Why are there no libertarian countries? – Nolan Chart LLC

Libertarians and anarchists often get challenged with an annoying question, Warren Redlich, theCEO of Independent Political Report and a former Libertarian Party candidate, recently wrote: Iflibertarianism is so great, why hasnt any country tried it?[1]

There is no doubt that the question has been asked often, andthat it is meant to be annoying.Consider the source: Michael Lind. Lind, for those who have never heard of him, is a writer for theNew America Foundation who has achieved some online notoriety as a professional anti-libertarian. (Agoogle search on Lind libertarianism turns up more than 100,000 hits.)

Lind first came to myattention when he proclaimed the collapse of libertarianism as a political force back inNovember 2007 just in time for the birth of the Ron Paul Revolution.[2] In fact, though, he washeralding the utter and final defeat of the libertarian counter-revolution. before that,[3]and he has continued to do so since: most recently in 2015, when he pontificated that thelibertarian moment [Rand Paul] symbolized is over.[4] (To be fair, he also pontificated inhis2015 article that There was never a libertarian moment in the United States which gets onewondering just what keeps collapsing.)

But constantly heralding the end of something that never existed in the first place must getboring after a while; so in 2013 Lind came up with a new angle: the above question, smugly packaged asThe Question Libertarians Just Cant Answer.[5] That had such a great reception thatLind followed it up within days with two more articles with equally-revealing titles, Why Libertariansare Basically Cult Members[6] and Grow Up, Libertarians![7]

Given this genesis, there is no wonder that anti-libertarians ask the question often, and thatthey do so mainly to annoy libertarians. But there is really nothing annoying about the questionitself. The absence of libertarian countries is a phenomenon in need of an explanation, andtrying to provide one could shed some light on little-explored areas of political theory. So itis worth attempting an answer.

It also worth looking at Linds answers; for indeed, he gives us not one but two. Hisfirst answer is not explicitly stated, but implicity smuggled into the way he phrases and rephrases his question. In his article he asks that question five times. The first instance is purely neutral: Whyare there no libertarian countries? but not so his reiterations:

If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modernsociety, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century isorganized along libertarian lines? If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldnt at least onecountry have tried it? Why isnt libertarianism discredited by the absence of any libertarianregimes in the real world? If libertarianism is not only appealing but plausible, why hasntany country anywhere in the world ever tried it?[8]

Such formulations seem designed to suggest their own answers: There are no libertarian countriesbecause libertarianism is not plausible it is discredited it is not a good idea andlibertarians just do not understand how to organize a modern society.

However, Lind cannot just keep repeating and rephrasing the same question. Some people may be tooobtuse to grasp those implications, no matter how often he makes them. Still others may beintelligent enough to see logical problems with the implications themselves:

Obviously, this is a silly, fallacious pattern of argument. Every good idea was at one pointuntried. A hypothesis that has not been tested is neither confirmed nor disconfirmed. One mayreasonably complain that a hypothesis is unfalsifiable. But it is simply bizarre to maintain thata hypothesis might be discredited because it has yet to be tested, because it is so far neitherfalsified nor confirmed. Such a principle would entail the absurdity that all hypotheses werediscredited at the dawn of time.[9]

So Lind also needs to provide a substantive answer to his own question. Which indeed he does: Onhis account, there is a significant trade-off between less government and more nationalinsecurity, more crime, more illiteracy and more infant and maternal mortality, among otherthings. Those other things including human survival itself: Economic liberty comes at a pricein human survival, it would seem. There must be no libertarian countries, then, because nocountry wants to pay that price in human survival.

But if there are no libertarian countries, what is Linds evidence that one would come with allthis nastiness? Fortunately for his research project, the free-market right has been rankingcountries according to economic freedom for years. Using one such ranking the 2013 one fromthe Heritage Foundation[10] Lind attempts to prove his trade-off theory.

His technique is to compare two points on the list. On the one hand, he looks atthe mature, well-established industrial democracies, with the U.S. as representative. But none of these countries, includingthe U.S., is anywhere near a libertarian paradise. Considering how often Lind points out the lack oflibertarian paradises, that does not exactly come as a surprise.

And then there is Mauritius. According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. has less economicfreedom than Mauritius, another small island country, this one off the southeast coast of Africa.At number 8, Mauritius is two rungs above the U.S., at number 10 in the global index of economicliberty at least Mauritius is economically free!

Comparing the U.S. and Mauritius, Lind illustrates his purported trade-offs: the U.S. has aliteracy rate of 99 percent, compared to only 88.5 percent in economically-freer Mauritius.Infant mortality? In economically-more-free Mauritius there are about 11 deaths per 1,000 livebirths compared to 5.9 in the economically-less-free U.S. Maternal mortality in Mauritius is at60 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 21 in the U.S.

