I wonder how libertarians can believe in both the gold standard and in the cornucopianism of natural resources. These ideas make contradictory assumptions, otherwise you have to justify why element 79 in the Periodic Table deserves a special Malthusian status that doesn’t apply to all the other elements.
You see this contradiction in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, where the Operating Objectivists can create mountains of goods—copper, coal, steel, petroleum, wheat, etc. - when they live under a proper political order. But they mysteriously can’t seem to do this trick for gold.
I think you’ve missed an important distinction in libertarian groups. Goldbugs tend to be more Malthusian than Cornucopian. In fact, Goldbugs are usually bulls on all commodities and perma-bears on everything else. Goldbugs tend to be paleo-libertarians like Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell etc. The Cornucopian libertarians tend to be cosmotarians like Reason Foundation/Cato Institute, etc. E.g. Julian Simon was a member of Cato.
I don’t think its super fair to use works of fiction to illustrate supposed contradictions in belief systems, particularly since libertarians aren’t objectivists.
Firstly, I’m not sure what libertarianism has to do with an alleged incompatibility between the gold standard and cornucopianism. It is perfectly possible to be a cornucopian supporter of the gold standard without being a libertarian. You seem to have a hobby-horse of bringing libertarianism into questions where it is irrelevant. I have been unable to find survey data of libertarian views on the gold standard, but the monetary policy views I most closely associate with libertarianism are Monetarism and Free Banking.
Secondly, your alleged contradiction doesn’t seem to work, or at least, is insufficiently developed. Why would it be a problem for a hypothetical gold standard if in the future we have mountains of gold alongside our mountains of copper, wheat, etc? As long as improvements in gold output track the improvements in all other goods, that would imply a constant price level, and the gold standard is vindicated. The major drawback of the gold standard is precisely the opposite worry—that there might be changes in gold output not reflected in the output of other goods, resulting in unanticipated shocks to the price level. But this is equally true in cornucopian and Malthusian worlds, and defenders of the gold standard nevertheless think that this policy is the best available option. So I really don’t see how the addition of a cornucopian belief creates any added (dis)advantages for support for the gold standard.
Historically, gold had a lot of attractive properties for use as currency:
Compactness: high value/volume ratio.
Low upkeep/maintenance cost (due to chemical unreactivity)
Difficulty to counterfeit. This applies to all the elements really, although you could in theory produce sub-Nickel elements economically through nuclear reactions. However physical law prevents this for heavier elements.
Ease of verification (distinctive color plus chemical resistance allows easy ‘field tests’)
Inherent value independent of legal status as currency (jewellry, electronics, etc.)
Even today I doubt you could find an element that combines all these properties together. Platinum and a few others might qualify.
These properties make gold attractive as currency when a stable currency-issuing government doesn’t exist, even today. This is why it fits in well with libertarian philosophy, since it’s based on the assumption of small and limited government.
About your second question, I don’t see the contradiction. Gold can also be produced, and in fact it has to do so in a growing economy based on the gold standard. The key phrase is ‘proper political order.’ The idea is to have a currency that can grow when things are good but be immune to things going bad.
By the way, I am most definitely not a libertarian, but the gold standard is hardly the biggest issue with libertarianism. The current monetary system might be better than the gold standard but that’s only because the political climate is much different.
Perhaps, because you need two fast rotating neutron stars to brush one against the other. Only this creates gold, a simple supernova explosion isn’t enough. ;-)
I’m a libertarian, and I think you’ve got an interesting question there. Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
I’ve still not sure it makes sense that people need to be fooled(?) into making sensible purchases and investments though mild inflation.
However, cheap oil does support the cornucopean hythpothesis, and it didn’t take a libertarian society—just modern tech and governments that aren’t extremely oppressive.
Anyway, I don’t know if there’s a libertarian consensus about gold these days, or whether an electronic currency is a reasonable substitute.
