Asymmetrical Information

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the list of 'agreed-upon policies' as kind of 'lite.'

You skipped "Undo the bankruptcy bill", the first item on both lists. Was there a reason?

You need to close one of those boldface tags, too.

You forgot to close the bold tag at the end of question two, so the entire rest of your article is bold.

Looks like you were editing as I was pointing it out. Nevermind.

I don't understand exactly what a "left-libertarian" means. On the points that you differ they appear to be moderately conservative Democrat than anything that would appear remotely "libertarian." Higher taxes, increased entitlements, more regulation.
Can anyone highlight the distinction?

Marriage "rights" for all - fine. Calling it "marriage" - not fine.

If you must call "gay civil unions" something other than gay civil unions, how about "vagina dialogues" and "bilateral buggerings"? Both are more accurate than calling such a relationship a "marriage".

Why is the debate on the death tax binary? I think we could get a concensus on having it kick in somewhere around threenahalf mil.

I agree with JG preety much completely (btw #3 still has bold issues) and I consider myself libertarian.

I think that the conservatives do well on economic issues, while the dems do better on some social issues, and are bordering on full blown socialism sometimes on the economic issues. Then there is foreign policy where libertarians often disagree with each other.

So, it comes down to which issue is most important in a given election and how far off the candidates are from you on the issues where you disagree.

Shouldn't Jane expect to get approximately 50% agreement with a liberal if she is a libertarian? Though of course the choice of questions matters greatly, libertarians should agree on many to most social issues with liberals, and disagree on most or all economic issues with liberals. This test and its results just seem to exemplify the false dichotomy between the parties, and the role of libertarian types in being left unhappily between the parties. If the questions had been split to 50% social and 50% economic, I would think it likely that Jane and Dan Drezner would have scored about 50% each.

I agree with some of the original goals. It's the others that I have a problem with:

16. Only fully licensed hunters, policemen, and U.N. peacekeeping forces can have weapons.

17. Anyone who's lived in the U.S. for more than six months will be eligible for citizenship. The USCIS will be abolished and replaced with a self-serve system.

18. "America" will be renamed "Gramscia".

I don't understand what you mean by institute a negative income tax. We already have one. I can't tell you how many multi-thousand dollar refunds I saw go out of IRS when I worked there, to people that had paid next to nothing in taxes. And having lived in poor neighborhoods, a vast majority of those one-time checks were not saved, they went to comsumption, TV's, cars, whatever. I don't see how that helps anybody, and find it quite irritating since these days it's my money that is getting transferred from my bank to someone else's consumption, via the government.

Everybody likes to be cool by 'caring' for the poor, but giving them crappy universal health care or cash doesn't seem smart to me. We ought to give them education vouchers instead, and it'd be cheaper than public education.

I also don't understand why 'more' progressivity is needed. The top half of income earners pay 95%ish of the taxes, the top 10% is something like 85%, I mean, geez, what do you want, no taxes for everybody but the top 1%?

"I'll go you one better--get rid of FICA and roll it into the general revenue system."

Won't that make it easier for Washington to increase the burden on high wage earners? FICA is the only flat tax we have. We should be promoting the idea that everyone pays for government. We should even go beyond a flat tax rate. A fair tax system is one where everyone pays a flat fixed amount, not a flat rate.

People who end up in bankruptcy are irresponsible, but people who lend money to those likely to end up in bankruptcy are... ???

A fair tax system is one where everyone pays a flat fixed amount, not a flat rate.

Nonsense. A "fair" system is one where everyone pays into the system more or less according to whatever value they draw back out of it, and that isn't really tenable in the real world -- unless you know a way to dial the clock back to the time before social safety nets and the federal income tax were conceived.

I found the whole question - response - reply format of this article hard to follow. I sometimes found it hard to determine if you were responding to the question or Mr. Denzer's answer to the question (particularly on question #9).

Sorry to comment on the form rather than the substance, but the layout made it difficult for me to follow the substantive parts.

People who end up in bankruptcy are irresponsible, but people who lend money to those likely to end up in bankruptcy are... ???

...frequently shackled by anti-redlining laws and other socially well-meaning, but economically distortionary, legislation.

That must be why it's so hard to get a credit card these days.

