Het nieuwe sociaal zijn: Libertarisme

1. Zeker mee eens. Een goed artikel

2. duidelijk verwoord! kan m.i. gebruikt worden bij een volgende compagne.

3. The American Conservative HOMEBLOGSPOLITICSWORLDCULTUREARTS & LETTERSARCHIVE Bye-Bye Bachmann—and Tea Party? Was Benjamin Cardozo Hispanic? For President Buchanan How to Take on Tornadoes Big Brother Says, ‘Open Your Mouth!’ Thatcher Goes to China The Rise of Nullification Is Tesla a Threat? Paul Wolfowitz’s Iran Connection Why Kennan Matters Bye-Bye Bachmann—and Tea Party? Was Benjamin Cardozo Hispanic? For President Buchanan How to Take on Tornadoes Big Brother Says, ‘Open Your Mouth!’ Thatcher Goes to China The Rise of Nullification Is Tesla a Threat?..Marxism of the Right
   By Robert Locke • March 14, 2005 .Free spirits, the ambitious, ex-socialists, drug users, and sexual eccentrics often find an attractive political philosophy in libertarianism, the idea that individual freedom should be the sole rule of ethics and government. Libertarianism offers its believers a clear conscience to do things society presently restrains, like make more money, have more sex, or take more drugs. It promises a consistent formula for ethics, a rigorous framework for policy analysis, a foundation in American history, and the application of capitalist efficiencies to the whole of society. But while it contains substantial grains of truth, as a whole it is a seductive mistake.

   There are many varieties of libertarianism, from natural-law libertarianism (the least crazy) to anarcho-capitalism (the most), and some varieties avoid some of the criticisms below. But many are still subject to most of them, and some of the more successful varieties—I recently heard a respected pundit insist that classical liberalism is libertarianism—enter a gray area where it is not really clear that they are libertarians at all. But because 95 percent of the libertarianism one encounters at cocktail parties, on editorial pages, and on Capitol Hill is a kind of commonplace “street” libertarianism, I decline to allow libertarians the sophistical trick of using a vulgar libertarianism to agitate for what they want by defending a refined version of their doctrine when challenged philosophically. We’ve seen Marxists pull that before.

   This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

   The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. Prosperity is connected to freedom, in that it makes us free to consume, but it is not the same thing, in that one can be rich but as unfree as a Victorian tycoon’s wife. A family is in fact one of the least free things imaginable, as the emotional satisfactions of it derive from relations that we are either born into without choice or, once they are chosen, entail obligations that we cannot walk away from with ease or justice. But security, prosperity, and family are in fact the bulk of happiness for most real people and the principal issues that concern governments.

   Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them. Taken to its logical conclusion, the reduction of the good to the freely chosen means there are no inherently good or bad choices at all, but that a man who chose to spend his life playing tiddlywinks has lived as worthy a life as a Washington or a Churchill.
   Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?
   Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.

   Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate. This is not just an accidental failing of libertarianism’s believers but an intrinsic temptation of the doctrine that sets it up to fail whenever tried, just like Marxism.
   Libertarians need to be asked some hard questions. What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free? What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners? What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society? What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways? What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?
   In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question.

   Furthermore, if limiting freedom today may prolong it tomorrow, then limiting freedom tomorrow may prolong it the day after and so on, so the right amount of freedom may in fact be limited freedom in perpetuity. But if limited freedom is the right choice, then libertarianism, which makes freedom an absolute, is simply wrong. If all we want is limited freedom, then mere liberalism will do, or even better, a Burkean conservatism that reveres traditional liberties. There is no need to embrace outright libertarianism just because we want a healthy portion of freedom, and the alternative to libertarianism is not the USSR, it is America’s traditional liberties.
   Libertarianism’s abstract and absolutist view of freedom leads to bizarre conclusions. Like slavery, libertarianism would have to allow one to sell oneself into it. (It has been possible at certain times in history to do just that by assuming debts one could not repay.) And libertarianism degenerates into outright idiocy when confronted with the problem of children, whom it treats like adults, supporting the abolition of compulsory education and all child-specific laws, like those against child labor and child sex. It likewise cannot handle the insane and the senile.

