Sunken Ships and Sinister Schemes

I’m kind of a crazy association thinker (or maybe just crazy in general). I’m also pretty obsessive about public policy and its relationship to politics, so you could only imagine how my wheels started turning as I saw Titanic 3D today. While most people just take the movie at its gushy face value, I relate it to the era of bull-moose progressivism that the film takes place in. After all, nothing happens in a vacuum; the behaviors and interactions of the Titanic passengers reflect the social stratification that was prevalent at the time.

The attitude of the day, championed by Teddy Roosevelt, was that big businesses and corrupt trusts ran amok, and needed to be reigned in by an activist government. At the same time, progressives such as Roosevelt didn't buy into Marxism, and believed that jungle-capitalism would anger the public into embracing radical utopian schemes such as socialism. Reforms were needed to appease the public, and open them up to a kindlier, gentler market. The progressive warnings against unbridled capitalism are echoed throughout the movie; it is interesting to wonder if James Cameron was aware of this. In the free-for-all leading up to the Titanic’s sinking, Rose’s arrogant fiancee, Cal, tries bribing an officer into letting him onto a lifeboat. The officer eventually rejects Cal’s money, though, since a soon-to-be-dead man doesn’t have much use for green-backs. Given the gravity of the situation, its surprising that the officer would even go for the bribe in the first place, but Cal is instead shocked when the officer later refuses him. From this scene of the movie, it seems like the upper class folk like Cal worship the almighty dollar, to the point of trying to strike a deal at death’s doorstep.

The expectation that the officer should take the money, death notwithstanding, has parallels in Upton Sinclair’s 1906 classic The Jungle, in which meat-packers are expected to take their low-paying jobs in the face of deadly working conditions. Progressives and socialists alike viewed this dollar-induced-irrationality as a tragic consequence of laissez-faire capitalism. If Upton Sinclair and Teddy Roosevelt sat down together to watch the Titanic, they would be horrified at the guns and gates used to keep lower classes from boarding the lifeboats. The threat of force, combined with the iron bars separating the steerage section of the ship from the top, made Jack and Rose’s escape nearly impossible. In this case, the moneyed interests of the ship teamed up with the officers and personnel of the Titanic to gain lifeboat access; the nexus of money and coercion proved to be fatal to scores of lower-class families trying to escape the ship. Cal’s bribery of the officer in charge of the lifeboats shows that pathology and irrationality are often found at the intersection of money and power privilege.

The injustices shown in the blockbuster-hit are simply echoes of the tensions that existed in the world of the progressive era. Often, progressives and “reformers” scapegoated the free-enterprise system, when in fact government force and crony capitalism were to blame. Would the meatpacking industry have continued to mistreat their workers if police had not violently put down workers strikes against them? Following the publication of Sinclair’s The Jungle, meat sales plunged and many European markets shut their doors to American beef. This might’ve spelt the end for the misbehaving meatpacking industry, but the government responded with a bill providing taxpayer-funded certification for beef. The industry, known for mistreating workers and selling a faulty product, was able to expand its market share through restoring confidence in its products.

Today, stomach-offending gobbledygook like “pink slime” is branded as food, and the government monopoly over meat inspection has been hijacked by the industry. Thanks to the nefarious partnership of the USDA and big meat, companies have been barred from using rapid testing for mad cow disease, and there is deceptive labeling abound. Can we really be surprised, though? Whether on board the Titanic, in meat-packing plants, or in the corrupt offices of regulatory agencies, the combination of industry money and government power holds down the interest of the common man. Once we correctly diagnose the problem as crony capitalism, perhaps “reformers,” social critics, and movie producers will realize that voluntary cooperation and a marketplace of capital and ideas are they key to keeping society afloat.

What The Lorax Can Teach Libertarianism

Surprise! 

I go onto Yahoo News, and I see an alarmist headline. What do we have to worry about on this fine day? Well, according to two MIT researchers, “global economic collapse” is predicted by the year 2030. The cause? In the same vein as the much-discussed academic report “The Limits to Growth” written in 1972, overconsumption and natural resource depletion is the demon at hand. Rapid population expansion isn’t much of a help either; we’re too-familiar with the pain at the pump exacerbated by the emerging demand markets of China and India. 

What many researchers and slacktivists of the environmental variety often fail to understand, though, is that natural resource discoveries and efficiency gains keep on driving the fateful doomsday back a couple of decades. If you look at the historical record, predictions about the depletion of oil resources have been proven wrong time and time again. Who could forget Standard Oil geologist Wallace Pratt’s 1943 prediction that only 600 billion barrels of oil will be produced before the world runs out? Or the U.S. Geological Survey’s 1919 finding that oil would be a thing of the past in nine year’s time? While geologists argue about when oil will go the way of the truffula tree, we can agree that political stability, proper utilization of existing oil wells, and reducing burdensome regulation can enable us to service the growing needs of the world’s developing nations.

 The traditional conservative/libertarian response to old-school environmentalism, though, is in desperate need of a re-working. You see, the current tax system we have is stacked against us; opposing both gasoline taxes and alternative energy subsidies leads to some nasty snipping from the left. If we moved toward a consumption tax, however, the debate would be profoundly altered. Oil and other fossil fuels would have a consumption tax slapped onto them, and the focus would be on exempting alternative energy from those fees. Since fossil-fuel-based energy (and virtually all other products) would have a sales tax, the few items that were not taxed would be greeted with a generous flow of capital from consumers and investors. 

