Why do so many leftists think libertarianism = big businesses running everything? The government literally funds them with taxes.
Posted by kingfish_1212@reddit | Libertarian | View on Reddit | 59 comments
[removed]
SherbertAccording306@reddit
Because if they understood Economics, they wouldn't be leftists.
TaperingRanger9@reddit
This is the biggest turn off to libertarianism for me. Y'all wanna replace government tyranny with corporate tyranny. Corporations have demonstrated that the literal only thing they care about is profit. Without regulation they'd absolutely start bulldozing our national parks and using slave labor among many other things. There needs to be some level of regulation to protect the environment and employees.
kingfish_1212@reddit (OP)
Workers rights and nature would still be protected đđ
Tayuven@reddit
How?
Aba_a@reddit
They think so because they are still stuck with books from the time information exchange was slow, small and expensive. At that time, which has been most part of human history, any organized group would run over individuals. Individuals without information exchange are very weak, because they all deal with the organized group as the first time the group would deal with an individual. Only recently that we can get to know everything an organization has done and offer help to each other and everybody else would know events very fast and readjust accordingly when dealing with that organization. So having a government was the only way to have a power where individuals could have some influence over (by infinitesimal vote) that could take a decision to defend individuals. Now that we have the internet, we can organize ourselves and results come much quicker than the state making a law and applying it. Example: when youtube started to censor channels during covid, a lot of people moved their content to other streaming platforms even before being censored. Just the information that it was happening with some was enough to make a lot of others adjust accordingly. This made youtube tone down and people moved back. Cheap information also allows small companies to diversify much easier, allowing them to be informed of new opportunities, attacking more markets at the same time, which is bad for big companies that have to always be on their toes for new competition cutting their prices, making monopolies even harder. That's why big businesses love more regulations and, as as consequence, the state is their best friend.
ShortieFat@reddit
Beats me how leftists think, other than they seem to like enforced utopias as a unifying concept.
If we're going for inaccurate generalizations, I'd say its more like individuals with small businesses running lots of things, which seems like unacceptable chaos to them.
Nado1311@reddit
You should look into tech bros âNetwork Statesâ if you want to talk about enforced utopias
Father_John_Moisty@reddit
It is because they see the ways that business across the economy operate today. A few examples:
Construction, mining, and manufacturing industry: people working without being provided necessary health and safety equipment and managers allowing/turning a blind eye to work without proper safety precautions. Work is done without concern for long term risks, hazards, or quality.
Retail and Service: Wage theft from employees is the most common form of theft in the US.
Banking: Every major bank has had a scandal, including Wells Fargo opening credit card and checking accounts for customers who did not ask for them, JP Morgan Chase using illegal methods to collect on debts, and of course the fraud that led to the financial crisis.
Companies tack on hidden charges and fees, have exclusions and exemptions in fine print, and otherwise act to extract money from customers and clients. Companies leak contaminants and pollutants into the skies and water. Companies merge all the time, usually a big company buying a smaller company in the same industry, which reduces competition and can lead to higher prices and reduced quality and other monopolistic activity. Companies work to hinder/prevent union activities.
There is also history to look at. Before the modern regulatory environment, there were a number of serious disasters. Building caught on fire, leading to numerous deaths, before building code regulations. Mines collapsed. Workers inhaled toxic dust and died. Ships with chemicals blew up and destroyed harbors and buildings. Between 1836 and 1863, there were a number of bank failures, leading to losses among depositors, during the âfree banking periodâ.
The reason people therefore believe that a libertarian society will be one in which big business is running everything is because they see the world as it is today and do not see what is preventing big businesses from taking over except the government. There is no other force that is, ostensibly, looking out for the people. Please look up the word ostensibly before jumping down my throat for this statement.
The Libertarian response to these issues that Iâve heard is that the government is what allows these companies to get away with these behaviors. That in a libertarian society, customers will become aware of bad/nefarious behavior by companies and switch to other companies, and individuals will be more aware that they are the only ones responsible for their own health, wellness, and safety, and will therefore take additional steps to protect themselves.
However, some of the bad behavior is not apparent to customers or is hidden by the company. Companies donât issue press releases about their pollution levels or how many workers were injured due to unsafe practices. Some harmful practices take time to reveal their harm. Some harms are not borne by everyone. Companies change their names, aka rebrand, to avoid negative associations.