   Libertarians argue that radical permissiveness, like legalizing drugs, would not shred a libertarian society because drug users who caused trouble would be disciplined by the threat of losing their jobs or homes if current laws that make it difficult to fire or evict people were abolished. They claim a “natural order” of reasonable behavior would emerge. But there is no actual empirical proof that this would happen. Furthermore, this means libertarianism is an all-or-nothing proposition: if society continues to protect people from the consequences of their actions in any way, libertarianism regarding specific freedoms is illegitimate. And since society does so protect people, libertarianism is an illegitimate moral position until the Great Libertarian Revolution has occurred.

   And is society really wrong to protect people against the negative consequences of some of their free choices? While it is obviously fair to let people enjoy the benefits of their wise choices and suffer the costs of their stupid ones, decent societies set limits on both these outcomes. People are allowed to become millionaires, but they are taxed. They are allowed to go broke, but they are not then forced to starve. They are deprived of the most extreme benefits of freedom in order to spare us the most extreme costs. The libertopian alternative would be perhaps a more glittering society, but also a crueler one.

   Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians.

   The political corollary of this is that since no electorate will support libertarianism, a libertarian government could never be achieved democratically but would have to be imposed by some kind of authoritarian state, which rather puts the lie to libertarians’ claim that under any other philosophy, busybodies who claim to know what’s best for other people impose their values on the rest of us. Libertarianism itself is based on the conviction that it is the one true political philosophy and all others are false. It entails imposing a certain kind of society, with all its attendant pluses and minuses, which the inhabitants thereof will not be free to opt out of except by leaving.

   And if libertarians ever do acquire power, we may expect a farrago of bizarre policies. Many support abolition of government-issued money in favor of that minted by private banks. But this has already been tried, in various epochs, and doesn’t lead to any wonderful paradise of freedom but only to an explosion of fraud and currency debasement followed by the concentration of financial power in those few banks that survive the inevitable shaking-out. Many other libertarian schemes similarly founder on the empirical record.

   A major reason for this is that libertarianism has a naïve view of economics that seems to have stopped paying attention to the actual history of capitalism around 1880. There is not the space here to refute simplistic laissez faire, but note for now that the second-richest nation in the world, Japan, has one of the most regulated economies, while nations in which government has essentially lost control over economic life, like Russia, are hardly economic paradises. Legitimate criticism of over-regulation does not entail going to the opposite extreme.

   Libertarian naïveté extends to politics. They often confuse the absence of government impingement upon freedom with freedom as such. But without a sufficiently strong state, individual freedom falls prey to other more powerful individuals. A weak state and a freedom-respecting state are not the same thing, as shown by many a chaotic Third-World tyranny.

   Libertarians are also naïve about the range and perversity of human desires they propose to unleash. They can imagine nothing more threatening than a bit of Sunday-afternoon sadomasochism, followed by some recreational drug use and work on Monday. They assume that if people are given freedom, they will gravitate towards essentially bourgeois lives, but this takes for granted things like the deferral of gratification that were pounded into them as children without their being free to refuse. They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

   This contempt for self-restraint is emblematic of a deeper problem: libertarianism has a lot to say about freedom but little about learning to handle it. Freedom without judgment is dangerous at best, useless at worst. Yet libertarianism is philosophically incapable of evolving a theory of how to use freedom well because of its root dogma that all free choices are equal, which it cannot abandon except at the cost of admitting that there are other goods than freedom. Conservatives should know better. _______________________________________________________

   Robert Locke writes from New York City.
   March 14, 2005 Issue
   .MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR
   Nation Busting
   Marxism of the Right.13 Responses to Marxism of the Right
   JIM PHILLIPS says:
   July 31, 2012 at 9:23 pm
   I SEE MYSELF AS STRONG CONSERVATIVE.
   HOWEVER, OUR PRESENT CONGRESS SEEMS TO BE OUT OF CONTROL.
   THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM.

