Donations have no place in the political race

Bertrand says:

07:33am | 23/02/12

@Vivian -  I keep telling myself I’m not going to involve myself in arguments with libertarian ideologues, but it seems I can’t help myself - there is just so much wrong with this extremist ideology that it worries me to see it apparently back in fashion.

This whole idea that libertarianism is an ideology that champions freedom and responsibility is simply nonsensical. It completely ignores the fact that there is no such thing as absolute freedom; one person’s freedom to do something will impinge on another person’s freedom to avoid the negative consequences of the action.

If we look at something like Labor laws… a company’s freedom to hire people with no regard to working conditions and pay will inevitably lead to a system where workers, who in competition with each other for any type of income (remember libertarianism also argues against a social safety net) inevitably lose their freedom not be exploited.

Any market and any social interaction therefore needs some type of rules to govern the way that interaction takes place. Regulations are about balancing the freedoms of the various parties involved in a relationship. In the absence of these rules, all you do is entrench the freedoms of the powerful at the expense of the freedoms of the weak.

This is not some type of hard-left socialist argument I’m making. I’m all for market capitalism, but this libertarian argument that the answer to society’s problems is to completely dismantle the regulatory frameworks that govern our markets is simply absurd.

The fact that you are also arguing in favour of allowing those with wealth to have an unlimited ability to use that wealth to influence policy (and let’s not pretend political donations are about anything else - a company is legally obliged to increase its bottom line; if a political donation was not seen to influence policy to a level that would bring greater profits than the original donation, it simply wouldn’t be made) speaks volumes about whose freedoms you are most focussed on protecting.

HappyCynic says:

07:40am | 23/02/12

Since when has a government ever been a ‘minor status in society’?  There has never been a leader of a nation in history that has gone “You know what?  You guys just do what ever the f**k you want, I’ll just stand in the corner and pretend not to exist.”  All governments seek control, every. single. one. of. them because control equals power.

I swear you seem to have copied and pasted that opinion from some nutcase Tea Party website without fully understanding what it means.

I spend my money how I want to, I’m responsible for my own individual actions and I don’t feel the need to influence a political party because they’re all a bunch of fat, useless, inept d**ks, which is exactly how I like them.  You shouldn’t be wanting a ‘small government’ because small governments are most likely authoritarian, corrupt and ruthlessly efficient (remember none have ever existed, so I’m merely hypothesizing based on the basic structure of corporations).  You want a useless government.  A useless government is indecisive, corrupt and hopelessly inefficient.  Kinda like every government we’ve had in the past 50 years or so.

Useless is better than small, easier for the people to control too.

Mark G says:

07:41am | 23/02/12

Vivian,

Think you need to read the article a little closer. These new laws don’t dictate where people spend their money. In fact it is the complete opposite. The laws apply to businesses and unions and NOT individuals. That’s the point. It stops large businesses and unions from trumping individual donations by giving parties ridiculous donations that an individual could never hope to match. It puts support for parties in the hands of individuals and not larger organisations that seek to influence parties in their favour.

AdamC says:

07:55am | 23/02/12

Ahem to that!

marley says:

08:31am | 23/02/12

@Vivian - the article is about limiting how corporations spend their shareholders’ money, and how unions spend their members’ money, not about how individuals spend their own money.  Your argument doesn’t make a lot of sense in that context.

Anyway, if you want to get Big Government to downsize, then a good start would be limiting the influence of Big Business and Big Unions and Big Lobby Groups in setting its agenda.  Get government back to responding to the people and not to the bucks, and you might get something closer to a responsive democracy than we have at the moment.

AdamC says:

09:55am | 23/02/12

Mark G says:

“These new laws don’t dictate where people spend their money.”

Read the article again. In particular, read the following sentence:

“The NSW law will allow private donations, but only from individuals who are on the electoral roll, and then to a maximum of $5 000 per year.”

Bertrand, there are so many problems with your comment. You don’t even define a right not to be ‘exploited’. (A ‘right’ which libertarians would not believe exists in the first place.) Of particular importance, who gets to decide when employment becomes ‘exploitation’? 