Many of the responses to your question have been to shit on âleftistsâ by saying that they are uneducated or incapable of critical thought or fascists. A mature philosophy would respond to arguments and criticism by countering the arguments and rebutting the criticism.
busyHighwayFred@reddit
Wage theft via huge corps like walmart is basically nonexistent. Its mostly small businesses doing it
Father_John_Moisty@reddit
FTC settles with Walmart for $100 Million
4,220 cases against large companies where they paid fines totaling $9.2 Billion
Walmart pays $640 Million to settle 63 wage and hour cases
If you have evidence for your statement, please provide it.
WillingnessSad8354@reddit
Because leftist logic is:
Any ideology on the right = corporatism
The republicans and MAGAtards throw a label of "free market" on all their cronie capitalist ideas in order to sound better and make Libertarianism look bad. Blame the MAGAtarians for this .
AnimalDrum54@reddit
Sounds like Noam Chomsky. Basically if you deregulate enough, the government is replaced by corporations.
Brave New World: Liberal Dystopia
1984: Conservative Dystopia
Blade Runner/Cyberpunk: Libertarian Dystopia
kingfish_1212@reddit (OP)
1984 is communist totalitarianism and cyberpunk is based on neoliberal cronyism.Â
AnimalDrum54@reddit
Totalitarian definitely. I don't know about communist. Orwell was a socialist. Most seem to interprete it as a critique of German Fascism and Stalin Communism.
As others in the thread mentioned our benevolent leaders of industry and government like to preach about free markets and then they turn around and do Crony Capitalism.
I think the cyberpunk parallel is apt. The USA is dead, NUSA is weak, far weaker than Arasaka or any of the other corpos. Hella freedom though if you have the money and chrome to earn it.
Murdoc555@reddit
Youâre correct, totalitarianism is a better word to encompass the takeaway from 1984.
AnimalDrum54@reddit
I think the point still stands if every ideology has an extreme that takes it too far conservativism would probably look a lot like that or a theocracy. Strong police state, surveillance, censorship, rewriting history, fake news/alternative facts(Newspeak), sowing division (two minutes hate) instead of building unity. Sounds like Trumps playbook.
Murdoc555@reddit
I disagree on that take. Your last sentence makes it sound that youâre viewing material in the novel through a contemporary political lense. Regardless of Orwellâs stance or influences from the time, the main idea was that government can eventually become so powerful that it reaches a level of totalitarianism/authoritarianism that political ideologies are not only transcended, but rendered obsolete. Neither left, nor right, 1984 is about a state achieving the ultimate human hive-mind.
AnimalDrum54@reddit
What does the conservative dystopia look like then?
Murdoc555@reddit
Surmising what a conservative dystopia looks like vs a marxist one is conjecture. The existence of either a left or right political party at all henges on the structure that the public collectively made a decision to appoint and entrust them as decision makers. In 1984, the government has reached a point where itâs in such a state of control that political parties donât even exist/would be a formality in lieu of the states power.
TLDR: Itâs a pointless argument to debate what it would look like if itâs all ultimately the same. Whatâs the ruling political party in a max security prison?
AnimalDrum54@reddit
Conservativism is an ideology... Ideologies can shape a ruling party...
Why didn't you say anything about Brave New World or Cyberpunk then?
If it's all pointless why are you so invested in distancing conservativism from dystopia?
It's a thought experiment we can follow it to the end, it can be fun and engaging to discuss. You clearly have some really interesting thoughts about it, I'd love to hear them.
Murdoc555@reddit
Conservatism is an ideologyâŚ
All governments if left unchecked lead to authoritarianism is the point of the book. Conservatism, socialism, or what have you are different roads to the same places
Why didnât you say anything about Brave New worldâŚ
I havenât read either of those books, but stand by my opinion about what technical type of dystopia 1984 represents being missing the mark of the story.
Why are you so invested in distancing conservatism from dystopiaâŚ
First, I reject your implication that Iâm defending conservatism, thatâs a strawman, and Iâve already illustrated how and why I think assigning a political party to the government in the book is irrelevant. If you said 1984 was a representation of a Marxist dystopia, I would also disagree. Iâm plainly saying that the heart of the novel is describing how any government can ascend in power, trying to pinpoint which government it started out as along the way is besides the point.
