libertarian (with a small "l")

'Tis the season to talk politics so here's my first post

on a non-technical subject. I describe my politics as libertarian with a small "l". I use this expression to differentiate my political philosophy from that of the Libertarian Party (note the capital "L").

Some years ago this distinction wasn't really needed. The Libertarian Party was about limited government and individual responsibility. We all traced our political philosophy to Ayn Rand and her heroic characters who both insisted on personal liberty and lived with the knowledge and belief that they and they alone were responsible for their own actions and their consequences.

Fast forward to the early twenty-first century. It seems the Libertarian Party has become the party to legalize recreational drugs and rape of the environment. One can debate whether the government should or should not regulate such activities but, to me, the "not regulate" side of the debate must be inextricably linked to the responsibility of the person partaking of such activities to be fully and completely responsible for the consequences of their actions. All I hear from the Libertarian Party is quite a bit about legalizing drugs and any sort of of exploitation of the environment one can imagine and very little about coupling that to making the individual responsible for their actions.

Talking about the Libertarian Party and legalizing recreational drug use first, the way I see it, people who wish to partake of currently regulated substances for recreational purposes face two levels of liability. First, there is the potential harm that such substances can cause to the person taking them. In a perfect, libertarian world this wouldn't be a worry. If someone were to fry their brain using some recreational drug, they would be left to subsist in some back alley like similar dregs in third world countries. People aren't going to allow that to happen and such victims of their own stupidity currently are supported by the welfare system.

Second, drug users are often a threat to other people. The threat ranges from simple property crimes committed to acquire money for more drugs to violent crimes acted out while the user is "under the influence." One can argue that legalizing drugs would reduce the cost to the point where users wouldn't need to commit property crimes to finance their habit. This may or may not be true but doesn't seem to be born out with crystal meth users who eventually run out of money to buy the supplies they need and take what they need even though everything is available at retail. It also does not address crimes committed while "under the influence."

Turning to the environment, I see the same sort of calls for removing regulations but none for making the individual responsible. Maybe a hundred and fifty years ago it could have been possible to argue that a man couldn't cause harm to another through exploiting his own property. Those says are gone as modern methods of amassing capital and modern machinery mean that actions on a persons property can cause grievous harm to those even far away.

Obviously, I'm not going to argue for the EPA and other government regulation. To the extent this approach works, it both imposes a huge burden on anyone acting outside of accepted practices and it, all too frequently, just means the government approves the particular, accepted method of poisoning the environment. On the other hand, there are financial instruments already in existence for monetizing and valuing risk. I would be very surprised if some sort of risk insurance couldn't be created that values the risks involved in an activity and creates a market for such risk. The government's only role in such a market would be to require that such risks be understood and appropriately insured against. That is, the individual (or corporation) is held responsible for all possible consequences of his actions. The beauty of this sort of solution is that individual stake holders value the risks and consequences as opposed to government bureaucrats only deciding based on accepted practices.

So, when the Libertarian Party addresses these issues, I may return to describing myself as a member of the Libertarian Party. In the mean time, I remain a small "l" libertarian who believes in limited government and individual responsibility.

Cheers,
Dave