Libertarians and conservatives alike could advocate for tax-free alternative energy as a boon to commerce, and an eco-friendly twist to their platforms. There would be no more hand-wringing over specific subsidies to faulty companies (*cough* solyndra *cough*) and we would not need to feel pigeonholed on the issue of climate change. While many libertarian purists might feel uneasy about supporting certain types of fuel over others, the market can still decide between a vast array of competing alternative energies. It would be wonderful to have a tax system with zero loopholes (or no taxes at all), but it is imperative to undo the damage caused by governments subsidizing global oil production for decades. In 2010 alone, the IEA estimates that countries collectively spent $409 billion in fossil fuel production; a global agreement to reduce these subsidies, coupled with the transition to a consumption tax should go a long way. 

In addition to questions about energy usage, the sales tax has natural appeal to many libertarians. Its enjoyed much support among analysts and economists, since it expands the base of taxation, is less prone to abuse, and less negatively impacts taxpayer behavior. The current system, complete with a plethora of special-interest deductions, comes with an enormous cost; working and other productive behaviors are penalized, and leisure comes at less of a cost. This kind of thinking isn’t even limited to the right; Al Gore, notorious man of the left, embraced the idea of replacing the distortionary payroll tax with a consumption-based carbon tax. If libertarianism 2.0 could build coalitions with the environmental left, move toward a less distortionary tax code, and remove harmful subsidies, the liberty movement will be in a far better place. 

Libertarianism 2.0

The libertarian movement is at a crossroads: with the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign drying up and the pro-liberty Congressman Justin Amash facing a risky redistricting, dark days seem to be at hand. Often, the electorate is forced to choose between the moral crusaders intent on spending America into oblivion, and social engineers hell-bent on putting even more onto the national credit card. To add injury to insult, the national “echo” of our two parties is made worse by reckless foreign policy adventurism, ranging from dubious drone strikes, the “humanitarian war” oxymoron, and rebel-funding schemes. Is this the gradual slipping of the United States toward mindless and heartless authoritarianism? Well, heres the rub- whatever the case may be, doomsday proselytizing needs to be balanced with a sunny, compelling case that libertarianism can pave the way for a new wave of prosperity and happiness.

The problem was never the end solution, though, it is the road we must take to get to our ideal society. Libertarianism 1.0, as I would call it, suffers from a multitude of problems that need addressing if we are to become a force to be reckoned with. For starters, we need to figure out how far we are willing to take the “states rights” issue. Libertarians are often put in an awkward position when states decide to implement draconian economic controls or medieval social restrictions. Take Lawrence vs. Texas, for instance- after the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’s sodomy ban was an invasion of a right to privacy, Ron Paul penned an article lambasting the Court for imposing “its vision on the people of Texas.” Don’t get me wrong- a loose reading of the Constitution often goes hand in hand with the destruction of civil liberties and increase of state power. In this case, however, the state of Texas was imposing their narrow conception of morality on two consenting adults in the seclusion of their own residence. In this clear-cut instance of individual sovereignty versus state power, shouldn’t libertarians celebrate the triumph of the individual?

The issue of abortion similarly puts libertarians in a very tough spot. In addition to the questionable “states-rights” position taken by many of us, there’s been plenty of intellectual blood spilled in the debate over rights violations. Is the insertion of government hands into a woman’s uterus an overreach, or is it a necessary intervention to protect a right? Leaving this unrelenting tug-of-war to the states does not seem to accomplish anything, since a mother can still “kill her baby” if she so wishes, by crossing state lines. The “states-rights” line is also anathema to the pro-choice crowd, since government infringements on reproductive freedom would be commonplace. While the fetus may have a right to live, its inherent, bodily dependence on others should strike libertarians as unjust. At the same time, though, destroying a life for inadvertently depending on another’s body comes across as an inhumane position, feeding into the image of “die in the street” libertarianism. 

Voluntary compassion, combined with the technological innovation of capitalism, may provide a powerful, unique solution to this dilemma. Fetal adoption, which involves cryogenically freezing the fetus and placing it in the womb of a wanting mother, is rapidly growing more successful and less costly. While the violation of a woman’s bodily sovereignty should be condemned at any level of government, unleashing helping hands and free-market innovations could provide powerful solutions to our age-old problems. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of Libertarianism 2.0, and this revolutionary proposition needn’t be limited to vexing social questions.

Combatting the welfare state needs to be combined with a truly compassionate alternative- a comprehensive network of fraternal organizations, cooperatives, and charities for the ailing and underprivileged. We must also reach out to groups that are in the progressive sphere of influence, including single women, African-Americans, and Latino-Americans. By discussing how prescription mandates and employer-provided insurance act as barriers to birth control access, we can prove that libertarianism is also friendly to female voters. Libertarianism 2.0 should point to bloated welfare systems and overrun prisons to demonstrate the plight of inner-city minorities, and propose a compelling alternative of fraternal societies and greater competition in education and health-care. 

Instead of the outright elimination of Social Security or the short-term “shoring-up” of the program suggested by Ron Paul, the program should be infused with competition over the short-run. While the public is often put-off by phrases such as “elimination” or “privatization,” a politically-savvy and pragmatic libertarianism would diversify Social Security into a number of different retirement plans. The public, faced with a multitude of benefit schemes and retirement ages, will finally warm-up to the logic of competition and free-markets. 

While many push for purity and strict- constitutionalism in the libertarian movement, we must readjust our program of reform to reflect the current reality of politics. Even though I’m in love with the libertarian cause, I often witness conversations grounded in an ideal utopia, sans any real-world-application. By gradually selling a compassionate, compelling brand of libertarianism to citizens of all persuasions, we can crawl out of our narrow ideological niche and unleash the floodgates of prosperity, peace, and sound money.