Noah Smith led off his recent “apology” to libertarians with a truncated list of things he’s long disagreed with libertarians about. For instance, he claims (without evidence) that a society defined by a lack of public goods would be poorer (would be” is operative since no such society exists).
Addressing the poorer angle first, one supposes Smith would agree that the central production and allocation of resources would be impoverishing, which at least raises the question why he thinks what’s impoverishing in total is wealth-enhancing if utilized in limited fashion. As for government itself, Smith pretends that libertarians are reflexively anti-government. No, libertarians disdain excessive centralized government. Libertarians are about choice, and think government should be largely local (and taxation largely local) so that free individuals can choose the kind of government they want, along with its cost.
Smith contends “some libertarians argue that people should be able to sell themselves into slavery.” It brings to mind conservative opposition to marital freedom, that eventually people will marry their dog, their doll, or some other one in a million entity. Smith’s own one-in-a-zillion critique had this reader wondering if he’s ever spent time with an actual libertarian. As someone who’s enjoyed weekly lunches with the co-founder of the libertarian Cato Institute (Ed Crane) for over twenty years, along with Crane’s much bigger libertarian network, this is the first I’ve ever heard of libertarians clamoring for the right to choose their own enslavement…
Smith follows his critiques that he claims “are all valid and true” to this day with the “apology” that launched thousands and thousands of e-mails. The instigator? It’s been “libertarian Rand Paul who has come out as one of the tariffs’ strongest rhetorical opponents in Congress.” Except that it doesn’t take a libertarian to be against something as mindless as a tariff, it just takes common sense. No doubt libertarians are more consistent about the abject stupidity of tariffs than are conservatives of late, but really?
It raises a counterfactual. What if Joe Biden had imposed tariffs without congressional approval. Oh wait, Biden did do just that, or in other instances Biden let stand the tariffs that Donald Trump mindlessly imposed during his first term as president. It’s no reach to suggest that if Sen. Paul had put Biden’s taxing power to a vote that the proverbial dog might have eaten the Noah Smith essay that so many libertarians naively ate. In other words, it’s hard not to wonder if Smith’s apology is really just a way for Smith to make nice with anyone at odds with Trump.
It’s a question worth asking because not long after his faint praise, Smith reverted to critiques of libertarians. Supposedly their ideological rigidity “proved inadequate” to “preserving U.S. defense manufacturing capacity in the face of Chinese competition,” which was impossible not to chuckle about. Really, when in modern life have libertarians ever had any say about foreign policy? Smith then pivots to other things libertarianism “proved inadequate” to including “speeding the adoption of green technologies, redistributing the gains from trade and technology, and driving forward technological progress in an age of exploding research costs.”
Actually, it’s the libertarian embrace of free trade that answers Smith’s platitudes. The beauty of free trade (among other things) is that it’s as if everything produced in the world is being made next door, or across the street. Which means that if Smith’s global warming alarmism proves valid, Americans will be able to import technology that mitigates the warming as though it had been created in northern California, along with the other technologies and progress Smith thinks libertarianism has long stood athwart.
Smith’s apology wasn’t really an apology, it was just a chance to nail Trump. Profiles in courage. As for the libertarians made giddy by the apology, their glee reads as apologetic. And it shrinks libertarianism.
