Sure, I'll play:
What economic issues have shifted for you so that you desire government intervention? And what evidence has made you trust the government (who ever might be in power) so that you are ok with giving them additional power?
Basically what I've changed on is the issue of how resources are currently distributed and how this came to be the case and how it should be. You have to look back in time. Land and property claims in the Americas originated after a mass conquest and genocide of Native Americans on the part of Europeans. That fact alone immediately negates a "natural rights" explanation of property in America. After colonies were established, land was appropriated among a privileged class of Europeans. As Kevin Carson pointed out "The first and probably the most important subsidy of history is land theft, by which peasant majorities were deprived of their just property rights and turned into tenants forced to pay rent based on the artificial “property” titles of state-privileged elites." This reverberated through history. I think many libertarians have an "is-ought" problem. They are quick to point out that our system isn't remotely "capitalist" in the free market sense, which I completely agree with. And yet they are taken to explaining facets of actually existing economics and the untouchability of property claims in terms of markets and "natural rights."
Move forward into industrial times. Carson adds "Contrary to Mises’s rosy version of the Industrial Revolution in Human Action, factory owners were not innocent in all of this. Mises claimed that the capital investments on which the factory system was built came largely from hard-working and thrifty workmen who saved their own earnings as investment capital. In fact, however, they were junior partners of the landed elites, with much of their investment capital coming either from the Whig landed oligarchy or from the overseas fruits of mercantilism, slavery, and colonialism. In addition, factory employers depended on harsh authoritarian measures by the government to keep labor under control and reduce its bargaining power." This all continues. I'm sure I don't have to point out the myriad ways in which the government continues to tirelessly sustain corporatism. And the story is similar in European states.
I appreciate libertarian's identifaction of "force" as the big ethical problem, in fact it's for that reason that my economic views have evolved. In other words, actually-existing property distribution has nothing at all, and has never had anything at all, to do with free markets, but rather is based in government force. Now here is where the divergence is. It seems to me the libertarian solution is "so get rid of government force."
My main problem with that is that I'm skeptical of what this would actually do to reverse past injustice. If you think of one man systematically looting another for a long period of time, the solution must go beyond having the first man stop. Force is justified on the part of the second man to get his stuff back. That's basically a sacred doctrine for libertarians. Maybe the free market would be an ideal system if it had been instituted from the beginning and from the ground up. As Adam Smith said, "under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality." But in reality, all of economic history has been a lead-up to modern corporate oppression and global dominance. Getting rid of the government would be getting rid of what little democratic power we have to rein in the system. I think it would be bad for the people.
My view of government differs from that of libertarians in that I no longer see it as something that is
exclusively a tool of the elite to establish their dominance, though it often does act that way. The way I see it now, "government" is a neutral concept, just as are "power" and "influence." We have to ask what kind of power it will be. Right now the government is controlled by corporate interests, that's what kind of power it wields. But we are fortunate to have some degree of input into the government's policy and make-up, though it would surely be more convenient for the elite if it wasn't so. It is a difficult process, but this means that the government can be bent. It can be used by the people instead of against them, as a tool, as a means of redressing past injustice. This is not some pipe dream, this is what happens. This is what all popular struggle has been. Take labor laws. This is where libertarians are just totally wrong. They see all laws as an extension of corporate/political oppression rather than asking what kind of power is being exercised and on whose behalf. Labor laws are not another means of corporate oppression, just the opposite. They were a hard fought victory of a defiant and dedicated Labor movement. It's an example of putting pressure on the system until it bends. Using force/power as a tool to benefit the masses, against those who rely on force to oppress the masses.
So now you can look at other issues of our day. Take health care. I favor a government run health care system, as do the majority of the American people. To the libertarian, this would be an abuse of power, and an example of theft and force on the part of those who would benefit. To me, the
currently existing system is an "abuse of power and an example of theft and force on the part of those who benefit." A government run system would be a response to that and a redressment of it. If a national healthcare system was instituted, again, it would be the result of popular struggle and pressure, again at the expense of those elites whose so called "success" is the result of force past and present. If all expansion of power was a boon to the corporate state, then why don't we already have national healthcare, free higher education, etc? It's corporate funding that determines who the candidates are and who gets elected, and yet our government is filled by people for whom these policies are off the table.
So it's not that I have a new-found trust in government, not any more than I have a trust of "power." It's that I've become aware that there is an ongoing struggle, on one hand a very small minority of state-privileged elites and on the other, everyone else, for who will control that power and to what end. Unfortunately, as massive and monstrous as the corporate power structure is, it's usually the corporations who win out on that. Which gets libertarians thinking "fuck the government can't do anything good." But I believe a candidate like Jill Stein would like to use power for the latter cause. I realize this puts me at odds with the founding fathers and many here who are quite anti-democratic and have no concern for the interests of the masses. In fact Madison remarked that the government ought to "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority," and that's just what it's done.
). That makes her a WHOLE lot better than Obamney.