Incidentally, though not a libertarian personally, I regard Australian industrial relations laws as just about the best arguments there is for libertarianism.

Mark G says:

10:58am | 23/02/12

adam C,

Not sure what you are getting at. The first part of the law that makes sure that it is someone on the electoral roll is a protection against foreigners unfairly influencing the politics so they can cut special deals in Australia. The second part that limits the donation to $5000, prevents companies or unions bypassing the laws by putting a large donation in the name of their CEO or Union boss instead of a corporation or union. These extra laws are again protecting the rights of the individual voter in Australia by covering the loopholes in the law. Both these components of the law limit the influence of large organisations on the political system.

Bertrand says:

11:07am | 23/02/12

@AdamC: “You don’t even define a right not to be ‘exploited’... Of particular importance, who gets to decide when employment becomes ‘exploitation’? “

Well the understanding of exploitation would be found in the labour regulations wouldn’t they? Things like a minimum wage set the standard at which work is no longer exploitive. By all means feel free to debate whether labour laws have got the balance right. I’m all for looking at our market regulations and reforming them where necessary. For example, labour regulations that enforce doubled pay on Sundays do no-one any favours, and should be reformed.

But Libertarianism isn’t arguing in favour of reforming particular regulations, it is arguing that we should completely dismantle and remove all market regulations all together. Libertarianism isn’t about whether we should shift the minimum wage up or down to get right the balance between employer and employee rights, it is about not having a minimum wage altogether. There is a significant difference.

“(A ‘right’ which libertarians would not believe exists in the first place.)”

Well, isn’t that one of my arguments against libertarianism? That it has an incredibly narrow focus on what actually constitutes freedom and rights, and that, as such the idea that it champions these ideas is nonsensical.

To use another example. In the absence of environmental regulations, a company would have every right to dump its toxic waste in a river. However, by gaining this freedom, it is removing the freedom of people downstream to access safe drinking water.

To argue that libertarianism only recognises some types of freedoms and rights is to help prove my argument. It is an ideology that, through its focus on removing the rules that help balance the various interests in society does nothing but entrench the coercive powers held by the strong over the weak, and, as such, only promotes the economic liberties of the economically powerful.

AdamC says:

02:51pm | 23/02/12

Bertrand, your pollution example is very different to your wages example. I believe most libertarians would accept the need for laws that manage our key ‘commons’, such as the environment. However, the problem with the state setting wage rates is that the difference between a fair wage and ‘exploitation’ is merely in the eye of the beholder. Why should governmnets determine minimum wages? Why not let employers and employees do that themselves? For that matter, when did I get to decide whether I wanted the government to have that kind of power?

That last question is really the basis of libertarianism. I personally resent having people who, usually erroneously, assume they know best making rules for me, and everyone else. Sadly, most people don’t think this way, and prefer to have the state tell them what to do. To some extent, this is simply human nature. Not having control of things absolves them from having to make hard decisions and live with the consequences.

Bertrand says:

05:18pm | 23/02/12

@AdamC: “I believe most libertarians would accept the need for laws that manage our key ‘commons’, such as the environment.”

You would think so, wouldn’t you? However, pure libertarianism argues against the entire concept of ‘commons’ altogether. Instead, it argues that there should be no common or public property and instead everything should be privately owned. The concept of National Parks, public beaches, publicly owned rivers, etc, goes against pure libertarian theory. So, in the case of my river example, the water quality would be protected not through regulation but when the owner of the river acts to protect his property rights against the pollution coming from the factory.

I don’t know about you, but for me (and I would wager most of us who enjoy going down to a public beach in the middle of summer) the concept that our entire country should be under private ownership is not a good one. Public goods exist for a reason, and I don’t think we should be willing to simply transfer ownership of these things to the highest bidder.

So, the example I gave about the river isn’t a strict reflection of what would occur in a true libertarian economy. However, no examples people give when illustrating a point will ever reflect the complexities of the real world. They operate to serve a point, and the original point I made - that there is no such thing as absolute liberty because various liberties conflict with each other - still stands. I’m sure you could think of hundreds of other ways in which the exercise of freedom by one person challenges the freedom of another.