Murdoc555@reddit
Yeah, Iâm not sure you can assign 1984 to a specific political party. Itâs full on authoritarianism.
dalkor@reddit
Alien universe is also another Libertarian Dystopia.
Yeeeoow@reddit
Look, I'm not a leftist but in my life I've voted centre left and centre right so I'll do my best.
The libertarian position of cutting regulation to spur innovation and drive growth lines up very neatly with the goals of established corporations who are currently up to their eye balls in OH&S expenses and are looking to cut costs.
It's not inaccurate to say the libertarian movement in Australia is funded by the Billionaire owners of the biggest companies in the country. Gina Rinehart is the inheritor of a mining dynasty who famously laments that Australia's wages are too high and there is not competitive with mines in the Congo. She's a massive Ayn Rand fan and is currently directing bankrolling the populist right party after years of funding the libertarian-esque Nationals party.
The wild thing about that history is that the gas fracking industry is a direct competitor for agricultural land with the farming industry and once it starts buying one farm in a region, the water table is ruined and the farms around struggle immediately.
So a mining magnate funds the farmers party, the farmers party cuts land regulations, gas frackers move in and kill farmland and the whole time people are raging at the centre left party who just opened up the entire offshore gas shelf, which will deliver more energy and destroy no farmland.
So to summarise, grass roots libertarian movements and big business have a pretty strong cross over of motivations when it comes to anti regulation and lowering corporate taxes. Sometimes that crosses over into direct funding of astro turf movements like Rinehart and One Nation in Australia or the Koch Brothers and the tea party in the USA.
That doesn't necessarily mean that those things are bad, after all broken clocks are right twice a day, but when leftists connect the dots it's pretty understandable how they arrive at that conclusion.
mtg-Moonkeeper@reddit
My counterpoint to this would be that destroying property that isn't yours is a violation of private property rights. In a libertarian society, it would be illegal to frack in a manner that messed up any property that is not owned by the fracker, directly or indirectly. People have the tendency to forget that there is a difference between less regulation, and outright no laws whatsoever.
Yeeeoow@reddit
Yeah, but the regulations that punish companies for damaging natural resources that businesses like farms rely on are the first red tape that gets slashed when conservatives come into power.
I agree that in a fictional libertarian world those companies would be held accountable, but in the real world libertarians slash the regulations that protect those natural resources at every opportunity.
Much like how communists need to come to terms with the fact that centrally planned economies are just supercomputers trying to run off of one processor chip and capitalist economies are millions of individual processors handling small decisions more efficiently every day, libertarians need to come to terms with the fact that for individuals to be able to express their freedoms, those freedoms need to be protected from bigger forces that are to big to tackle on your own. Some of those freedoms are access to natural resources that massive corporations want to monopolise or exploit. Some of those freedoms are the right to protect yourself from harm or exploitation in the workplace, which can happen when two parties in agreement have a massive imbalance in bargaining power.
mtg-Moonkeeper@reddit
Unfortunately, there has never been any system that holds true to its values, maybe because humans are imperfect. There's never been true communism, true libertarianism, true liberalism, true conservatism, etc.... We can view how well off a society is based on the general direction they move in, then compare those societies.
There's also a saying that if you ask 3 libertarians their opinions, you'll get 4 different opinions, so take my opinions as not 100% libertarian, as I would probably fail an online purity test.
In free societies, there is no right to take natural resources that one doesn't own. Of course, in real life, some that call themselves libertarians won't always agree with that. There is also no law preventing people from voluntarily joining bargaining units, as banding together is a natural right, like joining a club. Once again, some people that call themselves libertarians would be against unions in all forms.
AlexanderTheFun@reddit
Well said.
Now Iâd love to hear the argument against this sentiment.
Yeeeoow@reddit
Against what sentiment?
The argument that libertarians and big corporations are political opponents in the modern day?
Surely it'd be an argument hinging on corporate market capture and how big companies benefit from OH&S restrictions because they're more able to handle them than mom and pop shops because they have more resources like lawyers and HR etc to implement non-essential processes while small businesses are focused on essential production.