Everybody likes to be cool by 'caring' for the poor, but giving them crappy universal health care or cash doesn't seem smart to me. We ought to give them education vouchers instead, and it'd be cheaper than public education.

Also, regarding the 'tragedy of the commons' out here in the wild and wooly west, I think I understand the libertarian position on this -- it's anathema to have the government own and manage property -- and in principle I agree. However, most of those lands are 'public' because the government couldn't give them away back when they tried. They're still not worth much economically, so if they were to be sold off you wouldn't see the libertarian ideal of a vast new wave of small agrarian enterprises, you'd see Ted Turner and his clones setting up new baronies every which way you looked. Thanks, but No Thanks.

>Nonsense. A "fair" system is one where everyone pays into the system more or less according to whatever value they draw back out of it, and that isn't really tenable in the real world -- unless you know a way to dial the clock back to the time before social safety nets and the federal income tax were conceived.
Posted by anony-mouse at May 11, 2006 02:21 PM

How about a consumption tax? It could occur with the safety nets, but I would propose that we roll those back too as they keeping the poor in poverty and are draining the economy - which exacerbates the problem.

What we need to do is reconsider the constitutionality of all of them, and repeal the 16th amendment.

"Nonsense. A fair system is one where everyone pays into the system more or less according to whatever value they draw back out of it"

How could we ever hope to calculate the value that each person draws back out of our federal government? What value do we place on protection from terrorism or advanced knowledge of weather or reduction in Mississippi River flooding?

Sorry, but I still believe the only fair system is one where each adult pays equally. I agree in principle that government should not be used to force one group to provide benefit to another.

I don't get how this is a test for whether you're a "left-libertarian". Many of the questions you answered "yes" to would draw a similar response from ANY libertarian. Even the most "conservative" libetarians generally oppose "giveaways to corporations" and believe the government has no business regulating sex acts.

To answer a question: Left libertarianism generally refers to people who are either anti-corporation or anti-private ownership of land/natural resources. In my view these questions are not a good indicator of left-libertarianism.

The anti-corporate position is that things like corporations, intellectual property, official currency, are all constructs of the state. These things can't possibly have natural rights associated with them. The idea of a natural right to a patent is a self-contradiction. Furthermore, saying things like "Corporations should not be regulated" is also nonsense, since the very definition of a corporation is a regulation. Furthermore, if there are industries that, in practice, require government regulation to be efficient (banking, insurance, stock markets) - well so much the worse for those industries.

If someone is anti-corporation, anti-banking, anti-currency, they can not be reasonably described as being on the "right," and so the term "left-libertarian."

The other trait is anti-private ownership of land, natural resources, etc. It may be reasonable to assume individuals come into possession of their own bodies, but its unclear how someone can legitimately ever acquire a claim over natural resources (a claim they can transmit down from generation to generation.) Some who may be sympathetic to libertarian concept might reasonably reject notions such as the Locke proviso. Even if one does accept that, in theory, one could of acquired land legitimately, in practice land and resources have NOT been distributed fairly and so in practice the current land distribution is arbitrary and unfair.

These observations have at least two implications. First, there is a natural revenue stream to support the state - even if income taxes represent a form of slavery, the state can tax land and resource rents. Second, since the state/community owns the land, they can regulate what's done to the land. At the very least pollution/willing destruction of resources held in common can be forbidden. In extreme case, since virtually all economic production requires land, the state has a say on all economic production (although once you take that view, its fair to say you're no longer a libertarian, and now a liberal or socialist, so left libertarians don't usually go that far)

Generally an interesting discussion, but where did that claim about ERISA causing pension shortfalls come from? It's true that there are limits on how much can be contributed to a defined benefit plan, but generally the only people contributing at the limit are small businesses (especially professionals) with very small plans in which most of the benefits are going to the owners of the business. Pension underfunding at GM, airlines, etc. happened because companies put in as little as ERISA would let them get away with, not as much as it would allow.

I agree with DaveL, I believe Jane Galt's claim about the origin of pension fund shortfalls is total nonsense.