   HOW DO I GET INVOLVED WITH LIBERTARIANS LOCALLY
   WILL IT COST ME MUCH MONEY ?

   ben franklin says:
   August 12, 2012 at 12:52 am
   this is bullshit the governments sole responsibility is to ensure our freedom

   wether it be from foreign invaders, guaranteeing economical transportation to give you the freedom to get from one place to another, to giving you freedom to do as you please as long as it doesn’t affect someone elses ability to do as they please.

   libertarianism is the only governing style that can flourish indefinitely.

   America is crumbling because we strayed too far from our libertarian roots.

   Chris says:
   August 30, 2012 at 2:57 pm
   I stopped reading after a few paragraphs because if the rest of the article is based on the premise that all libertarianism is about is individualism and selfishness, then the rest of the article will be poppycock. Libertarianism isn’t about selfishness. It is about self RELIANCE. It isn’t about individualism. It is about individual responsibility. It is about not relying on the government. The Left and Right alike want government to set the rules for society where as Libertarians want the PEOPLE to set the rules for society. Until you understand that, your understanding of Libertarianism is completely off.

   Rafael says:
   September 6, 2012 at 4:00 pm
   The sad truth about libertarianism is that they think too much about individuals but nothing about, people and how contradictory they are.

   paineite says:
   September 10, 2012 at 8:07 pm
   Thanks for a thoughtful and perceptive analysis.

   Vincent says:
   October 10, 2012 at 10:41 pm
   Aside from what Chris said…

   People do practice libertarianism every day, even when they don’t know it.

   Also, the author really has no clue about Marxism if he thinks it’s anything like libertarianism; Marxism = neoconservatism: both are two war-like ideologies that have perverted anything and everything they touch.

   James says:
   November 2, 2012 at 10:55 am
   Thoroughly impressed. I loved this article. It is an excellent analysis of the folly of libertarianism.

   Jackson says:
   November 8, 2012 at 3:17 am
   Thoughtful and well-written article.

   Dave Metric says:
   November 13, 2012 at 1:27 am
   Locke – “This is no surprise, as libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism.”

   This is a typical strawman argument. Confusing Objectivism with libertarianism. Libertarianism is based on the NAP. Not “individualism” although many confusedly so claim that it is since Ayn Rand has been very influential in its upbringing.

   Marxism has absolutely nothing to do with altruism. It is based on forcing the “upper class” to bend to the egoism of the weak.

   Locke – “Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function.”

   Society may to some extent require collectivism it does not however require altruism. The only action I know of that is truly altruistic is a solider landing on a grenade for a buddy. Every other action can be explained in terms of egoism.

   Locke – “Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. ”

   The author is implying that democracy itself is an empirically sound form of government. Is there any precedent in history than can prove this? I will cede for a moment there is very little if any empirical evidence to support the theoretical pure libertarian society, but can we honestly look at the effects of Greece and Rome as evidence to the sustainability of democracy? How would the author care to explain away the problem of rational ignorance, or the “tyranny of the majority” problem, or the problem of dependent class voting? I highly doubt he will be able to answer any of these long known but rarely addressed arguments.

   Locke – “The most fundamental problem with libertarianism is very simple: freedom, though a good thing, is simply not the only good thing in life. Simple physical security, which even a prisoner can possess, is not freedom, but one cannot live without it. ”

   I agree there is a problem with the entire concept of “freedom”, but this author’s critique of it isn’t very good. Basing a political movement on “freedom” is impossible because freedom is a relative or incoherent idea. See “negative rights versus positive rights”. This is why some libertarians now based their philosophy on the NAP rather then on some end goal of freedom.

   Locke – “Libertarians try to get around this fact that freedom is not the only good thing by trying to reduce all other goods to it through the concept of choice, claiming that everything that is good is so because we choose to partake of it. Therefore freedom, by giving us choice, supposedly embraces all other goods. But this violates common sense by denying that anything is good by nature, independently of whether we choose it. Nourishing foods are good for us by nature, not because we choose to eat them.”

   There is no such thing as “common sense”. Something either makes sense or it doesn’t and saying something is “good by nature” makes no sense. It is a categorical mistake to say something IS good with no reason or standard in which to explain why it is good.

   “By nature” is not a standard. Nothing can be good “by nature” since you can’t get an ought from an is. You can only get an ought from an IF.