Which would be very convincing if the parties funded by big business didn't roll back workplace regulations every time they got into power, despite that supposedly being against their market advantage over small businesses.
Recent_Party_5146@reddit
Then how do you count for regulation like the Dodd Frank act which is supposed to prevent the next 2008 financial crisis that has implemented regulations that only huge banks can afford and has put thousands of small banks out of business there by reducing competition?
Martorfank@reddit
Yeah, but that is not really what happens nor makes sense once you understand things a bit more. The more regulations, bureaucracy and restrictions I have to go through, the harder it is to grow, to start something; not even talking about the possibilities of success. Most big corporations not only already meet most of those requirements, they can simply skip them with a few bribes, meanwhile you drown in regulations just to try to make your small business successful. Now, think of this, what would a big company prefer? Having to compete with multiple companies in the same field that pop up now and then, having to constantly improve, compete and invest just to keep yourself ahead or afloat or maybe risk closing; or having tons of rules and requirements that make it so hard to even start or expand so they can never compete, guaranteeing your choke on the market, allowing you to get away with anything against customers? Yeah, they might also want lower taxes, but for the most part they can get those only for themselves through bribes like most of them have done (Disney a few years ago).
cumminginsurrection@reddit
Because it effectively is; it replaces political bosses with business owners who effectively act like feudal lords.
VeterinarianWorth911@reddit
Because of the assumed risk of regulatory capture. Big business supposedly leverages their influence and capital to exert pressure on decision makers in a democratic government. No regulations on lobbying allows for this. Taxes that are levied by government are then not used in the publicâs best interest if the decision makers are being lobbied. This is essentially saying there are bad faith actors in this system
dalkor@reddit
In the end deep political philosophies are just that, people searching for Utopia. The problem is that philosophies usually assume the perfect version of themselves, and that never happens, people will always fuck it up. Libertarians and conservatives go to leftists and point to Russia or other fallen empires to show them why their utopia would never work, but those are imperfect examples because they didn't reach utopia. One could easily make the argument that America is a failed Libertarian utopia because for a lot of it's history it trended libertarian and then at some point, well, you see what we have now.
You're never going to achieve a pure political ideology as a form of rule except in fairly small groups. Many things don't scale well. How do you make an argument for the utopia when all the examples fail to get there? The best form of government more likely than not borrows concepts from different political ideologies.
Significant_Koala_61@reddit
Do we need big corporations? Kind of kills the little guy
oWatchdog@reddit
Libertarians are Anarchists with brains. They both value absolute freedom (oversimplified, I know), but Libertarians recognize human nature. It's inherent for humans to coalesce and impose order. Having no government is temporary. It simply means one will inevitably form or an opposing government will take over. It's best to have a say and keep it small. Anarchy isn't chaos because anyone can do whatever they want. It's chaos because any group can take over. I think this is the main reason many libertarians allow for government to have a strong (defensive) military presence.
The Left has a similar logical train. Power, even economic power, trend towards consolidation. Monopolies can wield incredible power. With a small government, monopolies will eventually have more power than the government, and that economic power will naturally convert to political power. An oligarchy is established where the people have no say and the government is powerless to stop them. This is worse than giving government more power because we at least have a say in a democracy.
Whether this argument is compelling to you is irrelevant. It is compelling to those on the left.
Anen-o-me@reddit
I only exactly why.
It's because they've been taught on the left that the big event behind everything wrong in the world is the ebil capitalists.
They even think capital controls the government, so everything that sucks about government they blame on capitalists too.
They believe the only thing holding back business is the few people in government willing to stand up to business interests.
So then it seems natural for them to conclude that without a State in the mix, business would run everything unconstrained, and that is their nightmare scenario.
DravenTor@reddit
It's a sad state they've created. Basically, recreating italian Fascism in the pursuit of fighting capitalism. Unjustly and unconstitutionally, I might add. Yet, still blame capitalism for all injustices.
Yeeeoow@reddit
This is embarasing hyperbole.
DravenTor@reddit
I wish, Look up Fascist Corporatism and compare to our own bureaucratic regulatory system.
Heavy-Bell-2035@reddit
Lack of critical thinking skills on their part for one. But, also a lack of necessary gate keeping on the part of libertarians letting milquetoast Republicans join the ranks and peddle supply side bs as good economics.