Never mind that back in 1980 (when it ranked only 68 on the Heritage list) Mauritius had aninfant mortality rate 3 times higher.[11] For Lind, the U.S.-Mauritius comparison is clear proofthat more economic freedom means more infant mortality (not to mention more maternal mortalityand less literacy).

There are five problems for his proof method, though: the five countries at the top of his list Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland the only countries the HeritageFoundation ranks as economically free. (Both the U.S. and Mauritius are ranked almost free).Using Google searches, I was able to find comparable statistics for all five; and what I foundwas indeed shocking:

The last four have literacy rates ranging from 97% to 99%: below the U.S., but well ahead ofMauritius. Their infant mortality rates (per thousand) range from 4.5 deaths (for Switzerland) to2 (for Singapore), and their maternal mortality rates (per thousand) from 11 (for New Zealand) to5 (for Switzerland) well ahead of both the less-free U.S. and less-free Mauritius. No evidenceof any significant trade-off there.

And then there is Hong Kong, at the top of the Heritage list. If Linds theory is correct, thenliteracy should be way down in Hong Kong, and both infant and maternal morality way up. Literacyis in fact down (though still above Mauritius), at 93%; but so are infant mortality (at 1.5 per1,000 births) and maternal mortality (1.6 per 1,000). No sign of any significant trade-offthere, either.

Lind deals with these apparent counter-examples by claiming that they should not count,because the Heritage Foundation rankings the very ones he relies on are biased. Hong Kong andSingapore do not count because they have small geographic areas the first is a city and thesecond a city-state yet Mauritius does, though it is only 2000 km in size. Australia andNew Zealand do not count because they are low-population countries yet Mauritius does,although its population is slightly above 1 million. Furthermore, four out of the top five weresmall British overseas colonies (so was Mauritius) that depended for protection first on theBritish empire and now on the United States (as does Mauritius, home of the Diego Garciaairbase).

And what of Switzerland, to which none of the above objections apply? According to Lind, it shouldnot count either, because wait for it Switzerland might not have maintained its independencefor long if Nazi Germany had won World War II. Really.

Despite Linds attempt to rule out all the evidence against histrade-off theory, it isreasonable to conclude that he has not proved it, and that the examples he picked to prove it were in factcherry-picked. But if his trade-off theory is unproved, it makes no sense to think that anynation (much less every nation) subscribes to it, and that that explains why none of them arelibertarian. So we should look elsewhere for an answer.

So why are there no libertarian countries? A libertarian might say it is because:

(1) Contrary to Linds initial assumption (which he puts in the mouth of libertarians), no oneactually organizes a modern society. Great societies are what Hayek calls spontaneous or polycentric orders not unplanned, but not conforming to any one plan, either; insteadsubject to a myriad of conflicting plans, by a myriad of different interest groups. Some of thosegroups goals can be libertarian, some the opposite (let us label those totalitarian).Consequently, one would expect any existing political system to contain a mixture of bothlibertarian and totalitarian elements.

(2) The most influential interest groups would be the most powerful, or, in otherwords, those that benefit most from the existing system; which means that each would have abuilt-in conservative bias conservative not in the sense of wanting less government, but in the senseof wanting to preserve the status quo and that the political system would reflect this bias. Changes ineither a libertarian or totalitarian direction would, then, happen slowly and incrementally, atthe margins.

(3) Political change is implemented by governments, and can be effected only through governmentpower. Libertarianism has an understandable bias against those who use government power for theirown ends, and vice versa. A government might adopt certain libertarian policies for its owninterests such as cutting tax rates to increase tax revenue, or repealing a universally-detested law for the sake of civil order but it is unreasonable to imagine any government reducingitspower just for the sake of doing so. Besides the already-noted conservative bias, then, one wouldexpect political systems to have a built-in totalitarian bias.

(4) The notable counter-examples to (2) radical changes in a society are those imposed bymilitary force; and, in light of (3), it strains belief to imagine a libertarian society beingimposed that way. While waging a war may accomplish some libertarian ends ending slavery in theU.S. is an example the very act of fighting one serves only to accentuate the already-notedtotalitarian bias.

In light of the above, one would expect to find no pure libertarian political systems. Then again, in light of the first two points, one would expect to find few, if any, pure ideologicalsystems of any kind and that expectation would be correct.

The Scandinavian role models ofsocial democracy that Lind invokes, for example, are hardly exemplars of pure socialism: whilegovernments share of GDP is higher there than in the Heritage Foundations economically freecountries, it comes nowhere near 100%. One of those role models, Denmark, actually ranks higherthan the U.S. (and just behind Mauritius) on the very Heritage Foundation list that Lind relies on; something that he either did not notice or did not see fit to mention.