With regards to current attitudes to environmental regulations, I think you will find that free market ideologues are indeed opposed to them. You can find cases in America where regulations governing a company’s responsibility to clean up toxic waste have been either dismantled or scaled back to such an extent that the waste remains.

Likewise, you are seeing the same attitude with the carbon debate. The whole idea that we are suddenly putting a price on carbon where none ever existed is only half true. There has always been a cost associated with dumping carbon into the atmosphere, it is just occurring without an actual dollar price marker attached. Essentially, polluters have been able to externalise (pass on) the cost of their polluting to society as a whole. A carbon price works to limit their ability to pass on this cost they create when polluting.

You will find that a vast swathe of industry regulations work under the same principle; that is, they seek to limit a company or industry’s ability to externalise the cost of running their business. This links back to one of my other comments about capital being a coercive force - without regulations capital has coercive power to pass on to others the costs they incur or create when doing business.

“Why should governmnets determine minimum wages? Why not let employers and employees do that themselves? For that matter, when did I get to decide whether I wanted the government to have that kind of power?”

The people decide this at every election. You have every right to vote for a libertarian candidate, or if none exists, stand as one yourself. People’s votes signal their feelings about what regulations they do or don’t want.

A good example is Howard’s Workchoices policy, which was far less extreme than any reform that would have cancelled minimum wages altogether, and he was booted out at the first opportunity, because the majority of Australians (rightly or wrongly) thought he went too far in promoting the rights of employers over employees. I would wager that any candidate or party that ran on a platform of abolishing the minimum wage altogether would not be overly successful. Minimum wage laws were first introduced by governments elected in by the people because they ran on the platform of introducing them.

Tell It Like It Is says:

09:58am | 23/02/12

Oh, perhaps the comment was referring to things like making the life of volunteers so difficult that there will probably now be a shortage. But in general the comment was probably making a reference to quality of legislation - and effectiveness in seeing it implemented (think: insulation!) rather than some naive concept of a tally!

marley says:

10:01am | 23/02/12

Haven’t you noticed, acotrel?  It’s the unions that are up in arms over this one.  I guess they’ll have to stop using their members’ dues to finance the ALP, and concentrate on brothels instead.

marley says:

09:39am | 23/02/12

The Canadian rules are very strict:  first, parties are restricted on the amounts they can spend, and that depends on the numbers of ridings contested, among other things;  second, candidates are also restricted, and that depends on the number of voters in their ridings;  third, there are no corporate or union contributions, and individuals are limited to donating around $1100 a year;  fourth, donations over $200 must be reported;  fifth, parties get a federal government annual allowance based on the number of votes received in the previous federal election; and finally, parties are partially reimbursed (60%) for election expenses by the federal government if they get over a baseline vote.

Very tough, very restrictive, and quite fair.  I think the restriction on election spending, which has been around for as long as I can remember, is the key.

Bertrand says:

11:31am | 23/02/12

Sounds like a good system. I don’t see how anyone could argue that huge financial donations to political parties doesn’t corrupt the democratic process.

DocBud says:

11:37am | 23/02/12

Political parties should not receive any taxpayer money.

The principle of: “What the law does is remove the power of trades unions to donate part of their members’ fees to a particular party without ascertaining whether the union member wishes to donate, and to which party.” should apply to taxpayers just as it applies to union members.

All we need to make a decision is a party manifesto from each party stuffed in our letter box and public meetings for those who want to attend. If the parties want to spend money on TV ads and touring buses then they should pay for it.

Another good restriction would be aimed at preventing these ridiculous daily policy announcements. Parties and independents should be required to provide full details of their platform by a certain date before the election, say 4 weeks.

marley says:

12:56pm | 23/02/12

@DocBud - reading over what I said, I didn’t make it clear enough.  The taxpayer funded “allowance” in Canada is allocated to political parties according to the number of votes they got in the previous election.  It’s currently around $0.44 per vote per quarter, so about $1.75 a year per vote.  So basically, one could argue that the allowance is entirely democratic since it’s based on who people voted for.

iansand says:

01:37pm | 23/02/12

Except that funding is entrenched for established parties and denied to new parties building up their vote (although I have no better system to suggest).

marley says:

01:59pm | 23/02/12

@iansand - true, but don’t forget there are spending limits as well which tend to level the playing field.  And however imperfect the system is, it allowed the NDP to get a 12% swing in its favour in the last election, go from 36 seats to 103 and become the Official Opposition.  And that’s without big donations from unions, I might add.