Before the big drop in the price of oil, I saw people doubting peak oil (the idea was that exploration is regulating by the expectation of returns, so it wasn’t going to look as though there was more than 30 years worth of oil), but I didn’t see anyone predicting cheap oil. Has anyone seen that sort of prediction?
Incidentally, there’s oil from shale in Atlas Shrugged—with no hint of what tech would be needed to get the oil out.
Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock. If anything that seems to be near the historical peak of technological progress.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock.
Lao Tzu, section 75 of the Tao Te Ching, written in the sixth century B.C.:
The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve. The people are difficult to keep in order because those above them interfere. That is the only reason why they are so difficult to keep in order.
I’d disagree with him as a matter of fact, of course, but historians of libertarianism typically put him as one of the earliest examples, and there seem to be lots of strong intellectual connections that may or may not be known well today. (I know some people who tout Lysander Spooner as the bridge between the libertarians before and after him who were previously thought unconnected, for example, but I don’t know enough to say whether or not that’s true.)
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one. Or we could call him a “reactionary”, since he writes about a supposed lost golden age in which society operated harmoniously.
Put another way — We should be careful about pattern-matching ancient authors onto modern ideologies, because we are likely to make useless but contentious claims.
We should also be careful to distinguish between political ideologies and movements. The difference is similar to that between religious creeds and churches: one is a collection of beliefs, while the other is a collection of participants with some sort of continuity between them.
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs! I’m rather fond of the notion that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) of the Bavarian Illuminati, would support the LW and CFAR mission of rationality education. But that’s pretty different from saying that LW and CFAR are part of the Illuminati.
I once read a book which made a pretty convincing case that the Tao Te Ching was written as a mystically-worded manual of statecraft for a totalitarian regime, pointing out the context of the times (the pre-unification period offering many other works like that), translation issues, and similarities of the passages about keeping the people ignorant and simple to other passages in statecraft manuals like the Book of Lord Shang. Ever since, I’ve been a bit dubious about how well we can understand classical Chinese thought...
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one.
I think that anarchists are contained within libertarianism; yes, he doesn’t look like an anarchocapitalist or a minarchist or so on, but that doesn’t mean he’s not libertarian. (I don’t think it’s quite fair to say “libertarianism in the modern American sense means anarchocapitalism,” but that may be because I’m more familiar with the variation in the modern strands of American libertarianism than the median American.)
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs!
Well, I think that’s because there are lots of old forerunners to modern beliefs. Ecclesiastes has it almost right:
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
There is a cottage industry in going back to old academic works and finding the ideas that were before their time—that is, ‘modern’ discoveries that were discovered before and not recognized as important (or underdeveloped in some crucial way). It seems to me that we should suspect similar, if not greater, levels of reinvention in philosophy as math, and that we should also be unsurprised when it’s direct influence instead of reinvention.
Libertarians are opposed to fiat money, in line with their general dislike of government regulation. If you reject paper money, where to next? Gold has a lot of very nice properties that made it useful as a medium of exchange in the past, so why not go back to something that worked? If you can explain away the problems with the old gold standard as a consequence of poor financial planning, then the rational choice seems to be the gold standard. Electronic currencies, like Bitcoin, have various issues of security and not really “existing” that just don’t apply to physical objects.
How to resolve this with cornucopianism of natural resources? Honestly, I haven’t seen any libertarian works addressing this question. It seems to me that the big push for gold has mostly historical reasons.
You see this contradiction in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, where the Operating Objectivists can create mountains of goods—copper, coal, steel, petroleum, wheat, etc. - when they live under a proper political order. But they mysteriously can’t seem to do this trick for gold.
The gold standard has an interesting history. The World Wars and the Great Depression uncovered many practical problems with the gold standard and Rand lived to see the various debates and policy shifts that arose during this time. The emphasis on gold in Atlas Shrugged is likely a yearning for the good old days before contemporary politicians mucked everything up.
I wonder how libertarians can believe in both the gold standard and in the cornucopianism of natural resources. These ideas make contradictory assumptions, otherwise you have to justify why element 79 in the Periodic Table deserves a special Malthusian status that doesn’t apply to all the other elements.
