Q:Liberal Capitalist Party? How do you differ from the Libertarians?

A:

We understand that principles are simplified generalizations, while the world is a very complex specificity, and thus principles are no more real-world solutions than a glossy restaurant menu is a substitute for the dinner it represents. The Libertarian Party doesn’t often seem to grasp this distinction, and as a result tends to “eat the menu” to one extent or another in most policy areas.

For example, in the case of government welfare programs, the Libertarian position is simply to end them and let private charity take care of those in need. Although the Liberal Capitalist Party agrees whole-heartedly with virtually all of the libertarian arguments against the welfare state, we also understand that to simply treat the ideal as policy would be incredibly disruptive to government and society, as the institutions that have built up around the welfare state suddenly find their foundation discarded. It would also cause short-term harm, and in some cases severe harm, to households and individuals who, for whatever reason, find themselves dependent on the welfare system, and it would run counter to the wishes of the majority of Americans who believe our government should establish and maintain some kind of economic “safety net” for its citizens. Unlike the Libertarian Party, the Liberal Capitalist Party understands that these facts make the sudden elimination of the Federal welfare state completely politically impossible, and thus pursuing this goal simply allows the status quo to live on, grinding up more lives with the same working class poverty and social underclass the current system perpetuates.

Our approach, on the other hand, would be to create a system which would transition us from our current predicament towards the ideal, a system which would account for institutional dependencies and the needs of constituencies that have coalesced around the current system over the decades. So for example, we might recommend consolidating most Federal entitlements, perhaps even including Social Security, into a single, efficient anti-poverty program that would provide enough assistance to recipients to subsist, but not enough to entice anyone to become a permanent ward of the system. Furthermore, as recipients produced their own income, assistance would be only gradually withdrawn, creating a system in which recipients are always economically better off taking a job than not, no matter how much it pays. One example of such a system is the negative income tax idea popularized by Milton Friedman in the 1960s, although the Liberal Capitalist Party has yet to adopt a particular system model.

Unfortunately, welfare reform is not the only policy area where the Libertarian Party makes the perfect the enemy of the good. The Liberal Capitalist Party, as a general rule,  is willing to compromise for the sake of genuine progress.

In addition, many members of today’s Libertarian Party tend toward anarchism to one degree or another, believing generally that the very existence of government is unnecessary and for the most part produces more social problems than social benefits. Liberal Capitalists are minarchists, and thus not only do we reject this notion, we hold that government is absolutely essential for the purpose of maintaining a free, prosperous and progressive society. To use a baseball analogy, it's not enough that the umpires are independent; they must be backed by an authority that crosses organizational boundaries and spans the entire field of play in order to guarantee that it never becomes in the best interests of any team to ignore the rules.

Lastly, perhaps the most important point where Liberal Capitalists and Libertarians diverge are in matters of national self-defense in general, and the current struggle against Islamist radicals in particular. The Libertarian Party has always been home to an admittedly principled group of isolationists and pacifists, but over the years this group has steadily expanded their influence within the party, to the point where their views have now come to predominate. Liberal Capitalists reject these views in no uncertain terms.

While the Liberal Capitalist Party takes a generally non-interventionist stance in foreign affairs by default, we are not isolationists nor are we pacifists. The Cato Institute’s Brink Lindsey probably put it best in an online debate with Ohio State University political science professor John Mueller hosted by Reason Magazine in late 2001:

Many libertarians slide easily from noninterventionism in domestic affairs to noninterventionism abroad, and believe that they're on equally firm footing with both positions. But they're not, because the fact is that there's no invisible hand in foreign affairs. There are no equilibrating mechanisms or feedback loops in the Hobbesian jungle of predatory dictatorships and fanatical terrorist groups that give us any assurance that, if the United States were only to stand aside, things would go as well for us in the world as they possibly could.

Like many other anti-war adherents, “the party of principle” too often project their own values and reasoning onto our enemies, in effect infantalizing them, and in so doing inevitably underestimate them and risk the possibility of protracting or worsening the very hostilities they seek to avoid. Liberal Capitalists understand that our self-declared enemies are people too. They have their own minds, and are capable of making their own choices based on their own values, which we may or may not be able to fully grasp. However, just because we don't understand our opponents beliefs does not mean we can simply dismiss them and substitute our own. Unlike the Libertarians, we take our enemies seriously when they state their belligerent goals toward the United States, and respond appropriately to protect ourselves when necessary.