I'm afraid I'll have to punt on the details, but I'm assured by people who study this stuff for a living that in the case of both the unions and the corporations, it was not legally possible to leave their funds substantially overfunded, which is what they wanted to do. When teh market collapsed, the holes opened up. At any rate, what is certainly true is that the pensions were all fully funded in 2000; it was the market collapse that opened up the gaping holes. So it hasn't been a question of companies undercontributing for years; it was a question of collapsing values--a phenomenon that has hit corporations, unions, public pension funds, and would-be early retirees alike.

Found it. Two major problems with current pension law: lump-sum distributions have to be discounted at the risk-free (treasury) rate, which makes them too big; and if a pension plan is overfunded by more than 50%, further employer contributions aren't deductible. Thus, at the height of the bubble, even firms that wanted to behave responsibly, and put extra funding into their plans, were strenuously discouraged from doing so.

But those "two major problems" don't come anywhere vaguely close to justifying the claims made in either your post or your prior comment. Many DB plans don't even offer lump sums, and for the ones that do, how is that supposed to prevent them from becoming overfunded? And as for the funding limit, yes, it's there, and there may be a few companies that were prevented from making contributions they wanted to make when the market was at its peak, but those aren't the companies that have severe funding problems today. The companies that do have severe problems--the airlines, etc.--are the ones who are busy lobbying for rules that would let them reduce their contributions, not increase them.

And do you have a cite for the proposition that "pensions were all fully funded in 2000"? Plans were certainly in better shape before the market tanked than after, but market fluctuations are precisely the sort of things that a long-term funding strategy is supposed to be able to deal with, and many plans have recovered just fine.

I'm not a fan of defined benefit plans, but you're really peddling dubious information here. Any chance that some of those "people who study this stuff for a living" are in the political arena? There are a lot of doctors, dentists, securities firms, and the like who would like to see higher contribution limits and who are always looking for talking points.

In 1998, roughly 85% of corporate and multiemployer (aka union) pension plans were fully funded; by 2002 that number was 37%.

>eft libertarianism generally refers to people who are either anti-corporation or anti-private ownership of land/natural resources. In my view these questions are not a good indicator of left-libertarianism.

How could *any* libertarian be against any kind of private ownership? That would make you Marxist or at the very least anarcho-syndacalist, not even anarcho-capitalist. The whole premise of libertarianism is private property and markets.

OK. And what's the number now? And how many of the plans the PBGC has taken over in the last couple of years were fully funded in 1998?

According to Watson Wyatt, 71% of Fortune 1000 pension plans are currently underfunded, over 50% severely so.

Jane Galt said:

"I'm afraid I'll have to punt on the details, but I'm assured by people who study this stuff for a living that in the case of both the unions and the corporations, it was not legally possible to leave their funds substantially overfunded, which is what they wanted to do."

I suspect the "people who study this stuff for a living" work for people with an agenda and are about as trustworthy as scientists employed by the tobacco institute. The claim that the plans in trouble would have been overfunded were it not for stupid government regulations is ludicrous.

See above James, I tracked down the regulatory problems, and it's pretty clear-cut that hte market drop is the primary cause of current underfunding problems.

FIne, whatever, if it means we can shut up about Diebold.

I know everyone has pet causes, and accept that yours isn't going to be mine. But if one takes it as a base precept that some form of democratic representation is desirable, this sort of thing really should be addressed, no?

Note that this is being publically discovered 6 years after they starting being heavily deployed.

From the piece you just linked:

Poor stock performance since 2000 is obviously part of the problem. So is the drop in interest rates, which affect assumptions about future returns.

But another part of the problem is that federal rules governing pension fund contributions give companies so much flexibility that only about 20 percent make the maximum contribution needed to have a fully funded plan in any year.

Companies even face a tax penalty if they contribute to a pension plan that has more assets than needed. That means when business is going well and the stock market and other investments are providing good returns, a company with a strong pension fund must stop making contributions, raise promised benefits, or face a tax hit.

Note how different that analysis is from the claim in your original post, that "most of the pension shortalls were caused by ERISA..., which forced companies to disburse 'excess' gains." You're noting some valid issues, but none of them come anywhere close to justifying the claims you originally made.

Again, the bottom line is that the plans that are failing now are generally the ones that have been weakly funded for years. They were able to get by when the market was booming, but when it crashed, so did they. Other plans that were better funded suffered plenty of pain from the combination of weak asset performance and low interest rates, and that's convinced many employers that they want out of the DB business, but those aren't the plans that are being dumped on the PBGC. If they're terminated or frozen, employees won't continue to earn benefits for their future service, but they'll be paid everything they've earned up to the time of the freeze or termination.

