, despite the fact that he ran as a Republican in a state that's
two-thirds Democratic?
His third point: "It's anachronistic." Yep, our old friend argumentum ad tempus, the Argument
from Time, basically, saying that something is good or bad based on how old it is.
"Most of the major expansions and reforms of government that libertarians resent and
wish to dismantle--the Federal Reserve, Social Security, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act,
the Americans with Disabilities Act, etc.--were brought about because there was a recognized
need for them. Societies grow and evolve, and so do the needs and interests of their
members."
The funny thing is, all the things he mentioned, from the Federal Reserve to the Americans
with Disabilities Act, are all things we've successfully made the case against. He doesn't
respond to any of these arguments; his whole point is that those things must be better
because they're more recent. Sorry, Steve, it just doesn't work that way.
And besides, most of them really aren't all that recent. Central banks and governments
have been "managing" the money supply and inflating the currency since ancient Rome.
All sorts of governments had their own versions of Social Security and government medicine
at least since the Middle Ages. And of course government itself is thousands of years old--democracy
is a MUCH older idea than libertarianism. So if anything's anachronistic, if there's
anything at all to this idea that something is invalid because it's old--AND THERE ISN'T--then
it's the state and the Fed and socialism, built on concepts that are millennia old,
that lose out. Doncha just love self-defeating arguments?
And in at least one case, the Civil Rights Act, the need that it addressed was there
BECAUSE OF GOVERNMENT! State governments passed Jim Crow laws after the civil war because
people started doing business with newly-freed black people, and that really stuck in the
craw of a lot of state politicians. And I think my video "Racism: In Business or Government?"
shows that it's government that loses the racial equality argument here.
His fourth point is, "It puts on airs."
"When it comes to intolerable smugness, an atheist has got nothing on a libertarian.
Unless the atheist in question happens to BE a libertarian, which is not uncommon."
I think the less said about this the better. Even if this is true--and I see FAR more arrogance
from statists myself, and I haven't seen ANY of them with the humility of the late, great
Harry Browne--I mean, really, what could POSSIBLY be more arrogant than the idea that your position
deserves to be implemented BY FORCE?
Anyway, even if it WERE true, it would be an irrelevant ad hominem, and he should know
better. I know, this is supposed to be a comedy, and again, I could excuse it if he were actually
being humorous. But he's just not.
And his final point: "It's naive."
"Libertarianism is also inescapably naive, since it assumes that, given maximum personal
and economic freedom, individuals would just sort of work out an ideal, or at least improve
society for themselves."
And how many times do we have to point out this ACTUALLY HAPPENING? From our early colonial
days in Plymouth Plantation, which went from starvation under a socialist-esque system
to plenty under a system of "selfish and greedy" property rights, to shared-space intersections
where people engage socially with other drivers, as well as bicyclists and pedestrians, without
the need for things like traffic lights and road signs, basically, whenever people have
been given the chance, they've done precisely what he expresses incredulity about! If I
were to make a five stupid things about statism, one of them would have to be "It's misanthropic."
It assumes that people misbehave, and amazingly enough, suggests that the solution is to create
an institution with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force against peaceful people, knowing
full well that this would be attractive to the most UNethical people there are! I mean,
how does this make any sense?
His graphic mentions Robber Barons. Generally, this refers to people like JD Rockefeller
and Gustavus Swift. Basically, more ad hominem demonization of people who actually did GOOD
things for this country.
"Suppose--and I know this is hard to imagine, but bear with me--that those with the most
wealth and resources decided that their private interests were more important than those of
other individuals or of society as a whole."
Okay, let's actually forgive the fact that these guys gave HUGE amounts of their fortunes
to charity. What did they do for other individuals and/or society as a whole while they were
going about their greedy, selfish private interests?
Rockefeller got rich by making cheap kerosene, much to the chagrin of the Pennsylvania Oil
Barons who wanted to keep gouging people with expensively-refined crude oil and even more
expensive whale oil. Standard Oil opened up this market to the poor, who could now afford
to heat their homes without resorting to dangerous coal furnaces. That 60+% percent of the market
they got, which many people say is a monopoly and must mean they got it by nefarious activities,
was mostly made up of people who weren't even IN the oil market before because they couldn't
afford it!
Gustavus Swift made his fortune developing the refrigerated rail car, which made it easier
to sell fresh meat in rural areas. As such, he grew the market share of the now-much-vilified
Chicago meat packers, not by cornering an existing market or anything, but once again
by adding people to the market who couldn't afford it before.
Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical, actually FOUGHT the monopolists in the German Bromkonvention
with cheaper bromine and toppled their world empire. These so-called "robber barons" were
self-made, starting with nothing and getting rich by providing value to people who would
otherwise have had no other option. How could anyone POSSIBLY have a problem with this?
And in case you're thinking it's in any way different today, consider that 80% of billionaires
in America are self-made, starting from NOTHING. They far more resemble Steve Jobs than Donald
Trump.
"And yet, the alternative that libertarians propose to this, which, in their bitterness
over having been born as members of a social species, they perceive as tyranny at the hands
of government, is something that amounts to tyranny at the hands of unaccountable magnates."
Say WHAT??? Look, without government, the ONLY way these people can get your money is
to get you to voluntarily give it to them, and the only way they can do THAT is by providing
something to you that you value more than you do that amount of money. There is NO OTHER
MECHANISM by which they can achieve that.
Well, aside from government, of course. Corporatism, which is what some call "crony capitalism"
even though it's not really capitalism at all, rules the roost in our democratic, Constitutional
government he's speaking so highly of. In the hated era of the robber barons, anyone
with a bit of knowledge and drive could easily create their own business. Maybe they wouldn't
get as rich as Rockefeller, but they could make enough to survive and even thrive. During
this period, the economic conditions among the poor improved at a FAR greater rate than
they ever have before or since, or in any other country.
Today, you try to set up a lemonade stand as a kid and they shut you down. Small businesses
get ground under the wheels of the corporate government's onerous regulations, regulations
they passed ostensibly to rein in the big corporations, but in fact passed at the behest
of those very same big corporations who knew they had the capital to be able to cover the
additional costs of compliance, but their smaller competition couldn't.
Now, it's the small businesses who are the second-class citizens. The people who run
them pay twice as much in taxes and get half the benefits. While they did nothing wrong,
money, capital, and credit was taken from them to give to "too big to fail" banks and
other corporations who made stupid decisions but, unlike the small businessman, don't have
to be accountable for it. Screw up, and your old buddy government will come along and bail
you out.
Now, I ask you: who are the robber barons? And why are you worried about the POSSIBILITY--which
is incredibly improbable at best--of us being tyrannized at the hands of unaccountable magnates
if we have a free market when that is ALREADY HAPPENING with your government???
"Suppose not everyone in this minimally-governed free market society was all that ethical."
Come on, it's not as if we haven't responded to this ad nauseam! First of all, libertarianism
IS NOT anarchism, and libertarians are not necessarily anarchists. Minarchist libertarians
accept the need for things like the court system where people can have their grievances
addressed, hopefully in a rational, civilized manner.
But even anarchist libertarians, or anarcho-capitalists, recognize that people are not going to act
morally and ethically all the time, and they have all sorts of ideas of how to address
this, from dispute resolution organizations to contract insurance, all sorts of things.
Now will any of these things work? Honestly, I just don't know. But you seem to, Steve.
You seem to be so sure of your position that you're willing to defend an institution that
uses force to keep people from even TRYING other options.
That's really all libertarianism is saying. I urge you to check out my Atheism and Libertarianism
series, which not only goes into the nuts and bolts of libertarian thinking, it just
might show you that we're not as different as you think, and that atheist libertarians
really aren't like you suggested we are. In fact, there's one part of the series that
says that if you really like your system, you can have it in a libertarian society!
If you think the Federal Reserve is great, wonderful! Use their money and do business
with their banks. Just give those of us who don't like it the OPTION to use something
else, and don't do things like throw someone in jail for making voluntary exchange tokens
based on gold and silver. If you think Social Security is wonderful, fine, pay into that.
But why force the rest of us to when we just don't trust it?
This is the nub of libertarianism, and really the question I've never seen a statist give
anything resembling a good answer for: if your system is so wonderful, why do you have
to force people to go along with it?
These are all good questions, and I don't know if Steve will answer them or not, or
even if he'll watch this video, I mean, his video got more views in a day than mine do
in a month. But whatever happens, remember one thing: this is NOT about the person. This
isn't about him or me, or which of us is better than the other. This is about the rationality
of the arguments and the quality of the data presented. So whatever else happens with this,
don't let it spoil you from going and enjoying his many other wonderful videos. Until next
time, stay strong and be free.