You see this contradiction in Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, where the Operating Objectivists can create mountains of goods—copper, coal, steel, petroleum, wheat, etc. - when they live under a proper political order. But they mysteriously can’t seem to do this trick for gold.
I think you’ve missed an important distinction in libertarian groups. Goldbugs tend to be more Malthusian than Cornucopian. In fact, Goldbugs are usually bulls on all commodities and perma-bears on everything else. Goldbugs tend to be paleo-libertarians like Mises Institute/Lew Rockwell etc. The Cornucopian libertarians tend to be cosmotarians like Reason Foundation/Cato Institute, etc. E.g. Julian Simon was a member of Cato.
I don’t think its super fair to use works of fiction to illustrate supposed contradictions in belief systems, particularly since libertarians aren’t objectivists.
Firstly, I’m not sure what libertarianism has to do with an alleged incompatibility between the gold standard and cornucopianism. It is perfectly possible to be a cornucopian supporter of the gold standard without being a libertarian. You seem to have a hobby-horse of bringing libertarianism into questions where it is irrelevant. I have been unable to find survey data of libertarian views on the gold standard, but the monetary policy views I most closely associate with libertarianism are Monetarism and Free Banking.
Secondly, your alleged contradiction doesn’t seem to work, or at least, is insufficiently developed. Why would it be a problem for a hypothetical gold standard if in the future we have mountains of gold alongside our mountains of copper, wheat, etc? As long as improvements in gold output track the improvements in all other goods, that would imply a constant price level, and the gold standard is vindicated. The major drawback of the gold standard is precisely the opposite worry—that there might be changes in gold output not reflected in the output of other goods, resulting in unanticipated shocks to the price level. But this is equally true in cornucopian and Malthusian worlds, and defenders of the gold standard nevertheless think that this policy is the best available option. So I really don’t see how the addition of a cornucopian belief creates any added (dis)advantages for support for the gold standard.
Historically, gold had a lot of attractive properties for use as currency:
Compactness: high value/volume ratio.
Low upkeep/maintenance cost (due to chemical unreactivity)
Difficulty to counterfeit. This applies to all the elements really, although you could in theory produce sub-Nickel elements economically through nuclear reactions. However physical law prevents this for heavier elements.
Ease of verification (distinctive color plus chemical resistance allows easy ‘field tests’)
Inherent value independent of legal status as currency (jewellry, electronics, etc.)
Even today I doubt you could find an element that combines all these properties together. Platinum and a few others might qualify.
These properties make gold attractive as currency when a stable currency-issuing government doesn’t exist, even today. This is why it fits in well with libertarian philosophy, since it’s based on the assumption of small and limited government.
About your second question, I don’t see the contradiction. Gold can also be produced, and in fact it has to do so in a growing economy based on the gold standard. The key phrase is ‘proper political order.’ The idea is to have a currency that can grow when things are good but be immune to things going bad.
By the way, I am most definitely not a libertarian, but the gold standard is hardly the biggest issue with libertarianism. The current monetary system might be better than the gold standard but that’s only because the political climate is much different.
Perhaps, because you need two fast rotating neutron stars to brush one against the other. Only this creates gold, a simple supernova explosion isn’t enough. ;-)
That’s what a proper Randian hero would do in a week with bare hands, if he only could get rid of all the bureaucratic obstacles.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist. I was watching Atlas Shrugged 3 yesterday, and the memories are still fresh.)
I’m a libertarian, and I think you’ve got an interesting question there. Libertarianism was developed when technology wasn’t changing as fast as it is now, and the gold standard is a solution to a real problem of serious inflation.
I’ve still not sure it makes sense that people need to be fooled(?) into making sensible purchases and investments though mild inflation.
However, cheap oil does support the cornucopean hythpothesis, and it didn’t take a libertarian society—just modern tech and governments that aren’t extremely oppressive.