It’s not a perfect system, but it sure as hell is better than the system south of the border.

marley says:

11:25am | 23/02/12

@paleoflatus - well, maybe with tighter donation rules, that “separate class” will have to pay a bit more attention to the little guy, because the big guys won’t be donating bucketloads to their campaign.  And perhaps the lobbyists will find that their ability to sway votes in the House is at risk because they too can no longer promise buckets of money.  Perhaps, when the donations are coming in $20 bills instead of $200,000 cheques, we might get a little more democracy and a little less plutocracy.

marley says:

01:17pm | 23/02/12

@Vivian - You seem to think the state is the only authority capable of coercion.  I think that’s putting a faith in the other institutions of our society that is quite unwarranted.  Whether it’s factory or business owners forcing their workers to work in unsafe conditions in the absence of regulations, or union members forcing their members to support political parties financially which they do not support with their votes, it’s all coercion.  Perhaps yours is a world in which regulation and law is unnecessary, but the one I’m in needs them – I don’t want 12 year olds going clubbing or demented 95 years olds driving trucks, thank you very much.  I don’t want criminals mugging people with impunity, nor the disadvantaged being ignored by the well off.  Nor do I want powerful corporate entities using money to influence policy makers.

So the question then becomes, what laws and regulations do we need that enable our society to function properly while still ensuring minimal intrusion in our personal lives.  That’s a moving target and one open to much discussion, but very few would argue there should or could be no state intrusion at all.  That said, frankly, I don’t see how having the state restrict election funding to individuals resident in the state, and excluding corporate entities, is in any way unleashing monstrous state power.  Rather, it’s putting a leash on corrupt corporate and union power.  At least we get to vote for the state - we don’t get to vote for CEOs or union bosses.  If you want to argue that individuals should be allowed to donate as much as they want to, fine, make that argument – but you haven’t produced a shred of a reason for unions or businesses to have that right.

As to human rights and the state, our rights are pretty much laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  They are fundamental to our being and as such cannot be granted or taken away by the state.  The state’s role is purely to ensure that the legislative and social framework does not impede those rights.

Bertrand says:

01:51pm | 23/02/12

Vivian - you are the one who seems like they don’t understand. I am very well aware of what anarchism is and what libertarianism is and the differences between the two. I am exceptionally well read on political and economic theory, so there is no need for me to re-read Friedman.

I firmly believe libertarianism is an internally inconsistent ideology and, yes, it is an extremist ideology, as it is absolutist - it sees the value of individual liberty as the only value worth protecting. Any ideology that promotes only one value at the expense of all others is an extreme one. The opposite of libertarianism is communism, and I would assume you have no problems with labelling this ideology as extreme.

Libertarianism is very clear in its belief in a laissez-faire approach to the market - ie. it does not believe in the use of regulations to govern the way the market works. Under Libertarianism, the role of the government is simply to protect property rights and enforce contracts between individuals. When I talk about the desire of libertarians to dismantle the regulatory frameworks that govern out markets, I am referring very specifically to its beliefs on the role of government in the market.

“I am horrified that so many of you actually WANT to be coerced by a state apparatus and have your life run by a multitude of complex and contradictory rules.”

There s no such thing as a society without coercion. The belief that there is such a thing is one of the logical inconsistencies of libertarian ideology. You are completely ignoring the coercive power of capital and the ability for those with capital to coerce those without. You can attempt to pretend that this is just an imaginary phobia, but the evidence is clear that it is not. Laissez-faire capitalism was practised in Britain and America in the 19th century. In both cases the coercive power of capital was very real and very destructive. Things like the emergence of labour laws were a direct response to the destructive nature of an unregulated labour market.

The purpose of a democratically elected government is to develop the regulatory frameworks that minimise the coercion that inevitably occurs in a completely ‘free’ market. Obviously this government action is in itself is a type of coercive power, but to me it is a lot less insidious than the unfettered coercive power of capital.

