u mad?

Short libertarian:

I don't give a shit.

Very true Ezra. There is a veritable treasure-trove of them. "Liberty requires people from poor backgrounds to work without a minimun wage, without Unions, and without healthcare." Or how about summing up Hayek?: "Social Security will lead to Totalitarianism."

How about end the war on drugs. If democrats really loved the poor you would end the war on drugs.

Shorter libertarian:

"I failed econ 101, so let me run your economy."

"Marginal utility and marginal costs? What are those?"

"Externalities? What are those?"

"If I close my eyes then market inefficiencies cease to exist."

"Pareto superior: is that some kind of disease?"

"The cure for impotence is tax cuts."

"The cure for too many tax cuts is even more tax cuts."

"Empirical? Is that like when you invade other countries all willy-nilly?"

"Feed the hungry? Sounds good to me. Only $49.95 on pay-per-view. Now we just need to find some lions to feed them to."

Shorter shorter libertarian:

MINE! MINE!

Shorter shorter libertarian:

MINE! MINE!

It's a little more complicated than that:

"What I've deluded myself into thinking is good for me must be good for America. MINE! MINE! And if you don't like that you hate America, you commie bastard!"

Most libertarians feel guilty enough about their greed in order to at least come up with pathetically flimsy and irrational rationalizations for it.

This commenter on Sanchez' site, Gil, hits a home run:

"I've got big problems with targeted taxes on the wealthy.

First, on moral grounds, I don't think having a large amount gives anybody as great a claim on legitimately acquired wealth than the owner. Wealth isn't zero-sum. People (in legitimate markets) don't get wealthy by impoverishing others.

But, also, on pure utilitarian grounds I think that the world is much better off with, for example, Bill Gates allocating his wealth than governments doing it.

The main quality of such taxes that attracts supporters is that it feeds their envy and desire to stick it to the successful.

It's really ugly.

"But, also, on pure utilitarian grounds I think that the world is much better off with, for example, Bill Gates allocating his wealth than governments doing it."

This is Andrew Carnegie's position (which, ironically, led him to support the idea of a quite substantial estate tax, as an incentive for the successful wealthy to allocate prior to death).

One issue here is that this creates, in essence, a kind of uncoordinated economic aristocracy. Taxes, on the other hand, allow the people's representatives to determine how such funds should be allocated. There are certainly cases where the private whims and fancies of millionaires turn out to be quite useful, sometimes in ways that a more democratic approach might not duplicate, which is why there's a good case for encouraging private philanthrophy, up to a point. Beyond that, even a small attachment to meaningful democracy and the reality that such fortunes intimately depend on the state toss things the other way.

I think this avoids the point that a luxury tax is clearly dumb if you think about its administration and effects for more than five seconds, and that Ezra clearly deserves to be made fun of for suggesting it.

The main quality of such taxes that attracts supporters is that it feeds their envy and desire to stick it to the successful.

I suppose it helps to lie to yourself to feed your delusional view of the world.

In reality, the main quality of such taxes is that they are popular because most voters never pay them and voters that do pay them aren't able to create "hardship stories" about their own burdens of paying them, so they are easier for politicians to pass without paying large political consequences.

It is, however, a prime aspect of the libertarian mindset, dating back to their "socially maladjusted teenager" days to fantasize that people do things to them "because they're jealous."

Maybe I'm misreading you, but your view seems to be that if taxes on yachts and such are to be enacted, they should be enacted more as a form of sumptuary law (call it a "Pigouvian sumptuary law") than as a revenue raiser, and raising revenues should default to more traditional methods like income taxes, inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, etc. I wouldn't regard that as a liberal viewpoint.

I think liberalism distinguishes itself from libertarianism in that it includes a fairly broad mandate to intervene in the economy to help the poorer members of society, protect the environment, correct the most damaging market failures, etc. (Although trying to correct every little market failure without attention to how big a deal it is would probably be futile and do more harm than good.)

I think that your views seem to go beyond liberalism's view of the state role in the economy into some form of moralistic economic statism that goes beyond enabling people to find the good life and goes toward telling them what they should think the good life is.

I'm not sure. Was your post a retraction of the view that luxuries should be taxed, along the lines of "luxury taxes aren't a great idea -- let's just stick to capital gains, income, inheritance, etc taxes," or was it more supposed to convey "luxury taxes are good at preventing positional competition, while income, capital gains, inheritance, tec taxes are good at actually raising revenue. They're good at different things."

If you were saying the second, I'm inclined to side with Sanchez on this one.

My favorite: Private companies left unregulated by the government will solve global warming.

HA!

"It is, however, a prime aspect of the libertarian mindset, dating back to their "socially maladjusted teenager" days to fantasize that people do things to them "because they're jealous.""

Ergo the cult status Ayn Rand among each new generation of maladjusted teenagers.

Oy vey. Talking economics with a libertarian is like talking biology with a creationist, or like talking economics with a communist. There just isn't much point to it beyond your own amusement since the libertarian has his entire self-image wrapped up in a manifestly willful ignorance on the topic.

Dang it, why can't more of them libertarians get sick after their job's been outsourced and they lose their health insurance?

I'm not sure an ideology that believes in increasing the minimum wage while ignoring the number of people pushed out of work by it should brag about their knowledge of marginal anything.

I'm not sure an ideology that believes in increasing the minimum wage while ignoring the number of people pushed out of work by it should brag about their knowledge of marginal anything.

Yeah when they raised it back in 1997 unemployment went through the roof....what? You say it didn't. Hmmmm, then I must be a jackass.

Hy-larious

Best libertarian response is by Micha Ghertner

Dude, Ezra, calm down. Libertarians have the same right to glib and snarky comments as anyone else.