In Search of Secrets

When people ask me about my politics, I like to say I’m a libertarian socialist. I like to say this because they get the most hilariously confused look on their faces.¹

(I also say it because it’s true, but that’s not the reason I like to say it.)

As amusing as this confusion is, though, I don’t want anybody to stay confused. So now that I’ve told you I’m a libertarian socialist I’m going to explain what I mean by that, and why I am one, and why I think it’s silly to be anything else.

Imagine that Bob, a Florida resident, reads an article in the news about a local school. The article is about how the school’s AC is broken, and due to budget cuts they’ve been unable to repair it. Grades have suffered, absenteeism is up, and although the school hasn’t officially admitted it, some parents are claiming their kids have gotten heatstroke.

Meanwhile, in Nunavut, Alice is reading a very similar article about a school whose central heating has failed. It includes a photograph of heavily-bundled students sitting at their desks, diligently trying to take notes with mittened hands. Some of the teachers have had to bring in space heaters–paid for out of their own salaries–just to keep the pipes in the bathrooms from freezing so the kids still have a place to pee. One of the students has gotten frostbite.

Bob goes to his parenting group on Facebook to vent his frustration. He writes a post titled “KEEP OUR SCHOOLS COOL!” Alice just happens to be a member of the same group, and writes a similar post with the title “Kids need heat!” After posting, Alice sees what Bob’s written and Bob sees what Alice has written.

…And then they get into a screaming flame war where Alice argues schools should be hotter and calls Bob a selfish, wasteful American, Bob argues schools should be colder and calls Alice an uncaring, communist Canadian, both of them accuse each other of being brainwashed or deliberately obtuse or of hating children, and then the admins have to step in and ban them both.

No? You don’t think that would happen? You think Alice and Bob would be allies? No way! Heating and cooling are opposites!

All right, back to the real world, where even though heating and cooling are technically opposites, we all understand that climate control is a problem of equilibrium–of keeping the right balance between two unpleasant extremes. How much heating or cooling a building needs depends on when and where that building is: a school in a town that’s always cold might never need AC; a school in a town that’s always hot might never need central heating; schools in temperate climates that get hot summers and cold winters need both; and a school in a tropical climate like Hawaii might not need either one!

We understand all this–indeed, it seems patently obvious–even though heating and cooling are technically opposed to one another. Nobody would be surprised if I pointed out that even though most buildings need both heating and cooling, trying to run them at the same time is a tremendous waste of energy and can actually make the building’s climate worse.

So why do so many people think socialism and libertarianism are incompatible?

Libertarianism and socialism, like heating and cooling, are two different methods for solving the same problem. Also like heating and cooling, they are technically opposites: trying to do both at the same time is a tremendous waste of money that usually leaves everybody worse off. And yet, also like heating and cooling, the problem can’t be fully solved without both!

What is that problem, you ask? In simple terms: “People need (or want) stuff. Sometimes there’s not enough stuff for everyone to just take as much as they please. How do we decide who gets the stuff?“

Libertarianism (you might also call it “free trade” or “owners’ rule” or something) is great at solving this problem.² So is socialism (or “communalism,” or “people’s rule,” or…) They are both effective despite being opposites, because just as there are different kinds of climates, there are different kinds of “stuff.”

Here’s a “stuff” people need: air. How do we decide who gets to use the atmosphere? The libertarian model would suggest designating some owner who has final authority over what happens to the air–or, alternatively, dividing the air into small zones and designating an owner for each. But this solution is unenforceable. If someone chooses to pollute the air in their zone, it’s not going to obediently stay in its place, it’s going to mix with the air in the zones around it; and no matter what laws you pass you cannot realistically force everyone to get some monarch’s permission before they can breathe. Air is an intrinsically shared resource; trying to fit it into a “property” model produces nonsense.

Here’s a “stuff” people want: other people. How do we decide who gets to use people’s bodies, labor, or creativity? Socialism says that the state (that is, all people taken together (somehow)) determines how resources are allocated; at its logical extreme, this includes your own body. If some other person has need of labor you can provide, you are obligated to provide it: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” If the state requires you to risk your health, wellbeing, or even life for the sake of another’s greater need, you get no say in the matter. I’d wager even my staunchest socialist comrades would draw the line at state-enforced slavery. Just as the air we breathe is an intrinsically shared resource, your body–and especially your mind–is intrinsically owned.

(Besides, a world in which people always get what they need, but have no way of securing what they want, would be stark and joyless–and in practice, it’s not really possible to separate the two anyway. I alluded to this difficulty in the previous paragraph: it’s all well and good to say that society is the final authority, or that resources must be distributed fairly among the population–but that just passes the buck to those tricky little words “society” and “fair.” History shows that passing this particular buck does not make it easier to cash out.)

Most “stuff”, like most climates, is somewhere in between two extremes. Some resources make sense to treat as property, other resources make sense to treat as communal. Thus, the problem of distribution reduces to the question of when socialist policies will produce better outcomes than libertarian ones, versus when the opposite is true.

There are a few important differences between resource allocation and climate control. For example, resources lack the equivalent of a thermometer. Is this resource more “own-y” or more “share-y”? Sometimes the answer is obvious, other times not so much.

Another important difference is that it’s not quite true that you can’t do both at the same time. Some libertarian policies play better with socialism than others, and vice versa. A universal basic income, for example, is one way in which socialist wealth redistribution might be effectively combined with a libertarian economy; externalities taxes are another. Thus, an additional part of the problem is in finding policies that not only work, but which play nicely with the policies operating outside their niche.

In short, the question “socialism or libertarianism?” doesn’t have a single, definitive answer: it’s an ongoing assessment of (a) which philosophy is most appropriate for a specific problem, (b) how to keep those philosophies in equilibrium, and (c) whether there might be useful ways those “opposing” philosophies could work together. None of these questions are as simple as deciding where to set the thermostat–as a rule, questions of policy shouldn’t appear simple–but it’s at least a big step forward from insisting that the only possible options are either 4 or 40.³

1. Technically, I’m more left-libertarian than Libertarian Socialist, as the latter is an actual political party in Europe (like “Democrat”), whereas the former is more of a general philosophy (like “liberal”). The Libertarian party in the USA leans much farther to the right. ↩︎
2. I called it “capitalism” in one of my older essays; as one of the commenters at the time pointed out, this was very not correct. Turns out a proper understanding of “capital” is required to understand capitalism! Who would’ve guessed? ↩︎
3. That’s Celsius, naturally. ↩︎