   Locke – “Furthermore, the reduction of all goods to individual choices presupposes that all goods are individual. But some, like national security, clean air, or a healthy culture, are inherently collective. It may be possible to privatize some, but only some, and the efforts can be comically inefficient. Do you really want to trace every pollutant in the air back to the factory that emitted it and sue?”

   I will cede that all of the above except “a healthy culture” are weak points in libertarian philosophy (the idea the government can promote a healthy culture goes against all empirical evidence. It always leads to economic dependence and millions in jail), but I will expect the author to answer the weak points in democracy I outlined earlier.

   “Libertarians rightly concede that one’s freedom must end at the point at which it starts to impinge upon another person’s, but they radically underestimate how easily this happens. So even if the libertarian principle of “an it harm none, do as thou wilt,” is true, it does not license the behavior libertarians claim. Consider pornography: libertarians say it should be permitted because if someone doesn’t like it, he can choose not to view it. But what he can’t do is choose not to live in a culture that has been vulgarized by it.”

   “Vulgar” is an opinion.

   Locke- “Libertarians in real life rarely live up to their own theory but tend to indulge in the pleasant parts while declining to live up to the difficult portions. They flout the drug laws but continue to collect government benefits they consider illegitimate.”

   Apparently, the author doesn’t seem to understand that the government is paid with taxes and that libertarians are probably going to be paying these taxes.

   I think I’ll stop here. I think I’ve given the author plenty of fireballs to deal with for one sitting.

   gbuddha2012 says:
   February 23, 2013 at 9:03 am
   I asked a libertarian one time why he was a libertarian. The answer i got chilled me to the bone… “Isn’t it obvious that the weak must perish”. There you have it, libertarianism in one sentence.

   SGT Caz says:
   April 30, 2013 at 1:47 am
   What most people call libertarianism is based on a structural idea: the individual holds authority over the self, and all interactions with others are based on the concept of consent. This is foundational to Western thought, and nowhere does it require that the individual not be responsible for the consequences of interacting stupidly in their social environment. The “natural order” of reasonable behavior comes about through incentives, not wishful thinking. And society has run like that quite often in the past.

   While there are certainly utopians who call themselves libertarians, most of them are not the idiotic freedom fetishists conjured up here. Most of them will accept the notion of communities restraining problematic behaviors, albeit through tools other than the government, which basically exists for the sake of property rights. Other disciplinary structures can emerge with this as the base establishment. I’m thinking church and family to start.

   It’s tricky to endorse this, especially in a society made so large scale with communications technology, and with so many government support systems for the individual that voters generally like. The most attractive thing about those systems is that they do not require the individual bending to, or even respecting, the opinions of those around them. That excessive freedom is becoming the problem, the absurd irreverence for the close, dynamic relationships with others nihilistic to the core.

   I’ll take libertarianism precisely for its disciplinary potential. Certainly, I’ll take it at the federal level, with state and local governments holding the legitimate scale for the promotion of cultural values. Empathy is not for bureaucrats, particularly on the national level.

   Bill N says:
   May 5, 2013 at 7:22 pm
   This writer completely PWNED libertarianism.

   Listen to people like Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, Jesse Ventura, and John Stossell and detect the underlying elitism, subtle urging of revolution, wacko economic theories, and a huge silence on civil rights, morality, racism, the impoverished, the disabled, and countries with huge human rights violations.

   I understand why this cult philosophy is so cool among fellow netizens and college student, after all both liberalism and neo-conservatism have failed us. But let’s not kid ourselves and think by worshiping an absolute “free market”, ignoring terrorism, and obstructing law enforcement will make a better society.

   Once you get past the revisionist history from libertarians, you can see it is a truly heartless political theory.

   RanDomino says:
   June 4, 2013 at 11:38 pm
   Left-Libertarianism (Anarchism) answers most of these questions by doing away with the archaic capitalist system of property and replacing it with use-based property rights, organizing labor syndicates and communities for mutual aid and defense, and letting people produce and distribute goods and services based on need rather than deifying profit. “Liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”

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   Igor [5] reageerde op deze reactie.

