It’s easy to confuse ‘what is’ with ‘what ought to be,’ especially when ‘what is’ has worked out in your favor.
– Tyrion Lannister, “The Dance of Dragons,” Games of Thrones season 5, episode 9
© HBO / via examiner.co.uk (click image for source)
I’d like to see a few corporations appoint CEOs and CFOs who think the corporate model is inherently flawed and unable to deliver goods and services in nearly as efficient a manner as the public sector. I’ll bet you anything those corporations fail to do much of anything efficiently.
In case you’re wondering, I’m making an analogy to this (h/t Jason):
Fox Business host John Stossel on Sunday asserted that most government was unnecessary because companies like Walmart would spontaneously provide assistance to disaster victims “in many more ways” than the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could.
“Ever feel like government makes too many plans that come to naught?” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told Stossel during a segment on Fox & Friends. “It’s kind of a bold idea. You’re saying that not every human activity needs to be planned from above. Some things spontaneously work themselves out pretty well.” Continue reading
The word literally means “no place,” so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising when a purported utopia—especially one built on an ideology that views selfishness as a virtue—turns out not to be one at all.
The hashtag #libertarianismin4words was trending on Monday, leading to some amusing critiques of what I will charitably call the political ideology, along with some breathless efforts to decry the ignorance of the mockers and some noble attempts to find four words to describe the libertarian worldview that weren’t all either “freedom” or “liberty.”
I haven’t exactly made my thoughts on libertarianism a secret around here, so I don’t need to rehash or go into any great detail here. I will note, perhaps gratuitously, that four words is probably a fair limit for defenders of the ideology, at least since my own experience suggests that it has nothing to recommend it aside from abstract nouns.
Voluntary transaction not coercion. #LibertarianismIn4Words
— Econlib (@Econlib) June 14, 2012
#LibertarianismIn4words Free Minds, Free Markets
— reason (@reason) June 13, 2012
I took the liberty (see what I did there?) of Storifying some tweets that I found amusing. This is by no means a complete set of tweets I liked, but rather just the ones that came up on a quick search of the hashtag:
Here were my thoughts for those who, as always, claimed that the critics just. don’t. get. it:
If you think that we who make light of #libertarianismin4words just don't understand REAL libertarianism – maybe it's you, not us (1/2)
— d.wells (@wellslawoffice) December 31, 2013
(2/2) because it's all based on what self-proclaimed libertarians say. But go ahead and try to backtrack. #libertarianismin4words
— d.wells (@wellslawoffice) December 31, 2013