Jane,

It seems to me that your health plan, coupled with mandatory health insurance for the portions not covered by govt (the 15% of AGI) would be a universal health care. And given that you are proposing that the catastrophic costs be borne by govt I suppose that the insurance would be comparatively low. Or did I read you too quickly?

How could *any* libertarian be against any kind of private ownership? That would make you Marxist or at the very least anarcho-syndacalist, not even anarcho-capitalist. The whole premise of libertarianism is private property and markets.

The Diggers would, in todays polical climate, be considered libertarian, essentially. However, they believed that no one person could own the land as the land was the bounty of God to all of mankind and must therefore be shared equally among all mankind. Of course, they were summarily executed by the British crown.

Liberty: the Wiki entry on Left-libertarianism & property describes the alternate view on land in depth. The general idea is that since land itself cannot be created through labor, it is different from other property and must be held as common. Some take this more leniently though, either instead believing that land "mixed with" labor is legitimate private property or allowing land to me subtracted from the commons in exchange for compensation (look up Henry George and/or "Georgism" on that one).

Drezner's comment on "left-libertarianism" sounds to me more like a slip of the tongue. From my experience with left-libertarianism (I personally side with it on the issue of corporate status, btw), they are no friends of mainstream "progressive" policy either, believing much of it to be a defacto subsidy to corporate interests. This would be an example of such a criticism.

It is untrue that a spouse can get a green card right away. You're eligible in theory right away, but in practice the process takes years, during which time you're subject to constant annoyances, both minor (having to come in for re-fingerprinting over and over as they fiddle with their fingerprinting database) and major (not being able to leave the country without getting a permit that costs hundreds of dollars and takes several months to come through).

I have no idea why a libertarian would want to defend this current system; it's just a mass of pointless beaurocracy.

Jane Galt, as DaveL notes your current claim that the underfunding is due to the market drop is different from your original claim that it was due to ERISA regulations. In a narrow sense your current claim may be correct in that if extraordinary market returns had continued many pension funds would be in better shape. Similarly if you take the rent money and bet it on a horse you can blame your subsequent eviction on the fact that your horse lost. However in both cases this is not the whole story.

DaveL, United's pension plan was fully funded in 1999--indeed, slightly overfunded, according to their 10K (see Note 16, Retirement and Postretirement plans). GM's US pension plan was fully funded according to their FY1999 10K (see section II-18, General Motors Corporation and subsidiaries--Pensions). So were Pfizer's, (p. 50 PFIZER INC AND SUBSIDIARY COMPANIES), Delta's, Lockheed Martin's, Boeing's, Raytheon's, DuPont's, Goodyear's, Dow's, HP's, Altria's, and Alcoa's. So, of the twenty companies named by S&P in 2005 as having the worst pension problems, only four--Exxon, Ford, Delphi, and Proctor and Gamble--were underfunded in 1999. A few of them had been underfunded in 1998--but most were within a very small margin of error, and several were grossly overfunded.

So yes, it was the market, combined with lunatic pension regulation, not systematic underfunding.

So your position now is that it's prudent to manage a pension plan in such a manner that its assets are at least $1 greater than its actuarially-determined liabilities at the very peak of a market bubble? Recall, also, that accounting rules give companies considerable room to massage their numbers on pension plan funding and that many companies took great advantage of that flexibility during the period you're pointing at.

And again, what "lunatic pension regulation" caused the current underfunding? To support that claim, you'd need to come up with evidence that the companies you're citing wanted to contribute to their plans during the boom years but couldn't.

(I assume that you're aware that the plan funding rules provide for minimum contributions when plans are underfunded and maximum contributions when they're overfunded, but give employers discretion to contribute anywhere between the minimum and the maximum. Some companies chose not to contribute during some years when they weren't required to. That doesn't mean that they couldn't have contributed if they'd wanted to.)

I don't think a consumption tax would generate much revenue. Tuberculosis is on the upswing, but people afflicted by it don't have a lot of income.