Especially among the 'beltway' typles, Cato and what not, you'll see this nonsense. Most people view libertarians as just a different flavor of Republican, and in a lot of ways and as applied to a lot of people they're not wrong. An example would be the support of many 'libertarians' for the so called 'free trade agreements' that they all know are crammed with cronyist BS, but still support as 'free trade.'
You'll also see libertarians come almost universally down on the side of businesses in any dispute between employees and their employers, and especially unions and employers. It doesn't matter what explicit contracts exist or what laws everyone agreed to abide by during the relationship, if the business wants something most libertarians will just assume it should be so, even if they signed an explicit contract saying otherwise. The contract guarantees a minimum amount of time off? But they're trying to run a business, how dare you?! There's a near universally higher subjective valuation placed on businesses over employees or individuals by most libertarians. You see it on the Cato side and in the Mises crowd too, the latter tends to lionize and even diefy the 'entrepreneur,' even when it becomes clear those entrepreneurs are more of the political variety and seem to have made much if not most of their fortunes through cronyism, not actually earning it.
Also, libertarians tend to ignore all previous cronyism when evaluating situations involving employees and consumers. They will be principled and rail against cronyism in general and in specific cases, but completely forget and and all of it the second an employee or a consumer has a dispute about anything. A company can get 80 quadrillion in bailouts and an explicit monopoly and monopsony status and libertarians will rightly point out how wrong that is. But, god forbid an employee of that company suggest they could pay a bit more and those same libertarians will all of a sudden forget all of that and assume a perfectly ceteris paribus free market and that employee will get a 100,000 word disquisition on how wages are set on a 'free market.'
Historical-Mud5845@reddit
I thought libertarians generally hate lobbyists and political entrepreneurs, and they wanted to downsize the govt cause of that
Heavy-Bell-2035@reddit
They do. They just conveniently forget they exist, along with any and all market advantages they may have bought for their clients, any time there's a dispute between an employee and an employer.
Look at how many 'libertarians' fawn over Elon Musk. The guy has a questionable record of success at best. He was born into money that seems to be partly the result of government enforced child labor in mines. He bought his way into a few companies and it's at least arguable whether or not any of them were better off for having him in leadership, and the companies he's best known for, Tesla and SpaceX, both relied and continued to rely on massive government subsidies and advantages and contracts. SpaceX itself has over 20 billion in government subsidies and contracts.
Knowing that, watch what happens and how 'libertarians' respond when someone suggests that maybe he could pay his employees better or offer more reasonable hours, or remote work for those where it's possible. They'll immediately revert to Ceteris Paribus Fantasy world.
Look at how many 'libertarians' are in favor of the H1 program. There is not nor has there ever been a labor shortage in tech, I should know because it's been my job for over twenty years to find these people. A shortage is when you can't find something even though you're willing to pay through the nose. It is not when you can find something but think it's too expensive. Tech workers got the slightest advantage for a short time and rather than wait for supply to increase to meet demand the tech bros of yore lobbied for and got legally enforced indentured servitude.
They did not make it easier for people to immgrate here, they carved out a special niche and came up with a Rube Goldbergian system including a 'lottery' system which if you applied it to any other production input other than labor would be decried as the most convoluted hair brained subsidization scheme in world history. But, apply it to labor and most 'libertarians' not only seem fine with it, they think it's awesome. Apparently, according to most 'libertarians,' the only production input price that can't ever go up is that of labor.
Lefties see this all the time, libertarians are always and without fail on the side of businesses in any and every dispute between them and their employees, of course they're just going to think libertarians are apologists for cronyism.
skiphandleman@reddit
It's all theory and I use that word losely. Any opinion can be framed as a theory.
Up until around WWI, the US was arguably the most libertarian society in modern history (with the glaring caveat of slavery). I discount medieval and earlier societies because economics were highly localized.
Liberals would argue that sometime after 1860, business began to become very wealthy and powerful, resulting in the beginning of middle class deterioration and significant income disparity. There arguement is that this could never be overcome without regulation of business and that it would ultimately lead to 99% of society essentially becoming indentured servants. We'll never know because in the late 1800s and more intensely in the 1930s, they got their wish. But what ensued was even more income disparity ove the next 100 years.
