Question

[james_davis_nicoll]

Can one be both a Keynesian and a libertarian?

Comments

[dsgood]

Sure -- just as an American can be a libertarian and also believe in the divine rights of states.

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

I have never found that people with multiple sub-classes of "the crazy" really bother to think about things like that as they doom your economy and destroy your livelihood for their own self serving delusional goals.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Keynesian is crazy?

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Possibly, if some variants of the Fourth International or anarcho-syndicalism count as libertarian...

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

Republicans in America manage to combine libertarianism with Hobbes, Burke, and Christianist dominion theory. Surely it's possible to be Keynesian and libertarian. Simply ignore or finesse the points of disagreement.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Seconded, I suspect. David Brin seems to manage the contradictions - if there are any - well enough.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Sure, they'd have everyone enter into a voluntary contract with a privately held countercyclical taxing-and-spending monetary authority under the force of their enlightened self-interest!

[scentofviolets.livejournal.com]

You have to say that with an Eric Idle accent.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

Theoretically, yes. One could believe that the economy benefits from government spending in a recession while believing that it's immoral for a government to do anything. "Immoral" isn't the same as "wouldn't work".

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Libertarianism doesn't require believing that government action is immoral, per se, across the board. A minarchist libertarian can certainly believe that certain functions are best handled by government, and if they also buy into Keynesian economics, then it's totally plausible to suppose that one of those functions might be getting the economy out of a liquidity trap. Certainly there is no conflict whatever between various left-libertarian ideas, like legalizing drugs and gambling and prostitution and the ideas of Keynes.

[baeraad.livejournal.com]

Not as I understand the terms, no. But I have also long since stopped being surprised at the way people decide that the abstract description of some ideology can, by creative interpretation, be made to sound like what they believe in, and then label themselves by it while claiming that everyone who practices the ideology as it is commonly understood are just "doing it wrong."

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

If a "Christian" can believe in voting against programs that help the poor, a "libertarian" can certainly favor government management of the market.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Do you mean "be", or "label oneself as"?

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps you should ask Charles Stross.

The term libertarian has been poisoned by the American Libertarian Party, but I reckon libertarianism should mean being in favour of actions to improve individual liberty, rather than being at best anti-government, or at worst anti-tax. All institutions are good servants, but bad masters, so checks and balances to prevent particular institutions becoming harmful are desirable.

Promotion of the general welfare would be a legitimate function of government - so if one thinks that countercyclical government spending has that effect one can be a libertarian and a Keynesian. The trick is to avoid the countercyclical spending leading to inflation or an oppressive tax burden - e.g. by not practising countercyclical spending only during the downward half of the cycle.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

I think the more common term for those that seek to maximize individual liberty is "classical liberal". At least that's the nomenclature I seem to encounter.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

At first i read that as "...both a Kryptonian and a libertarian", which I suspect would be easier (for them).

[avram]

But they'd be in constant danger of losing their powers from exposure to their stockpiles of gold kryptonite.

Let me spoil the fun

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

James is probably reacting to http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/327431.html

Back when I first called myself libertarian, it was the hardcore flirting with anarcho-capitalist kind, "non-aggression principle" and all. And from the LP and the Internet that's what I'm mostly familiar with. RPG.net has self-styled libertarians who insist that's a lunatic fringe and that most are a lot more moderate. The current leader is far too snarky to be pinned down on what he does believe, but I can certainly see a moderate libertarianism that's less about the deontological absolutism and more about "more freedom and markets are good, up to a point" that draw the line in a different place than modern liberals. I also never did pay that much attention to Reason and Liberty (the magazines) but have a vague idea they've been more pragmatic all along.

Re: Let me spoil the fun

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I think it's a pretty nasty distortion to equate Keynesian economics with anti-market stuff. There's more of a cross over now than there ever has been but that has more to do with stinking mess current regulation has made of a bunch of stuff that really should never have been allowed to run unregulated in the first place.

The bulk of the problems we have now, worldwide, were caused by not pursuing Keynesian economic ideas during the boom times and then abandoning them during a depression.

It's kinda funny really, when I was first taught this stuff I had really bought into the Austrian School stuff, and my teacher would role his eyes and point out the potential problems and likely failure modes.

It's not funny 25 years later when he's mostly right and the 16 year old me was mostly wrong.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

For different values of both, I am sure.

One of the weird things at the moment is that somehow Keynesian economics isn't seen as being fiscally conservative anymore... which is really odd when you think about.

Likewise, I think there's a LOT of Keynesian leaning people who would see eye to eye with libertarians on most social issues.

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

Government dearth panels will have to pry my countercyclical policy instruments out of my cold, dead hands!

I'm not the world's greatest fan of trad Keynesianism, but I don't see there's anything even slightly more libertarian about the present policy of helping a bunch of oligarchs steal all the silver spoons on the way up, and all the wooden spoons on the way down.

Then again, taking both social and economic libertarianism seriously has led me progressively and inexorably into what is called Loony Left territory, and I've heard the GOP is mooting extraterritorial legislation to forbid people like me worldwide from representing themselves as 'libertarian' at all. I wouldn't want to go calling myself libertarian without a license, or anything!

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The word "libertarian" originally came from the radical left, didn't it?

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Former Manhattan KS mayor Bob Strawn posts to the local newspaper forums touting both Keynesian economics and libertarian policies, but I should point out that I think he's either really extremely hilariously clueless or trolling.

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

James, you should make a regular feature of apparently incompatible idea sets like this. I recommend Prosperity Theology nest.

[spikebrennan.livejournal.com]

Sure:

"Government budgetary action can help society. We must prevent this from happening at all costs!"

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

If it isn't in ones best interest to be a libertarian, can one still be a libertarian? I mean, that would be kind of hypocritical, wouldn't it?

(Thinking mostly of Randroid style libertarianism here.)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Lots of libertarians have nothing to do with Objectivism. The basic ideas are far older than her.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, John Maynard Keynes himself conceived of the General Theory as a solution to the business cycle that, unlike communism or fascism, permitted a liberal society and maintained a role for individual entrepreneurs. He considered that activist monetary and fiscal policy was a minimal-intervention treatment rather than the heroic surgery the totalitarians or the starvation cure the conservatives prescribed.

A lot of Keynes' writing is about individual liberty, and politically he was always very close to the Liberal Party, which was an atavistic endeavour at the time, and to the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the News Chronicle.

On the other hand, Keynes was pretty suspicious of Keynesianism, and he doubted that it would actually work on those terms. Hence the section of the General Theory about state control of investment. There's a thread running through his work in which he seems to simultaneously want to save a liberal democracy with a recognisable market economy, but also to suspect that this is impossible and even that he is wrong to oppose it.

I remember George Steiner saying about Viennese culture that it's a mistake to think that these terrifying forces of modernity were lurking under the civilised surface. No, they were right there in it, the ambivalence and rage and mood swings and lust. It is mistaken to read Keynes as being an evenly mixed pinko synthesis, rather than a discordant dazzle pattern of simultaneous contrasting impulses.

In the end, his ideas were operationalised by Labour and the civil service, which meant that in practice they were identified as part of a package with Fabian social democracy. Almost certainly he would have found it more interventionist than he would have liked, although he might have been pleasantly surprised by where they went on sexuality and gender. On the other hand he was proud and delighted by the success of the very socialist war economy he played a huge part in managing.

How about a Kynesian libertarian?

[rpresser.livejournal.com]

Well, might be hard to find one, most of the people on Dune were trying to back one ruler or another.