Leftism and libertarianism are all but mutually exclusive. Leftists desire to re-order society to conform to an ideal. "Social democrats" do this using coercive laws; "communists" do it using violence and oppression. In both cases freedom is dramatically reduced in order to bring about "social justice".

Libertarians on the other hand believe in liberty for the individual. Libertarians have a lot in common with liberals, not leftists. One of the main reasons rational political discourse so difficult in the Excited States of America is that the word "liberal" has been utterly drained of its original meaning and turned into a near synonym for "leftist".

[Classical] Liberals and libertarians are my kind of people. Leftists and paleo-conservatives (both species of the authoritarian killjoy) are not.

Instead if an estate tax, how about a deferred income tax, due at death? We just need to resolve the issue of making sure that assets are available to collect from.

"See above James, I tracked down the regulatory problems, and it's pretty clear-cut that hte market drop is the primary cause of current underfunding problems.

Posted by Jane Galt at May 11, 2006 07:50 PM"

I also wonder how much funding restrictions contributed to pensions being underfunded due to the irrationally inflated market prior to 1999.

The defining characteristic of leftism is the primacy of politics over all things: economics, law, etc. Everything is to be directed politically. This is the common thread through communism, socialism, 'environmentalism' etc. It's all just the same primacy of politics people donning new skins.

The defining characteristic of libertarianism is minimization of coersion.

If you pay much attention to history, you will note that the primacy of politics *requires* coersion, and is thus intrinsically incompatible with libertarianism.

DaveL:

Quit moving the goal posts. Each time you ask for evidence, Jane cites it. She has produced much more empirical evidence than you have (none)..now, having given you SEC filings that describe what the state of corporate pension plans was in 1999, you expect her to tell you what the INTENT was in the corner office? She never claimed to be clairvoyant.

You are wasting time and annoying the paying customers. Go back to your bridge.

At some point in the comments someone said that libertarians are left in the middle of the parties because we agree with liberals on social issues and conservatives on economic issues. So here's a question: If most of the people I know agree with that statement (and I think that is probably true of a great many people in this country), why isn't there a political party that represents us? It seems to me that there is a majority in this country that would elect someone that espoused a socially liberal/economically libertarian agenda. Why are we in the wilderness? I've wondered for many years why one of the parties doesn't adopt this platform; they'd dominate politics for generations.

Jane—if you don’t mind, I’ll jump in on the pensions issue; I’m a life actuary, not a pensions actuary, but I’m still part of the group of weird geeks that studies this stuff.

DaveL, James Shearer,

There are two inter-related and interacting regulatory problems with pensions; ERISA and tax law.

ERISA is old; some of the financial calculations it requires were state-of-the-art in 1970 but are less good than present knowledge. The key flaw is that it encourages companies to invest in equities, by over-valuing them relative to other assets; it under-compensates for the additional risk of equities over bonds. Jeremy Gold has written extensively on this subject; for a very good exposition of the problem, read the paper “Accounting/Actuarial Bias Enables Equity Investing by Defined Benefit Pension Plans” at
http://library.soa.org/library-pdf/naaj0503_1.pdf
The result is that companies invest pension assets mainly in stocks, and so are exposed to the risk of stock market decline—which happened in 2001-2003.

Tax law, and the IRS’ interpretations thereof, are the second and larger problem. The IRS views “overfunding” of pension plans as a form of tax evasion, and so has extensive rules to prevent it. The net effect is that contributions that the IRS views as excessive are not counted as expenses for tax purposes, making them effectively impossible. The IRS standards for reasonable contributions are quite optimistic, so the effective limit on contributions to a pension plan is low. This interacts with ERISA in a particularly perverse way; since ERISA strongly encourages investing in stocks, and the IRS makes sufficient funding difficult, companies often cannot contribute to their pensions in good years (earning are high and the stock markets are up, and IRS rules assume the market will never go down); then, when the market falls and earnings tank, required contributions skyrocket to an unaffordable level.

"FIne, whatever, if it means we can shut up about Diebold."

Jane loves her some rigged elections.

On the pension underfunding issue, I have been a full-time reporter covering the retirement industry since 1990 and saw first hand what happened. Jane is correct that ERISA (and Congress) are at the root of the problem, though the "perfect storm" of falling stock prices and rising rates was only a recent chapter in the story.

