Times are a-changin'?! 'The American Conservative' runs Sheldon Richman's sympathetic view of the "Libertarian Left"
Wow — The American Conservative is now running a sympathetic overview by Sheldon Richman on the “Libertarian Left” (subheading, Free-market anti-capitalism, the unknown ideal).
Have conservatives lost their senses, or have they come to realize that the statist rot at the core of American “capitalism” is growing out of control?
Even libertarians who don’t consider themselves on the left (FWIW, I consider myself as a screwed-up RIGHT-leaning libertarian) will find the piece thought-provoking and insightful.
But it strikes me as funny that, if I judge from Sheldon’s piece, Left-Libertarians have not quite focussed on how the state grant of limited liability to shareholders – something that cannot be obtained merely by voluntary transactions) has set in motion and greatly fuelled the growth of the state and battles over the wheel of government — battles in which insider elites, generally acting through corporations, have the overwhelming advantage.
I have posted extensively on limited liability; for the interested reader perhaps this post will be a quick introduction:
The Cliff Notes version of my stilted enviro-fascist view of corporations and government
For those of you who prefer to not let their fingers do the walking, as I have noted elsewhere: “I am NOT arguing FOR a general rule that shareholders SHOULD be liable for corporate torts; rather, I have：
(1) pointed out that limited liability itself has served to muddle the question of whom, exactly, should be responsible for the very real harms that corporatons frequently cause,
(2) noted that the limited-liability corporate form has enabled risk-generation and -shifting on a massive scale, with innocent third parties frequently being stuck holding the bag (not solely when liabilities exceed assets, but more generally since the cycle of escalating government interventions to rein in corporations perversely ends up raising barriers to entry and giving corporations “rights to pollute” that curtail recourse even when sufficient assets are available),
(3) argued that libertarians should reconsider the grant of limited liability for torts (as opposed to limited liability as to those who contract with the corporation on a voluntary basis) not simply because it is clearly non-libertarian to begin with, but because it has had profound consequences – consequences at a serious enough level that state-loving libertarians concede simply by troubling themselves to argue against curtailing limited liability,
(4) noted that the most efficiacious way to roll back the regulatory state lie in the direction of shifting ultimate responsibility fpr managing risks to enterprise owners (and ending the counterproductive regulatory risk-management experiment), and
(5) noted that a curtailment of limited liability for torts could be hedged by shareholders via insurance, and could be achieved by state governments and the federal government offering more lenient regulation to busness enterprises that operate as partnerships, unlimited liability corporations, or in cases where shares are not fully paid up so that calls for signifcant additional capital could be made against shareholders if needed to pay claims.
IOW, the insistence by Kinsella . . . that one must “provide a theory of liability that coherently distinguishes shareholders from any other patron of the company” BEFORE one can examine the justifications FOR and the consequences of the state grant of limited liability is both sadly non-libertarian and dangerously blind and shallow.”
Government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives. Whether it is banning effective products or mandating inferior functionality in our appliances and fixtures, government’s role here is indisputably to degrade our quality of life.
Jeffrey, I’m sorry, but while you are certainly correct that government regulations have made a mess of our daily lives, your conclusion that “government’s role here is indisputably to degrade our quality of life” is extremely shallow, and the rest of your discussion suffers as a result.
While a great deal of stupidity accompanies government, why do you ignore the cupidity that DRIVES government? You know, the cupidity that drives the elites who always dominate the use of government, the self-interest that influences the decision-making of administrators, bureaucrats and employees, and the cupidity that drives the rent-farming by politicians? Are not the powerful corporations that use government to pick consumers’ pockets and to create barriers to entry worthy of mention?
And why no discussion of dynamics? We have a regulatory state not simply because we have elites, politicians and bureaucrats who wish to extend their control and purview, but because we have governments that create risk-shifting corporate machines whose owners have no downside liability for corporate misdeeds. By the simple act of granting corporate status, governments have set off cycles of social damage, growing demands for government action by citizens to “do something”, a growing “agency problem” as government interventions increase management independence from shareholders, growing opportunities for a socially irresponsible corporate elite, bureaucratic and political manipulation, and growing partisanship battle for control of the wheel (including fights over CSR and tort reform) and of the spoils of our increasingly top-heavy system.
Yes, we still have competition in the marketplace. But the reason we don’t have MORE freedom is not just “stupid government” by self-serving central planners who don’t understand the marketplace; the real reason is that that we have elites who used the grant of limited liability corporate status to avoid personal responsibility and to mask their depredations, and then further use their concentrated power to control government.
More thoughts here:
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2007/10/16/fighting-over-the-wheel-of-government.aspx
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2010/07/06/the-cliff-notes-version-of-my-stilted-enviro-fascist-view-of-corporations-and-government.aspx
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/search.aspx?q=limited+liability
Merely pointing out the stupidity of our court intellectuals does nothing to strike at the roots of our problems, and certainly is not persuasive to leftists who think that more government is the only solution to corporate risk-shifting and rent-seeking.
Kind regards,
Tom