My arguement, or theory if you wiil, is that if the US maintained a less intrusive regulatory policy and never introduced an income tax, we would have less income disparity today. Why? Because business is greed. Business wants to grow bu nature. To grow, you need human capital. To get more human capital you need more humans or you need to pay humans more, in which case, an equilibrium between the scarce human resource and the demands of the business begins to form. That creates a natural redistribution of income back to the the working class. Forced production of more humans is not an option in a Libertarian society, because slavery is not legal.
In 'short', my opinion is that while big business and monopoly can cause extreme income disparity in the short term, they can't contiue to grow under a true Libertarian Constitution unless they pay fair market value for their most valued resource. You can't supress wages forever and grow. Growth drives up prices and wages must follow because if the wage isn't enough to pay for goods and services, we all die. Big business doesn't want us to die and stop buying it's products.
We never let it play out long enough, so we'll probably never know.
If you want to say that value of human capital will be replaced by AI, go ahead, but please put forth an informed arguement. I lead teams that build AI and we are decades away from that being a realty.
NeoWayland@reddit
Because they believe Somebody Has To Be In Charge and the only choices are government or private.
Yeeeoow@reddit
Not necessarily has to be in charge.
More like, someone will end up in charge if left alone. A power vacuum fills itself eventually given enough time.
Firm_Balance_8285@reddit
That corporations have the power to extract rents from the government does not mean that they would not exist or not rent-seek absent a government.
PW_stars@reddit
Probably because they look at the US economy and think of it as "pure capitalism." They think that if the government was removed from the equation, then corporations would still have the power that they have, and there'd be no government to keep them restrained.
But they don't realize that big corporations could not exist without a big government. If the government is severely shrunk, then corporations would lose their precious subsidies and thus disappear.
rymden_viking@reddit
Deficit spending by the government always finds its way to the largest corporations and the people who own them.
iroll20s@reddit
Because they are authoritarian first. People being in charge of their own lives doesnât exist in their worldview.Â
RootHouston@reddit
Because they don't know what capitalism is. They don't understand natural economic markets.
Martorfank@reddit
To make it quick and easy, is a mix of: Bad education, not understanding economics, seeing economics as a 0 sum game, seeing every interaction/exchange through the lenses of power dynamics, collectivism, thinking humans are evil (even if they don't want to admit it), not understanding incentives, and lastly, living in a system that they think it is something that it isn't and their complete inability to connect their decisions to the consequences of them (in worst cases being willingly blind to this).
bannabananabanna@reddit
because to be a marxist one has to be a moron
Ninja_Gingineer@reddit
I think many, including libertains, don't understand the full implications. Governments are responsible for big corporations because corporate structure is written into the laws and tax code. If these are also cut, along with other regulations, large corporations wouldn't exist as they do today. Partnerships of many people could exist, but the lack of accountability wouldn't be there. Without the protections of law currently enjoyed by corporations are gone, the excesses people largely object to will be gone.
mediocretes@reddit
Same reason libertarians think leftism always ends in gulags.
ItShouldntBe06@reddit
From their perspective, they think that less government intervention = monopolies forming everywhere when the reality is that monopolies form because of heavy government intervention. The free market is the solution to monopolizing industries but a lot of media these days unfortunately depict the opposite because the writers lack economic knowledge.
No_Ambition_6141@reddit
Somthing that contributes is that Republicans market their ideas as free market and then turn around and run cronie capitalism. If you heard Republicans talk about free markets since the 70s you might get a little skeptical.
Advocating for total free markets at a macro level can be difficult because it has never really been executed at scale. Similar to communism except millions of people dont have to die along the way.
TheKorndawg720@reddit
Leftists despise capitalism and believe the end goal of capitalism is corporatism slop. Why is that? Because Leftists are all about collectivism in some shape or form. From your Anarchist, communists, leftists, liberal, etc they rely on a collective framework.
AutoModerator@reddit
REMOVED: due to a large amount of brigading, we are temporarily restricting posts from drive-by users. If you are unfamiliar with our beliefs or ideology, take some time to lurk, or do some research. Do not message the mod team, this will be reviewed when we have time. Messaging the mod team asking us to approve this will result in an automatic denial and potential ban as we will assume you are a clanker sending automated messages.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.