Plan sponsors were set up to be sunk by the perfect storm when Congress passed new regulations in response to the Michael Milken capers in the eighties. Remember, he would take over companies with overfunded DB plans, terminate the plan and fund the liabilities with a GIC (often one written by Executive Life). When the junk bond market collapsed after Milken's arrest and took Exec Life with it, Congress added an excise tax on withdrawals from overfunded pension plans to stop this behavior.

Prior to this tax, the plan sponsor effectively owned the excess assets. After the tax was implemented, the plan effectively owned these assets.

Though the tax may have fixed the Milken problem, it removed the incentive for plan sponsors to adequetely fund their plan and to prudently run the plan. After all, whereas they once owned the excess assets and directly benefited from a well-run plan, the excise tax now ensured that any funds contributed to the plan were gone for good. It also meant that the company could add risk to the plan to try to meet its obligations through asset gains rather than contributions from its operating business.

That worked for companies until it didn't. On a simple level, the effect of that change should be obvious ... if there is nothing in it for the employer, the employer will try to get out of the obligation. Ergo, underfunding and a rush to 401(k) plans.

If there were no excise tax, it is very likely the plans would have had a greater cushion heading into 2000.

BTW, there are old pension pros who will describe how Congress messed things up even before the eighties if you ask them.

We don't care about whether a person casting a vote is entitled to cast said vote so why should we care about whether or not it is accurately counted?

If Libertarians are seduced by the "Left" b/c they're "allowed" their social freedoms...fine.

If Libertarians are seduced by the "Right" b/c they're "allowed" more financial freedoms...fine.

Point? That, given either of the above, the "seduced" weren't Libertarians to begin with.
And, the whole "Left/Right" paradigm is a false-frame to bolster the ruling Duopoly.

That JG, here, examines the Quiz @ DKos, as opposed to one of the below, might be telling.

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

http://www.mises.org/quiz.asp

And, for definitional purposes, relating to Libertarianism:

http://www.theihs.org/category.php/142.html

Keep y'all's Eyes open...

There's no such thing as a "left-libertarian" because libertarianism is a philosophy that's opposed to the core beliefs of leftism.

However there are many competing philophies that are opposed to the core beliefs of leftism, and these all tend to be called "right" but there is no such thing as the core beliefs of rightism.

>Liberty: the Wiki entry on Left-libertarianism & property describes the alternate view on land in depth. The general idea is that since land itself cannot be created through labor, it is different from other property and must be held as common.

To tie it so directly with labor, again sounds Marxist to me. Marx defined labor as the primary - or rather only - source of "value". No capitalist ever would. Capitalism recognizes that you can create wealth (through entrpreneurship, invention, expansion, cutting costs or direct labor, etc) and then use the money to purchase land. Private property s sacred for all things, land certainly included.

Anyone who uses labor as an indication of value is Marxist. Anyone who refuses property rights for land is also Marxist (its one of Marx's major steps toward communism).

Many Marxists consider themselves to be rather libertarian as they hope to see the state one day wither away. Many Marxists have been mislabeled "anarchists" or "left-libertarians" over the years - including Emma Goldman who was anti-war because capitalists used war to exploit the proletariat - and who founded Mother Jones.

>So here's a question: If most of the people I know agree with that statement (and I think that is probably true of a great many people in this country), why isn't there a political party that represents us? It seems to me that there is a majority in this country that would elect someone that espoused a socially liberal/economically libertarian

1. I don't think the full libertarian view is actually a big majority - most Americans have at least some desire for social conservatism on some issues, eg parental notification for abortions, perhaps more restrictions on them, perhaps marriage amendment or something of that sort; drug laws, etc.

2. Reagan had about that amount of social conservatism and was quite the libertarian, especially if you read his Reason interview from 1975, and he was one of the most popular presidents of all time. We may not need a new party, just the right candidate.
http://reason.com/7507/int_reagan.shtml

3. America has a two party system, trying to create a third party tends to just derail the closer of the two parties to the ideals in question.

>However there are many competing philophies that are opposed to the core beliefs of leftism, and these all tend to be called "right" but there is no such thing as the core beliefs of rightism.

Actually, there certainly are. Right=conservative=conserve the founding father's ideals. Some see the founding ideals as purely libertarian, others as more Christian, socially conservative, as well as small, limited government.