4. Is het vorige wel een echte post? Als je zo je punt wil maken heb je niet gelijk.

5. @Matthieu Schriek [3]:
   SPAMMER!

6. Een overheid die voor de behoeftigen zorgt veroorzaakt “moreel verval”: gemakzucht en onverschilligheid. Integendeel! In de Derde Wereld, waar de meeste overheden gewoonlijk niets doen voor de armen, zieken en werklozen, zijn de mensen veel onverschilliger voor maatschappelijk leed dan hier in onze sociale welvaartstaat.

   Overmatig overheidsingrijpen is vaak de oorzaak van werkloosheid. Werkloosheid is inherent aan een op private winst gebaseerde economie (kapitalisme). Beleid dat de werkgevers bevoordeelt leidt gewoonlijk tot hogere werkloosheid, hogere werkdruk en lagere lonen.

   Als de mensen meer inkomen hebben/overhouden dan zullen ze meer uitgeven aan het goede doel. Enerzijds blijken de vermogenden significant zelfzuchtiger te zijn dan de armen http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2024680/Why-rich-selfish-empathetic-altruistic-lot.html anderzijds zijn samenlevingen met een grotere kloof tussen arm en rijk (waar de overheid doorgaans minder nivelleert) in de regel ook asocialer.

   Bertus [10] reageerde op deze reactie.

7. Quote:
   ” Integendeel! In de Derde Wereld, waar de meeste overheden gewoonlijk niets doen voor de armen, zieken en werklozen, zijn de mensen veel onverschilliger voor maatschappelijk leed dan hier in onze sociale welvaartstaat.”

   Volledig incorrect. In de derde wereld landen waar het niet goed gaat is bijna zonder uitzondering sprake van een volstrekt corrupte regering die maar een doel heeft, zoveel mogelijk graaien voor zichzelf.

   Of het nou in naam socialistische staten zijn, of in naam kapitalistisch, of gewoon een stamhoofd/craphole met een luipaard petje, het komt op hetzelfde neer.

   Dergelijke bevolkingen zijn dag in dag uit bezig met een enkele vraag: Hoe overleef ik deze dag? In dat soort landen gaan mensen dood door de meest onbenullige ziektes. Waaronder ziektes die wij als westerse mensen niet eens meer kennen.

   Deze mensen hebben vaak geen internet, geen TV en geen radio en dus minimaal benul dat het anders kan, al zou ze het op dat punt nog interesseren.

   Je ziet keer op keer dat op het moment dat de dodelijke overheid weggenomen wordt en de mensen in dat soort landen weer een keus en een kans krijgen dat de situatie naar een positiever niveau gaat.

   Dat is ook een punt wat ik vaak maak, geef de mensen zelf een kans. De weg naar verbetering is niet interventie, niet Westerse dikbuik die eens even haarfijn gaat uitleggen hoe het moet, en vaak niet de behoeften van zo’n land snapt, niet allerlei goedbedoelde troep opsturen die faalt in het klimaat aldaar, maar gewoon de bevolking zelf een kans te geven.

   Desnoods met wat echte hulp, dingen waar ze wat aan hebben. Bij voorkeur dingen die ze zelf kunnen maken of fabriceren.

   Helaas moet ik constateren dat veel corrupte/westerse landen nog steeds dit soort regeringen de hand boven het hoofd houden, of zich bezig houden met domme militaire interventies. Geloof de pers maar niet, het is nog steeds een ongelooflijke puinhoop in Irak, vooral in het noorden.

   En er wordt nog steeds “Bilaterale hulp” gegeven aan derde wereld regeringen die wat anders verdienen. Zoals een eerlijk proces als aanloop voor een leven lang in de cel.

   Pasparal [8] reageerde op deze reactie.

8. @arvr [7]: Je haalt oorzaak en gevolg door elkaar. Corrupte overheden zijn een symptoom van scheve maatschappelijke verhoudingen in een land. Corruptie gedijt daar waar de kloof tussen arm en rijk groot is, waar de samenleving sterk hiërarchisch is, en waar de civil society slecht ontwikkeld is en de democratische instituties zwak zijn.

