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Quick question: what makes Peter Thiel an asshole?

How about things like "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible?" The general gist of the argument being that the voters will never accept the degree of dominance by the free market required for libertarianism to work, and therefore (by implication) democracy is the thing that must go, since it stands in the way of libertarian freedom. You don't have to go much farther than that to get into NRX territory (where you need a dictator to have liberty), although I do not know if Thiel is there yet.

Thiel's support for Trump is not the problem. If anything, it's just a symptom.

Libertarians are by no means universally hostile to a Universal Basic Income. Cato had a wide-ranging set of essays and discussions around the UBI - the lead essay was pro while other essays ranged from lukewarm support to implementation concerns. No one was really adamantly opposed.

Since that series of essays, the current Libertarian Presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, has said he's open to a UBI (and, until forced to walk it back, even open to using a carbon tax to fund it).

On the conservative side, F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, Richard Nixon (!), Charles Murray, Marco Rubio and others have all supported some form of UBI. The Earned Income Tax Credit is a form of UBI and one of the most politically popular features of the tax code.

The devil is in the details, but some form of UBI is coming - we're running out of work.

see you have redefined your terms to suit.

No, you keep redefining terms to suit your argument. If you eliminate the reasons for sales taxes to be regressive, they are no longer regressive. For example, if you don't tax staple foods and other basics and give everyone a basic income, then it need not be regressive.

Sales taxes already exclude staple foods and other basics; if you restrict them any further, they turn into luxury taxes. But be that as it may, of course they are still regressive, for the simple reason that people with higher incomes tend to only spend a smaller fraction of their incomes. It also doesn't work out fiscally. Germany collects a VAT, not just a sales tax, and has few exemptions, yet it raises only 20% of their total taxes, $140 billion. If you distributed that across all Germans as a basic income, you end up with $2000-3000/year/person, nowhere near enough to live on, and you're proposing to reduce the tax base even further.

And, I would say at a guess most of the Libertarians I run across would rather rip out their own livers with a spoon than implement a basic income.

Hayek supported it, and the Cato institute published an article favoring it. Many libertarians would view a no-strings-attached basic income as far preferable to the current massive system of government benefits, for reasons of privacy, self-determination, and efficiency.

The government would need a great deal of information in aggregate, but not so much personally identifiable.

You are making the erroneous assumption that progressivism and the welfare state are only about handing out money to people with low incomes; that is simply false. Both ideologies are about government helping people and improving society, and that requires attention to the details of every individual's life.

As I was saying, a society in which the function of the state is reduced to that of collecting sales taxes and turning them into a basic income guarantee is a libertarian state. Many libertarians (myself included) simply believe that that is not fiscally feasible; that's also the conclusion reached by governments that have looked into it. Furthermore, we fear that attempts to push it through politically would simply result in a basic income in addition to the current massive and intrusive welfare system.

Sure. That's because you're probably usually arguing with loony right-wing religious nuts who fundamentally think we're all lazy sinners looking for a free ride, or loony right-wing supply-siders who think the only people who can't find work are the lazy and incompetent.

True. As a libertarian who supports having a BIG(instead of current welfare), my views are 'interesting'. Of course, I'm also a *moderate* libertarian. For example, I often point out that Ayn Rand a: wasn't a libertarian, b: an idiot.

You say that any job should pay enough to live on. I say that not every worker is worth a 'living' wage.

And I say that is a horrifyingly immoral position.

Wierd. I don't view it as a moral position at all. It's a productivity statement.

To deconstruct, you are basically saying that there is some work where you believe the people who do it literally do not deserve to live. That they should be sucked of whatever they can deliver, then left to die.

Only if you ignore the whole BIG proposal. As an example, I have an aunt who is mentally retarded. She has worked in the past. Should she have been paid a 'living' wage? While she enjoyed the work and was paid some for it, by no means was her productivity enough to pay for her to live on, even discounting the additional medical and supervision requirements.

You turn that into a bell curve of productivity, there are indeed people out there who aren't productive enough to support themselves. Thus the BIG. And probably single-payer healthcare because we've managed to create a system that combines the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism, rather than the best.

Probably firstly in the office toilets.

Our janitors? Unlikely.

Firstly, I'll point out that exactly this same "problem"/argument applies to a BIG.

Not really, since a BIG is per person.

Secondly, my personal measure is a liveable wage for a typical family of two adults and 2-3 children. Because anything smaller is below species survival level.