Those are easily as core to the party as socialism is to the left.

"Fine, whatever, if it means we can shut up about Diebold."

Jane loves her some rigged elections.

Ever heard of the term "stuffing the ballot box"? :)

People complain a lot about how Diebold machines have security holes. Well, yeah, they do, and that's troublesome. But paper ballots have no security of any kind.

> Left libertarianism generally refers to people

"Left libertarian" was invented by a leftist who read "libertarians are republicans who like to smoke dope" and said "Hey, I like to smoke dope, maybe they'll vote with me".

> Ever heard of the term "stuffing the ballot box"? :)

There are two ways to stuff a ballot box, regardless of what form the ballot box takes. One is to tamper with the ballot box. The other is to tamper with the folks putting votes into the box.

Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.

I'm curious what details Black actually has in mind. If it's "pro-family government subsidizes junior's daycare bill," then "left libertarian" better translates to "not libertarian." If it's "child-targeted welfare provides socialization and food to at-risk kids who would otherwise get neither," then he might get some takers. Details, obiously.

bristlecone, it is Jane Galt who is moving the goal posts. She originally claimed ERISA prevented companies from adequately funding their pension plans. This claim is nonsense. She is now providing evidence that pension funds were in pretty good shape on 12/31/1999 near the end of a long bull market. Even if this were true (it isn't entirely) it has little to do with the original claim.

Jane Galt, the GM report you cite says:

"GM's funding policy with respect to its qualified pension plans is to contribute annually not less than the minimum required by applicable law and regulations."

Similar language appears in other reports. You will note no mention is made of the maximum allowed as would be expected if this were the important constraint you would have us believe it was.

Jane Galt, your claims that pension funds were in good shape on December 31, 1999 are only as good as the accounting in the reports you cite. This accounting depends crucially on the assumptions such as the discount rate for pension obligations and the assumed rate of return for the pension fund. Assumed rates of return were typically between 9-10%. As this article by Warren Buffet explains these assumed rates of return, made near the end of an extraordinary bull market, were unrealistically high and hence the pension funds were not actually in as good shape as might first appear.

Jane Galt, actually why is it important whether ERISA forced (as you implausibly claim) or allowed (as Black says) companies to underfund their pension plans. In either case the law should be changed to require the plans be adequately funded so that the government is not stuck with the bill.

Or perhaps you disagree, perhaps you want the government to bail out companies and unions with underfunded pension plans and your claim that the underfunding is the government's fault is just meant to provide political cover and should not be taken seriously.

>>Liberty: the Wiki entry on Left-libertarianism & property describes the alternate view on land in depth. The general idea is that since land itself cannot be created through labor, it is different from other property and must be held as common.

By the way, alos: the Wikipedia entry confirms my theory that they are just Marxists in sheep's clothing, in the first line of the entry.

Mentioning that the term "libertarian" started out as referring to left-anarchists who opposed Marx means they're marxists?

1) I realze that I am harking back to a previous discussion of taxation, but:

. 1.1) I just through reading "In our hands" and generally like it, ( http://del.icio.us/mllive/inourhands ) = $10,000 / US adult and elimination of most transfer payments, and would suggest that there be a separate posting and discussion of this proposal.

. 1.2) My thought would be: a) the "In our hands" proposal, b) a flat, 15% tax on all income, Captal Gains, (Realized or not (perhaps every 5 years)), and c) 2% on wealth.

2) I like the Liberatarian 2-d test, http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html (with others noted in: http://www.wematter.com/links.htm#quiz)

3) If you could, I'd suggest an "upgrade" of your comment area so that people could comment of comments rather than just linearly thread it.

Why should the US govt be responsible for GM's debts to ex-employees? It isn't responsible for other GM debts.

1) Why the hell not? You can't tax dead people. Cuz dead people don't got rights. If the government is claiming unclaimed stuff, I don't much care.

2) Hell no. Destroy the minimum wage.

3) Pretty much ONLY if I personally get absolute control over how the entire government framework holds this up. Otherwise, they'll just fuck it up with standardized government idiocy.

4) Yes.

5) Hells yes.