   Bovendien worden corrupte overheden vaak in het zadel gebracht en gehouden omdat de economische elite daarbij gebaat is. In het geval van het neo-kolonialisme zijn het de buitenlandse elites of multinationals die corrupte marionette-regimes in stand houden (zg. bananenrepublieken).

9. Quote:
   ” Je haalt oorzaak en gevolg door elkaar. Corrupte overheden zijn een symptoom van scheve maatschappelijke verhoudingen in een land. Corruptie gedijt daar waar de kloof tussen arm en rijk groot is, waar de samenleving sterk hiërarchisch is, en waar de civil society slecht ontwikkeld is en de democratische instituties zwak zijn.”

   Je doet iets teveel moeite om op de voor jouw bekende “Talking Points” uit te komen. 😉

   Ayhow, laten we even een gedachte experiment doen. Laten we ons verplaatsen naar een primitieve samenleving die leeft als “Stam”.

   Nou hebben veel mensen een geromantiseerd beeld van zoiets, maar er is een stamhoofd. En aangezien rijkdom in een dergelijke samenleving relatief is zijn de verschillen dat dus ook. Volgens jou kan dan het stamhoofd niet corrupt zijn?

   Je kan met hetzelfde gemak aantonen dat een corrupte overheid de oorzaak is als het gevolg, immers, het is een systeem wat zichzelf in stand houd. Aangezien de machtshebbers in dat soort landen de wapens in de handen houden lijkt het mij vrij logisch om hun als oorzaak te zien. Dat dicteert de machtsverhouding. Vaak is er nog veel meer mis in dat soort landen dan om eenvoudig te zeggen “Schuld van rijk versus arm” of “maatschappelijke verhoudingen”.

   Bijvoorbeeld Religieuze tendensen, culturen die verkeerd reageren op de situatie en het feit dat in veel van die landen al tientallen jaren in deze ellende leven maakt bij elkaar een dodelijke cocktail van ellende. Eenvoudigweg een Marxistisch talking pointje over de schutting gooien gaat niet helpen vrees ik.

   “Bovendien worden corrupte overheden vaak in het zadel gebracht en gehouden omdat de economische elite daarbij gebaat is. In het geval van het neo-kolonialisme zijn het de buitenlandse elites of multinationals die corrupte marionette-regimes in stand houden (zg. bananenrepublieken).”

   Volgens mij zei ik ook al zo iets dergelijks. Zouden we het dan toch met elkaar eens zijn? Voor een keertje dan?

   Pasparal [11] reageerde op deze reactie.

10. @Pasparal [6]: Overmatig overheidsingrijpen is vaak de oorzaak van werkloosheid. Werkloosheid is inherent aan een op private winst gebaseerde economie (kapitalisme). Beleid dat de werkgevers bevoordeelt leidt gewoonlijk tot hogere werkloosheid, hogere werkdruk en lagere lonen.

    Je moet er geen beleid op maken. Bovendien dat is per definitie het geval als je een bepaalde groep bevoordeelt. Rare redenering.

    Pasparal [12] reageerde op deze reactie.

11. @arvr [9]: De vergelijking tussen een kleine primitive stam en een staat met miljoenen inwoners gaat amper op. Een traditionele stamhoofd bezit niet heel veel meer rijkdom dan het modale stamlid. Daarnaast is het overleg overzichtelijker en de wederzijdse controle dus groter.

    Maar bij grote en complexe samenlevingen horen helaas ook grote en complexe overheden. De problemen die inherent zijn aan centraal bestuur kunt je niet bestrijden door het centrale bestuur te verzwakken, in te perken of te verkleinen. Daarmee compromiteer je de talloze taken die alleen een overheid efficiënt of effectief kan uitvoeren.

12. @Bertus [10]: Ik hoor heel vaak VVD’ers zeggen dat wat goed is voor de werkgevers ook goed is voor de economie en de burger.

    Bertus [13] reageerde op deze reactie.

13. @Pasparal [12]: U mag geloven in wat en wie u wilt. U slikt alles voor zoete koek? U vindt het lastig zelf te moeten nadenken?

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