Besides, one cannot help adding, Scandinavia might not have maintained its independence for longif Nazi Germany had won World War II.

What one would expect to see and what one does see, all over the world are mixed systems:countries with a mixture of libertarian and totalitarian policies, some more libertarian, somemore totalitarian, most probably more totalitarian than libertarian, but never purely one or theother.

There is, though, one notable counter-example to my last statement: totalitarian communism. There certainly have been totalitarian communist regimes in the real world. Most of those, too, asLind concedes, have been imperfect models, but somehave comevery close indeed tototalitarian perfection: Stalinist Russia,China under the Red Guard, Pol Pots Cambodia, and NorthKorea.

While Lind claims that the pro-communist left has been discredited by the failure of theMarxist-Leninist countries, (presumably referring to the non-existence of most of those regimes today),the reality is that at least one of them, North Korea, is still going strong in the 21st century.

Like it or hate it, North Korea does look like an example of pure totalitarianism: a political system inwhich libertarian elementsare completely absent. In which case, any theory attempting to explainthe absence of libertarian regimes in todays world should also be able to account for thepresence of totalitarian regimes. That proves no insuperable problem for my theory North Koreais an example of (4), a regime imposed and maintained solely by military force but it does seemto do so for Linds.

For one thing, North Korea gives precious little evidence to support his trade-off theory.North Korea, as expected, ranks last on the Heritage Foundation list, meaning that by Linds theory literacyshould be high there, and infant and maternal morality low. The country does boastan incredibly high 100% literacy rate not one illiterate in the entire country. But its infant and maternalmortality rates (22 and 82 deaths per 1,000 births, respectively) are higher even than those ofLinds cherry-picked paradigm of economic freedom, Mauritius.

For another, the example of a purely totalitarian regime in the 21st century also poses a problemfor Linds implicit answer to his question (the one smuggled into itsvarious iterations). Forif the criterion of an ideologys correctness, goodness, plausibility, etc., is whether or not itis adopted in the real world, one would have to count totalitarian communism a ringing success onall counts.

So let us rephrase Linds questions, and ask them right back at him in turn:

If totalitarian communists are wrong in claiming that they understand how best to organize amodern society, how is it that a country in the world in the early twenty-first century isorganized along totalitarian communist lines? If totalitarian communism was not a good idea,wouldnt there be no countries that ever tried it (much less continue to try it)? Why isnttotalitarian communism vindicated by the presence of totalitarian communist regimes in the realworld? If totalitarian communism is not only implausible but unappealing, why are countriestrying it?

I have no doubt that Lind will be able to answer those questions, though not without changing hiscriterion of what makes a political ideology correct, good, plausible, and appealing. So I lookforward to seeing his answers.

Photo Michael Lind in 2015. Photo by D.W. Taylor. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

[1] Warren Redlich, Was America Ever Libertarian?, Independent Political Report, April 25,2017. http://independentpoliticalreport.com/2017/04/was-america-ever-libertarian/#comment-1589317

[2] Michael Lind (2007), The Centre-Grounds Shift to the Left, Financial Times, November 27,2007. https://www.ft.com/content/4afdfafe-9cf7-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac

[3] Lind (2006), The Unmourned End of Libertarian Politics, Financial Times, August 16, 2006. https://www.ft.com/content/2333b794-2d4e-11db-851d-0000779e2340

[4] Lind (2015), The False Rise and Fall of Rand Paul, Politico, October 20, 2015. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/rand-paul-2016-libertarianism-213265

[5] Lind (2013a), The Question libertarians Just Cant Answer. Salon, June 4, 2013. http://www.salon.com/2013/06/04/the_question_libertarians_just_cant_answer/

[6] Lind (2013b), Why Libertarians are Basically Cult Members, AlterNet, June 11, 2013. http://www.alternet.org/economy/libertarians-are-cult-members?akid=10559.113011.rcc3cH&rd=1&src=newsletter853683&t=9

[7] Lind (2013c), Grow Up, Libertarians!, Salon, June 13, 2013. http://www.salon.com/2013/06/13/grow_up_libertarians/

[8] Quotations in italics are from Lind (2013a).

[9] Will Wilkinson, Michael Linds bad argument against anything, The Economist, June 6, 2013. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/libertarianism-and-experiment

[10] Index of Economic Freedom, Wikipedia, April 11, 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

[11] Ronald Bailey, Michael Linds Obtuse Attack on Liberty and Libertarianism, Reason, June 7,2013. http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/07/michael-linds-obtuse-attack-on-liberty-a

The Question Libertarians CAN Answer!

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Why are there no libertarian countries? - Nolan Chart LLC