Firstly, in a democracy the government is ultimately an expression of the people. Government in a democracy is not the same as government in a dictatorship - we can turf it out if we disagree with the rules and regulations it puts in place. The same cannot be said of someone abusing the coercive power that arises from their wealth.

Furthermore, government coercion seeks to maintain a balance between the various interest groups. It certainly doesn’t always get this balance right, and that is why we have the right to change governments when we think they have got the balance wrong. Howard was thrown out because most voters felt like the power had tipped too much in favour of employers, and Gillard is going to get turfed out because people see her as going too far the other way.

Under libertarianism no such attempts to balance the various interests in society can be made. Instead, coercive power is monopolised by the few who control capital. As Libertarianism is also against the use of taxation to provide any form of social safety net, the coercive power of capital grows.

Don’t attempt to portray me as some ‘leftist’. I’m pretty centrist when it comes to market economics. Certainly not too much further left than Howard was. He, like pretty much every other political leader since the 1930s rejected libertarian ideology because, quite simply, it doesn’t work.

“How do you people define a “human right” with regard to the state?”

I really don’t know what you are asking there. Do you mean what rights should we have to protect us from the state? Or whether I think human rights only stem from the state? I would be happy to answer your question but I don’t know what you are getting at.

AdamC says:

02:57pm | 23/02/12

Bertrand, how do those who control capital ‘coerce’ people, unless they are able to usurp the power of the state? Your criticism of libertarianism appears to rest on the assumption that owners of capital have equivalent power to the people who control the police and armed forces, but you never back it up. As non-libertarian Mao Zedong noted, power comes from the barrell of a gun, not merely from ownership of stuff. Stuff which, I may add, is prone to expropriation by the people with access to force, not simply cash.

Bertrand says:

08:17pm | 23/02/12

@AdamC - sorry I missed that comment, so coming in late. You probably won’t even see this response unfortunately

“how do those who control capital ‘coerce’ people, unless they are able to usurp the power of the state?...power comes from the barrell of a gun, not merely from ownership of stuff”

That’s a very narrow understanding of power and coercion. You need to consider all of the elements of a libertarian society. The social safety net that exists in Australia means that those who are unemployed can still access support payments, public housing, public education and healthcare, and so on. None of this would exist in a libertarian society, so those born into families that cannot afford a private education will remain uneducated.

They will therefore have no power to obtain any type of work other than the most menial. If they are unable to obtain work they will either starve to death or need to rely on charity, which simply would not have the ability to assist all who needed it.

These people will therefore be in desperate competition with each other for the jobs that are available. No system has ever achieved 100% employment, so there will always be someone who is unemployed, meaning those who want to work have no bargaining power. The coercion exists through the basic circumstances that these people exist in.

Once employed, the absence of labour laws mean the employers can treat their workers pretty poorly. Have a look at the 1832 “Report of Parliamentary Committee on the Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children in Mills and Factories” to get a taste of what unregulated workplaces were like. To argue that this wasn’t coercion is ridiculous.

Likewise, once employed a worker has no bargaining power, because if they attempt to form a union or bargain for better conditions, there are no regulations prohibiting the industrialist from firing any workers agitating for change. Again, this is the use of capital to coerce.

But if you are going to talk about power at the barrel of a gun…. Remember, under libertarian ideology, it is argued that the state should act to protect individual property rights. What this essentially means is that industrialists can co-opt the military or police power of the state when their property rights are apparently being threatened.

If you look at American labour history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when this laissez-faire economic ideology was actually being put into practice, it wasn’t uncommon for picketing strikers to be dispersed and shot at by the national guard or local police forces…. picketing a workplace shuts down production and prevents the owner from enjoying the profits of his personal property, so the role of the state is to stop the picket from happening.

Google the Ludlow Massacre for a famous example.

Look, libertarianism sounds great at first; who wouldn’t want more freedom. But it is at essence a seriously flawed and, I would say, evil ideology. It simply does not promote the individual freedoms it claims to, and is in actuality nothing more than a way to protect the strong’s ability to abuse their power against the weak.