Despite all the attention it received in the blogosphere during this slow holiday week, I’ve read about libertarians thoroughly enough already that I couldn’t sustain the interest to read Chris Beam’s recent take in New York magazine all the way through. Some libertarians are weirdo Randites, some are capital-L types with the usual pathologies of most small capital letter political sects, and some are just ordinary folks with a non-insane tendency in the direction of strong individual rights and minimal economic regulation. Meh. But speaking of that, here’s a tiny excerpt from a Dave Weigel post about how libertarian thought is doing these days:
Voters like low taxes, and they hate regulation and policies that take away choices. Libertarians are winning on all of that.
This is a common misconception. Actually, regulations are like lawyers: everybody hates them until they need one. Then your lawyer is suddenly a shining beacon of truth and justice fighting against a slavering horde of corrupt and greedy corporate snakes. Likewise, everyone hates regulations that restrict them from doing something that might harm other people, but they generally love regulations that prevent other people from doing stuff that might harm them. It all depends on whose ox is being gored and how different people define “harm.”
But then, definining “harm” is the central problem of much of libertarian thought, so this is no surprise. In any case, the bottom line is that although you can whip up a fair amount of resentment against “gummint regulation” in the abstract, specific regulations are actually a lot more popular than most libertarians and conservatives would like to believe.