2 working adults? 1? Grandparents? In my family it's 'traditional' to live close enough to them that they provide like half the child care.

No, it's due to the systematic undermining of workers of which outsourcing is but a part. This has been going on for the better part of forty years.

There are other factors, yes, but I'm not trying to pretend that a BIG is a solution to all of them either.

Firstly, you say you're dealing with current reality, yet supporting a BIG is a *massive* change from current methods and mentalities around welfare. You can't really dismiss a jobs guarantee in that context (arguably less of a change than a BIG).

I'm not dismissing it. I even said that a job guarantee could be part of the system. Other than that, I was addressing your assertations about how a BIG would work out that I felt was incorrect.

Secondly, you say you're a libertarian opposed to "government meddling", yet a BIG is about as "government meddling" as you can get since it's effectively making a huge swathe of the population fundamentally reliant on "government" for surviva.

I'm a very wierd libertarian. Still, I'm far from unique:
The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee
The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income
Why Did Hayek Support a Basic Income?
I'll point out that libertarians are about freedom. There are many kinds of freedom. Do I increase the freedom of the poor more by taxing the rich?
There's also the matter of the

What's with everyone predicting with certainty what will happen? Absolutely none of you know what will happen! The only way to find out is to try it.

Personally, as a moderate with libertarian leanings (although not a true Libertarian), I think it's worth a shot. The fact is that, like it or not, totally getting rid of the state welfare is politically impossible. However, we can make it less of a mess. Instead of having an alphabet soup of government welfare programs (and the bureaucratic overhead to go with it), it's not that crazy to just cut everyone a small check and be done with it. If the plan doesn't work, scrap it. It's hard for me to believe that the world will end (or even be significantly damaged) if we try it for a year. The economy is surprisingly resilient and has survived worse without serious damage.

FWIW, I'm not the only non-liberal with this idea. Here's an argument for basic gauranteed income published by the Cato Institute (Cato Unbound is one of their publications). Here is Charles Murry on the issue. (I'm not the biggest Murray fan, but he's certainly not on the left either.)

Patents back in the 1970s were only slightly broken compared to today. I've met several inventors or their relatives who invented things like milk cartons and every-day items we now take for granted. Up through the 1970s, "inventor" was a potential career path.

That all changed rapidly starting in 1982, when Congress voted to give all patent appeal cases to a single appeals court in Washington DC. This court basically created the patent troll industry. Before 1982, trolls would have been thrown out of court. Since then, this court has become a puppet to the patent troll industry through something called regulatory capture.

I wont go into the evils of software patents here. It is a regular flame topic on slashdot. However, we can blame this appeals court for them. Most recently, I was shocked when they changed long standing precident and declared that APIs are copyrightable, which if upheld, has potential to end software development as we know it.

I have several software patents. We are required to get them for defensive purposes. This is essentially a lawyer's tax on the software industry, with zero benefit to non-lawyers, so far as I can tell.

That was kind of my point, like the OP I was referring to the subset of present-day libertarians that advocate laissez-faire capitalism and who advocate this kind of crap.

It really defies belief how you can attempt to blame the policies of a Democratic supermajority in Massachusetts on libertarians.

What is happening in Massachusetts is what Democrats do. It is precisely "this kind of crap" that libertarians are opposed to. And it is libertarian opposition to "this kind of crap" that is the reason why the Democratic establishment heaps such vitriol on libertarians.

Laissez-faire capitalists will cheer along as these privatised forces morph into corporate armies until they them selves are being targeted.

The Massachusetts SWAT teams aren't "privatized" in the sense of laissez-faire capitalism; they don't operate independently of government, they don't provide a service in a free market, they are a government monopoly, and they aren't subject to civil lawsuits. Massachusetts SWAT teams are "privatized" in the way fascists and progressives "privatize" things: government subsidized and regulated monopolies exempted from market forces and liability, and even exempted from government accountability. That is exactly the kinds of abuse of power that libertarians are strongly opposed to.

Do some reading:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/20...

In a sweeping essay, Sheldon Richman explains why private property and free competition are superior to state-provided goods and services. He warns against granting “private” corporate monopolies, which are not true privatizations, but act as arms of the state. He adds that for many state activities, the best way to privatize is not to provide the service at all — as in the case of punishing victimless crimes, which no one should do. For legitimate services, he recommends a “homesteading” approach, in which stakeholders in a public service, such as a school, would receive shares in a new, independent corporation.

Here's some more on SWAT teams:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

https://www.google.com/search?...