6) Yes. But probably not the way you're thinking. Income-based taxation is the biggest pile of unsustainable, over-extended, corrupt, government-involved-in-the-market bullshit (I realize those are synonyms) ever. Sales tax is me yelling at you for hours. And then throwing things. The least repulsive tax is property tax. Paid not in 'money' but in community service.

7) Um, yes.

8) Go further and actively target any corporation that tries to get government-sized power.

9) Destroy patents.

10) Hell no. Why the fuck should we decide which way the market should work?

11) Fuck states rights. Decriminalize drugs now.

12) Don't give a shit.

13) Now I gotta quote Reynolds: "I agree, but probably not in an Atrios-friendly way. How about this: Federally override most state and local licensing and zoning laws to make daycare centers easier to open and operate. Most of those rules don't have much to do with protecting children anyway. (Federalize! That's a "liberal" solution, right? Er, but it's deregulation, so . . . Anyway, I'm pretty sure that what the question really envisions is taxpayer-subsidizd daycare, or even federally run daycare, and I'm against those.)"

14) Fuck social security. Lets just finance complete communism in matters of agriculture. Bread lines for everyone who wants it and McDonalds/et alia for the rest. Basic neccessities platform to stand on, for the destitute, the lazy and the retired.

15) Hells yes.

16) Get the government the hell out of any market affair.

What good is teaching young children how to put on a condom when anyone who has had sex knows that condoms are rarely, if ever, used and the pill does not prevent the spread of disease. Speaking as a liberated unmarried women with a good twenty five years of sexually revoluntionized sex I can honestly say the condom argument is stupid. Why teach the younger generation that condoms are the answer to all sexual activity when we adults know from first-hand experience that the condom does not work because they inhibit the sensitivity factor and is taken off the moment it gets in the way. Personally, this is the reason why I'm beginning to support abstinence-only programs. The other approach held over the last three decades proved to me, time and again, to be worthless.

Adults should be honest instead of conning children into believing in the bogus 'magical rubber'.

Further, if words have meaning what is the definition of 'gay marriage' because 'a same-sex union between a man and a women' is irrational. Please define 'gay parents'; this term must really throw biologists for a loop.

If one owns a small family business the estate (death) tax is a real killer. How many people know the existance of estate (death) tax insurance which family business owners have to purchase in order to prevent bankruptcy should the primary owner die? Many small businesses (including family-owned farms) were lost to bankruptcy because the estate tax was so ridiculous that the families were forced to sell their family-owned businesses in order to pay the tax. Limited partnerships have help to defray potentical banruptcy but this does not solve the devastating impact of the estate (death) tax.

>Mentioning that the term "libertarian" started out as referring to left-anarchists who opposed Marx means they're marxists?

No. Saying that the founders of left-libertarianism were "anti-statist socialists" does. Most Marxists were "anti-statist" as they beleived that the state would wither away. The entry then says "as opposed to that socialism propounded by Marx" (which is a fallacy if you have read Marx, all Marxists were against the idea of an enduring state, communism would require no state.)

Then the entry says to read more about this origin of left-libertarianism, see "libertarian socialism." Going to that page we read:
"Libertarian socialism is any one of a group of political philosophies dedicated to opposing coercive forms of authority and social hierarchy, in particular the institutions of capitalism and the State. Some of the best known libertarian socialist ideologies are anarchism - particularly anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism - as well as mutualism, council communism, autonomist Marxism, and social ecology."

Hence, yes, this breed of anti-property left-libertarians do come from Marxism and other forms of communism/socialism.

The problem with Marxists and similar ideologists is that they do not realize what would *actually* happen if they got to implement their plans - Lenin thought the state would wither away - so whether you put emphasis on the state withering away or on something else, one you implement the ban on property, the economy will require a state much more controlling than anything seen under capitalism.
http://www.economicliberty.net/Dictatorship.htm

Does "paper ballots" include mail-only elections like they only have in Oregon and are soon to only have in the Upper Left Washington? If you are really concerned about "vote fraud" and that trend doesn't give you the creeps, but instead are all worked up about some Diebolt conspiracy, you are a fool.

For example, it's already becoming common for there to be "voting parties" where folks are encouraged to all get together and mark their mail-in ballots as a group. A tactic used in institutional settings like retirement homes and in union halls. Can you say "goodbye secret ballot?"

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