1) The idea that less state intervention implies smaller companies is in direct conflict with the robber barons of the late 1800s...
To play devil's advocate, the robber barons also had a lot of lobbying power, influence over political "machines", and indirect government subsidies that disproportionately benefited big players.
2) The idea that the "freed marked" can deal with environmental concerns doesn't deal with the fact that the environment is a giant tragedy of the commons waiting to happen.
Right. Basically, greedy algorithms don't work for all problems, so there are cases where everyone making locally-optimal choices screws things up for everyone.
There are also cases where the overhead of market choice (oversupply) greatly exceeds the benefit of increased choices (e.g. infrastructure). Cases where the financial facilitation of a given economic activity becomes so influential that it destroys the economic activity it's allegedly facilitating (mortgage-backed securities, health insurance). And cases where technically voluntary choices are de facto coercive because one party has a much greater cost of walking away from negotiations (employment, most of the time). And instances where giving decision-making power to everyone (as opposed to just people with money) is the right thing to do.
In conclusion, I'm not a libertarian.
Where I agree with the author of the article is that liberals and left-libertarians have a lot of common cause (there's a lot of once-sensible regulation that has become counterproductive, and a lot of devil's-compromise-regulation that lightly restrains with one hand and grants a permanent monopoly with the other, not to mention outright regulatory capture and corporate welfare). And that some libertarians are far too vigorous in defending the pro-big-business parts of the status quo and seem to only care about fairness in the context of criticizing government.
no subject
To play devil's advocate, the robber barons also had a lot of lobbying power, influence over political "machines", and indirect government subsidies that disproportionately benefited big players.
2) The idea that the "freed marked" can deal with environmental concerns doesn't deal with the fact that the environment is a giant tragedy of the commons waiting to happen.
Right. Basically, greedy algorithms don't work for all problems, so there are cases where everyone making locally-optimal choices screws things up for everyone.
There are also cases where the overhead of market choice (oversupply) greatly exceeds the benefit of increased choices (e.g. infrastructure). Cases where the financial facilitation of a given economic activity becomes so influential that it destroys the economic activity it's allegedly facilitating (mortgage-backed securities, health insurance). And cases where technically voluntary choices are de facto coercive because one party has a much greater cost of walking away from negotiations (employment, most of the time). And instances where giving decision-making power to everyone (as opposed to just people with money) is the right thing to do.
In conclusion, I'm not a libertarian.
Where I agree with the author of the article is that liberals and left-libertarians have a lot of common cause (there's a lot of once-sensible regulation that has become counterproductive, and a lot of devil's-compromise-regulation that lightly restrains with one hand and grants a permanent monopoly with the other, not to mention outright regulatory capture and corporate welfare). And that some libertarians are far too vigorous in defending the pro-big-business parts of the status quo and seem to only care about fairness in the context of criticizing government.