I pass the libertarian hypocrisy test

I found an article so dreadful that it demands that I revive this long dormant blog.  In it, something called RJ Eskow has eleven questions that he demands be asked of libertarians to determine whether they're hypocrites.  I love quizzes.  Here we go.

Are unions, political parties, elections, and social movements like Occupy examples of “spontaneous order”—and if not, why not?

Yes.  You may find libertarians who are in favor of right-to-work laws on the grounds that liberty, including liberty of where to work, should be defended for the individual against any concentration of power, including that of a labor union.  I am not one of them; I'm persuaded that right-to-work is not something the state should be promulgating.

What you won't find, I think, is libertarians who think unions should be banned altogether, especially not in the private sector.  That includes Eskow's boogieman Ayn Rand (libertarian only by the loosest possible definition, as we will discuss below), who endorses unions and has one of her heroes address one in "The Fountainhead".

This does not mean that unions are a good idea.  I think it's perfectly fair to attribute the decline of the American auto industry, for example, in part (and only in part) to unionization.  But libertarians are not the people you have to worry about making things illegal just because they're dumb.

Is a libertarian willing to admit that production is the result of many forces, each of which should be recognized and rewarded?

You mean, am I against slavery?  Gee, sure, why not.  Not coincidentally, Lysander Spooner, one of libertarianism's early heroes, was also one of America's prominent abolitionists.

Is our libertarian willing to acknowledge that workers who bargain for their services, individually and collectively, are also employing market forces?

These are all basically the same question so far, but yes.  Of course, corporations who engage in "antitrust" by "colluding" to fix wages are also employing market forces.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Or at least it is if you don't want to be a hypocrite.  Right, RJ Eskow?

Is our libertarian willing to admit that a “free market” needs regulation?

You'd have to read this for more context.  The short answer is: maybe, if the regulation does more good than harm, which is seldom the case.  But we don't need to talk about regulation to deal with the example Eskow is citing: "banker crimes that include stockholder fraud and investor fraud."  Fraud is a crime, not a regulated activity. At least, I hope so. You never can tell with progressives.

Does our libertarian believe in democracy? If yes, explain what’s wrong with governments that regulate.

Does our progressive believe in democracy?  If so, democratically elected Adolf Hitler did nothing wrong, right?

Come on.  Sure, I believe in democracy.  I also believe in moderation, which means putting a lot of things, such as those found in the American Bill of Rights, off limits to the meddling of the people and their representatives.  One of the things that should be off limits is unreasonable regulation of the markets.

We can argue about what that means, but when we do, we must always bear in mind that government has an agency problem.  Public choice economics (not a particularly libertarian school of thought) tells us that our representatives will always represent their own interests.  The same is true of regulators, who also experience a phenomenon known as "regulatory capture" where they soon begin to regulate for benefit of their targets rather than to restrain them.

So do I believe in regulation?  In theory, yes.  In practice, not if we will get this.  And it's my belief that we will always get this:

"But the government didn't really do its job of inspecting the rig. According to the Associated Press, the actual number of MMS inspections of the Deepwater Horizon rig fell short of agency's own monthly standard. It turns out that the MMS collects billions in royalties from the very industry it's supposed to regulate. So if it interrupts the flow of oil and gas -- and hence cash from the industry -- the MMS cuts the value of its own royalty stream."

 Does our libertarian use wealth that wouldn’t exist without government in order to preach against the role of government?

Has our progressive ever used wealth generated by the free market to advocate restrictions on the free market?  Eskow's bio blurb lists him as a business owner.  Has he ever generated cash as the result of a voluntary trade?  Uh oh.

Don't worry, that's a trick question.  He can't avoid it.  We live in a mixed economy, no one can avoid either government tentacles or free market ones, and there can be no evidence of hypocrisy on either side as a result.  Of course, we have no idea how much wealth would exist in a *genuinely* free market.

Does our libertarian reject any and all government protection for his intellectual property?

Gladly.  You will hardly find anyone *other than* libertarians who can answer yes to this.  I would point Eskow at Stephan Kinsella's writings.  There is, to be sure, controversy on this among libertarians, but the growing consensus is that intellectual property is a government grant of monopoly for things for which no monopoly can be economically justified.  In other words, it's a type of ineffective regulation for the benefit of the regulated, just like what the MMS did with BP's offshore rigs.  I can't speak for Peter Thiel, but yes, I think that's bad, and I think that people who think like I do are a lot more likely to think it's bad than people who think like RJ Eskow are.

It's true that Eskow is attempting to attack Randian Objectivists here, and they do believe in intellectual property, but the problem there is that he keeps using the word "libertarian".  It's nice that Eskow thinks Objectivists are libertarians, but neither Objectivists nor non-Objectivist libertarians would agree.  Rand herself called libertarians "the hippies of the right".  They're not like us, RJ.  Unless we are making up our own definitions, in which case, you're a Stalinist Nazi Evilcrat.

Does our libertarian recognize that large corporations are a threat to our freedoms?

By large corporations you mean things that exist entirely because they have government charters and government grants of limited liability and government-created barriers to entry?  Well let me think a nanosecond.

Large corporations are absolutely a threat to our freedoms.  They are also not in any sense whatsoever the work of the free market.  They are creations of law, tentacles of government, in short: entirely the work of RJ Eskow's beloved democratic process.  For a progressive to criticize a large corporation is genuine hypocrisy.

Ayn Rand was an adamant opponent of good works, writing that “The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves.” That raises another test for our libertarian: Does he think that Rand was off the mark on this one, or does he agree that historical figures like King and Gandhi were “parasites”?

Well this is a neat rhetorical trick, for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, we're still confusing Objectivists with libertarians here.  Secondly, it's an attempt to force libertarians to counterattack by smearing two beloved figures.

Which, in the case of Gandhi at least, I will cheerfully do.  Gandhi was a politician, and not always a particularly good one.  Politicians, as previously discussed, govern for their personal benefit.  I can't speak to Doctor King's history, but in my experience, we don't have to worry about what people who live for others are.  There aren't any.

To the more general question of whether libertarians oppose good works: of course not.  We just have a pretty basic test: if you're forcing someone else to do it (which is what government taxation is) it doesn't count as you doing a good work.