As far as Jock is concerned, I “don’t get it” because I do not agree with where he is coming from ideologically

Geoffrey, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, I really couldn’t give a yellow rubbery one whether you *agree* or not: it is that you *wilfully* misrepresent the libertarian position that bothers me.

Play the ball, not the man, there’s a good fellow. Tell me why you are content to see these state protected privileges flourish only to have to come up with ever more expensive and intrusive measures to redress them.

I suggest you read something like Benjamin Tucker’s “State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree and wherein they differ” (it’s only a few pages, not a vast burden) rather than simply make up whatever corps of bogey men you want to project us all as worshipping.

Why on earth would a libertarian want to amend something like “Unequal societies function badly for all their people, with poorer standards of health and education, higher levels of crime and weaker communities and political institutions”, pray tell me? Well, except for the last three words – I’m all for weaker political institutions. You think we laud an “unequal society”? The claim we make, by and large, is that it is the state, past and present, that is the biggest contributor to that “unequal society”.

You believe we think that “nothing should be done”? What nonsense. We want to thoroughly dismantle the complex web of privilege and patronage through which the state operates that “unequal society”.

The difference between our positions is relatively simple Geoffrey. You, Stephen here, and a lot of others to be sure, seem content to leave the really distortionary privileges in place, to allow the beneficiaries to take advantage of these state granted injustices, and then try to compensate I, and most, probably all, libertarians I know, have met or have read, want to eradicate these injustices that allow such vast disparities of wealth to arise in the first place because they are at the root of what enables the wealthy and well-connected to exploit the poor.

Your approach allows state protected injustices to flourish and then tries to correct the inequitable outcomes (how could they be any other than inequitable rooted in injustice) with yet more injustices – the taking of people’s property by force agnostic about how it was gained. Mine seeks to eradicate the first injustice first.

Two wrongs don’t make a right was never more true.

Yours is always going to be an uphill struggle, get more expensive and so perpetrate ever greater injustices to put right, until eventually it cannot be afforded at all, or until the pips don’t just squeak but fight back And all the while it will increase the dependency on favours from the political rulers.

Mine is liberal. It sets free from dependence. Some might even call it courageous, to threaten such entrenched privileges of immense power. But for all its claims, not even majoritarian “democratic” power has bothered even to try. We think it ought to have the power, backed by the people, to do so, but in reality it is just as hand in hand with the privileged few as ever it was. We are being conned, and you, Geoffrey, wittingly or not, are part of that con.

More generally, the idea that “there are rich people because there are poor people” is part of the Marxist exploitation theory that assumes that wealth-creation is a zero-sum business; that one can only profit if another loses. That is simply not true and flies in the face of 250 years (and more?) of liberal thought.

You are utterly correct, however, to note that “when poverty goes along with a feeling that it is not going to be possible, whatever one does, to get out of poverty… poor people will… continue to feel themselves a neglected and despised under-class.” It is therefore desperately important that poor people are free to improve their welfare.

That is not achieved by raising the minimum wage, however, as that merely makes the least productive members of society unemployable. If one cannot produce work of value higher than the minimum wage, one is unemployable. A particularly good example of this was when
Evan Davis found work for three unemployed people on an asparagus farm. The asparagus they picked in a day was worth less than the farmer was legally allowed to pay them, so he was losing money by employing them. Few jobs are that easy to quantify, but in general it is the least productive who suffer as a result of minimum wage laws, as a result of which they not only can’t get work but (consequently) can’t improve their productivity or gain more skills as time progresses.

On a more general note, economic freedom promotes both economic growth and equity and the poorest in society have far greater absolute wealth in economically liberal countries.

This is why Labour has failed so badly measured against its own most basic objectives. Unfortunately Lib Dems also seem curiously reluctant to think about underlying problems. Absent good analysis ‘Good Ideas’ (which we generate by the truckload) are just ideas, as likely to be bad as good.

Why do so many firms pay their senior staff such eye-watering amounts and their junior staff minimum wage – assuming that their jobs have not been outsourced completely?

There are many reasons, but one big one is that in too many sectors we have allowed dominant firms to emerge without any justification which enjoy a monopoly or, more commonly, an oligopoly with no meaningful oversight by shareholders. Directorsare then free to pay themselves as they see fit but they don’t actually have to be good managers, only skilled at climbing the slippery corporate pole which is a quite different ability. With politicians not willing for whatever reason to call time on this practice high pay has inevitably evolved into wholeale looting. Thus, as bankers have payed themselves record amounts, they have racked up losses greater than the total cumulative profits of banking throughout the 20th Century.

Another big problem is the obscene growth in the public sector payroll. In the short term this has addressed Labour’s desire to create jobs, but too many are not real wealth-creating jobs – merely an inefficient way of distributing a shrinking pool of national wealth to a growing class of apparatchiks.

So, a big part of our thinking needs to be directed to how to shrink the public sector on the one hand and how to make commerce and industry more competitive and vibrant on the other. Do that and a great many other problems will shrink as if by magic. Cure the fever and the spots will go.

But “reducing privilege” is not achieved by increasing interventions. You see that is what privilege is, by definition. Intervention by the government on behalf of particular interest groups. So to “reduce privilege” you really need to reduce state interventions that advantage people, not allow those privileges to build up and then add yet more of the heavy hand of the state to try and redress those previous injustices.

Think “liberal“