I cited Niemöller quite deliberately precisely because he cheered along with the Nazis until they got around to targeting him.

Yes, and my point is that Niemöller never actually changed or understood where is moral failure was: he always stayed a totalitarian at heart and always remained opposed to individual liberties. He simply shifted allegiances as it was politically expedient and to assuage his guilty conscience.

Christ on a crutch, all you have to do is look at the budget. It's all there.

The budget is here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/bc/Fy2007spendingbycategory.png/800px-Fy2007spendingbycategory.png

As you can see, about 60% is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment/welfare, and interest. That leaves 40% for everything else. There is no way social programs are smaller than corporate subsidies.

Re farm subs - the original stuff worked, to an extent, and the incentives weren't bad.

Such government programs tend to work in the short term; but they fail in the long term as people learn how to game the system.

_Some_ are healthier, wealthier, and better educated

You're trying to spin this as if some ended up better off at the expense of others and that's wrong. A lot of people are better off, and some just stayed where they were. The net result is more inequality. That inequality reflects a larger inequality among the value of different workers and professions to the economy.

Aaargh. If you look at income distribution alone, the fact of the shrinking middle class ought to be a sufficient sign.

Here is a comparison of income distributions:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/sites/cato-unbound.org/files/old/images/burkfig2.jpg

Yeah, a significant part of the middle class (the green peak) disappeared; it became wealthy (in part just because of demographics), but even the low end of the income distribution shifted upwards slightly. So the US as a whole is better off than it used to be and no income group profited at the expense of other groups.

I don't mean to show a false sense of impending disaster. We're living inside one already, there's no impending, unless you wish to count all the jobs that will be lost due automation alone in the next thirty years. What will we do with all the jobless?

Oh my god, not that tired old Luddite argument. Automation doesn't produce joblessness; it never has and it never will. What will happen? They'll get cleaner, better jobs than they had before, either making more of the stuff they were making before, or making stuff nobody had time to make before. Automation makes us all better off.

I dunno, man; I think it'd be good to sit around a table and follow the numbers - where does money come from and where does it go, and what is it doing for whom as it flows. This is really what Congress is supposed to be doing. Of late in particular they're not doing so well at it.

No, it is not the job of Congress to direct money around the economy or make sure everybody gets a share; we don't have central planning in the US.

Ah, crap, I'm not good at this, I can but try, even so poorly. The numbers are there. YMMV.

The numbers are clear, and they don't support your views.

And you know what they call ~50% of medicine that doesn't work? Medicine.

Not defending alternative medicine, just disputing the characterization of mainstream med as some kind of paragon of rigorous empiricism.

if you look at pre anarchy and post anarchy Somalia you will see that the people there were much, much, much, much better off without the central authority.

In case anyone is wondering about the source for such a counter-intuitive claim, he's talking about Peter Leeson's paper Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse.

On the flip side, some of Leeson's conclusions are in dispute.

The differences in human breeds can show up at the extremes, even if they don't show up significantly for the averages.

Actually, there is a significant point gap in IQ scores between black and white populations.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/20/james-r-flynn/the-black-white-iq-gap/

Though this gap has narrowed by a third in the past 20 years, there is still a large difference in the averages of the two groups.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/7620/title/Racial_IQ_Gap_Narrows_Blacks_gain_4_to_7_points_on_whites

You're making the standard mistake when assessing the value of education. Your criticisms would be valid if all education was supposed to do was provide utility to companies.

Regardless of what education is "supposed to do", the fact is that the incentive for most people to pursue one is very much to demonstrate their utility to employers. Again, as you point out yourself, your employer didn't hire you for what you learned in school, he hired you because it "proved you could think".

The point here is that your employer used your education as a proxy for an aptitude test, he didn't hire you because you actually knew anything useful to him. The employer could just as easily have given aptitude or IQ tests himself, but unfortunately those leave them open to charges of "discrimination" if the subject matter isn't directly related to the job qualifications. Bryan Caplan and Charles Murray have both written some very good articles on the relationship between education and job qualification.

What, people who are self-employed or business owners cannot get health insurance?

McCain is not self-employed. He is paid a substantial salary of a US Senator. The package includes wonderful health insulation — getting off it in favor of a hard to find and expensive (due to the cited near-absence of market) private plan would've been either crazy or grandstanding. And the man, for all his other flaws, is neither...

And before you accuse him of hypocrisy again, let me remind you, that he was not saying, people should ditch their existing employer-based plans. His proposal was to stop the government subsidy for them, in favor of subsidizing individuals.