Anyway, I don’t know if there’s a libertarian consensus about gold these days, or whether an electronic currency is a reasonable substitute.
Before the big drop in the price of oil, I saw people doubting peak oil (the idea was that exploration is regulating by the expectation of returns, so it wasn’t going to look as though there was more than 30 years worth of oil), but I didn’t see anyone predicting cheap oil. Has anyone seen that sort of prediction?
Incidentally, there’s oil from shale in Atlas Shrugged—with no hint of what tech would be needed to get the oil out.
When do you consider libertarianism to have been developed? I think of libertarianism (in the modern American sense) as originating around the early 20th century with HL Mencken and Albert Jay Nock. If anything that seems to be near the historical peak of technological progress.
Lao Tzu, section 75 of the Tao Te Ching, written in the sixth century B.C.:
I’d disagree with him as a matter of fact, of course, but historians of libertarianism typically put him as one of the earliest examples, and there seem to be lots of strong intellectual connections that may or may not be known well today. (I know some people who tout Lysander Spooner as the bridge between the libertarians before and after him who were previously thought unconnected, for example, but I don’t know enough to say whether or not that’s true.)
We may as well call Laozi an “anarchist” as a “libertarian”; he seems rather more interested in a classless society than a market-driven one. Or we could call him a “reactionary”, since he writes about a supposed lost golden age in which society operated harmoniously.
Put another way — We should be careful about pattern-matching ancient authors onto modern ideologies, because we are likely to make useless but contentious claims.
We should also be careful to distinguish between political ideologies and movements. The difference is similar to that between religious creeds and churches: one is a collection of beliefs, while the other is a collection of participants with some sort of continuity between them.
Lots of people like to find old forerunners to their modern beliefs! I’m rather fond of the notion that Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) of the Bavarian Illuminati, would support the LW and CFAR mission of rationality education. But that’s pretty different from saying that LW and CFAR are part of the Illuminati.
I once read a book which made a pretty convincing case that the Tao Te Ching was written as a mystically-worded manual of statecraft for a totalitarian regime, pointing out the context of the times (the pre-unification period offering many other works like that), translation issues, and similarities of the passages about keeping the people ignorant and simple to other passages in statecraft manuals like the Book of Lord Shang. Ever since, I’ve been a bit dubious about how well we can understand classical Chinese thought...
I think that anarchists are contained within libertarianism; yes, he doesn’t look like an anarchocapitalist or a minarchist or so on, but that doesn’t mean he’s not libertarian. (I don’t think it’s quite fair to say “libertarianism in the modern American sense means anarchocapitalism,” but that may be because I’m more familiar with the variation in the modern strands of American libertarianism than the median American.)
Well, I think that’s because there are lots of old forerunners to modern beliefs. Ecclesiastes has it almost right:
There is a cottage industry in going back to old academic works and finding the ideas that were before their time—that is, ‘modern’ discoveries that were discovered before and not recognized as important (or underdeveloped in some crucial way). It seems to me that we should suspect similar, if not greater, levels of reinvention in philosophy as math, and that we should also be unsurprised when it’s direct influence instead of reinvention.
Libertarians are opposed to fiat money, in line with their general dislike of government regulation. If you reject paper money, where to next? Gold has a lot of very nice properties that made it useful as a medium of exchange in the past, so why not go back to something that worked? If you can explain away the problems with the old gold standard as a consequence of poor financial planning, then the rational choice seems to be the gold standard. Electronic currencies, like Bitcoin, have various issues of security and not really “existing” that just don’t apply to physical objects.
How to resolve this with cornucopianism of natural resources? Honestly, I haven’t seen any libertarian works addressing this question. It seems to me that the big push for gold has mostly historical reasons.
The gold standard has an interesting history. The World Wars and the Great Depression uncovered many practical problems with the gold standard and Rand lived to see the various debates and policy shifts that arose during this time. The emphasis on gold in Atlas Shrugged is likely a yearning for the good old days before contemporary politicians mucked everything up.