Of course you can find individual plans, if you're willing to shell out the money for them.

Yes, and — as an owner of my own company — I have one (with a $10K/year deductible, that my paternalistic Massachusetts is now forcing me to lower). Would I rather have a better plan for free? Sure! And so would everybody — as long as somebody else is paying for it. But I don't think, government providing it is a good idea — quite the opposite, in fact.

Wish I could find the article; it said it so much better.

Ah hah! From an essay at the Cato Institute by Rasmus Fleischer (co-founder of The Piracy Bureau, parent organization of BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay):

Copyright law is mutating into something qualitatively different than what it has been in previous centuries...

Gray zones like these are omnipresent in 21st century copyright law. One reason for this development is the uncertain status of the very idea of "copying" today. Contrast today's world with the golden age of copyright, roughly speaking between 1800 and 1950. Back then, enforcement was easy. The act of reading a book was far removed from the act of printing one. Record presses and gramophones were safely distinct machines. Since then, things have changed.

The Future Of Copyright

Bryan Caplan's The Myth of the Rational Voter points out that when the average beliefs of voters are consistently wrong in the same direction, these biases do not cancel each other out; they compound.

In particular, it has been proven that the average voter is wrong about economics in a consistently biased way.

I wouldn't get too smug. Half of all real medicine is no good either.

(I know, I know, "That's just Cato, a right-wing nut-case organization." I'm not asking you to believe it because Cato says so. I'm asking you to believe the rigorous studies Hanson references, and note how uncontroversial that claim is among actual medical professionals.)

Sorry, it isn't whether the state is red or blue. The politicians are giving the voters what the voters ask for, and the voters have irrational wants. Every Democratic candidate runs on the promise of more jobs. (What would happen to the candidate who said, "Elect me and we will have the cleanest water in the world, even though it will cost us 100,000 jobs!"?) Some candidates run on "pro-business" platforms. Why? Because business brings "prosperity" (read "jobs") to the area. Same promise, different spin. All false.

Here's an interesting little essay on "The Myth of the Rational Voter". WARNING!!!! Intelligence and open-mindedness required! http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-capla n/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter/

I'm surpised the Mankiw piece got linked without mentioning a someone similar piece by Prof. Bryan Caplan (who himself links the Mankiw piece) that summarizes his upcoming book, The Myth of the Rational Voter.

Long story short, he argues that because people don't personally bear the cost of holding ridiculous political beliefs, they relax their standards of intellectual rigor, similar to how they do with religious beliefs. They thus use voting to appeal to their "feel good" side rather than seriously analyze the issues (like the would with, e.g. their own finances), resulting in destructive policies all-around.

So he takes Mankiw one step further and says that it's not just ignorance that's a problem, but irrationality. If it were mere ignorance, the errors would cancel. But, Caplan, claims, they don't -- they skew the wrong way.

Something I read over lunch today was germane to this discussion. As I was ready to post the link, I read your comment first thing.

The link: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/11/06/bryan-capla n/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter/

Quote from the first paragraph:

There's an election tomorrow. Do voters know what they're doing? According to the typical economist -- and many political scientists -- the answer is "No, but it doesn't matter." How could it not matter? The main argument is that the public's errors cancel out.

Or is it the Cato revolution?

"But the discussion only begins at Cato Unbound. It ends, if it ends at all, with you. Cato Unbound readers are encouraged to take up our themes, and enter into the conversation on their own websites, blogs, and even in good old-fashioned bound publications. "Trackbacks" will be enabled."

-- So... uhmmm. I may dicuss and Cato "enables" talkbacks.

Cato Unbound will scour the web for the best commentary on our monthly topic, and, with permission, publish it alongside our invited contributors. We also welcome your letters. (Send them to wwilkinson@cato.org.)

--- Ehemm. yieemm. eheemm: Never pay for comments. You are a thinktank, you are paid for propaganda but you cannot buy the blogger community.
Just look at the success of the Campaign for Creativity.... (see: http://www.eulobbyaward.org/)

"Protection . . . against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough," wrote John Stuart Mill; "there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." Here at Cato Unbound, we aim to do our part. "

--- So Cato wants to balance propaganda with Cato unbounc. Nice. Very Nice. A Think tank donates flowers to slashdot. They let a hippie write weird stuff because they thought we were like-minded.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/about-cato-unbound/
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Cato_I nstitute