Libertarians and science

I am responding here to Orac’s post “What a lot of it boils down to when it comes to antscience” at Respectful Insolence regarding libertarians and science.

I am a libertarian, and I definitely believe that some libertarians take a contrary stance with regards to science because, at least IMO, they are not willing to acknowledge some of the hard choices that have to be made. For example, with regards to second-hand smoke, if libertarians do accept that second-hand smoke is harmful then you have a libertarian conundrum–one should be free to do what they wish so long as it doesn’t harm others, except second-hand smoke is causing harm.

When I apply libertarian principles to this factual scenario, I come up with the following policy conclusions:

1. Smoking that harms others in places where they have an absolute right to be–public facilities, public land, etc. may be banned outright to the extent that science shows such smoking to have an adverse health impact on those who have a right to be in that same place. Libertarians should have faith in the market to devise a solution to this health issue–a cigarette that eliminates second-hand smoke or eliminates the adverse health impacts of second-hand smoke. Libertarians are fond of saying that the market provides solutions, and we should have similar faith here.

2. People who own businesses should have the absolute right to determine whether to allow smoking in their establishment or on their property and under what conditions. My property, my rules. If you don’t like those rules feel free to patronize , or work at, another establishment. If I value employees who smoke as well as employees who don’t smoke, I will take appropriate measures, measuring the costs against the benefits.

At least number 2 is a run-of-the-mill libertarian position . . .

I also think that even libertarians need to take a look at the challenges associated with kids and second-hand smoke. On the one hand libertarians believe that parents should have broad discretion in how they raise their kids. On the other hand, if second-hand smoke is directly harmful to their health then you run into as issue that the kids aren’t exactly capable of giving informed and free consent to being harmed in this way. I contend that it is a different issue than how parents educate their children, although it runs a fine line against how you feed your children, whether you get your children vaccinated, and other health issues. These are not black-and-white issues to me, as I’m not fully content to say that parents can subject their kids to whatever–if we’re honest about the principle of being able to do whatever you want unless and until it harms another is it fair to simply dismiss harm caused to children?

This isn’t just a “think of the children!” excuse to enact broad legislation–I’m still in favor of minimal government whenever possible, and when it is necessary it should be specifically tailored to meet a specific need, but this is just to me a sticky libertarian issue that I don’t think my kind actively engage in enough.

The environment certainly is another tough one. Ideally polluters would be taken to court and held responsible for their polluting by those who were harmed by it. But in a practical sense our society is not set up to handle this issue in that way–courts are clogged, it can be difficult in some cases to prove harm, corporations shield individuals from liability, people die, or move, or corporations go out of existence . . . it certainly present challenges. And then there’s global warming . . . in order for a private enforcement system to be effective, you have to be able to assign value to damage done, and how the hell do you do that regarding individual polluters and global warming? Who would bring the private action? How would they prove their damages? What would a court do and how would it be enforced in a logical and consistent way?

Libertarians believe that if people individually cared enough about the environment, enough to put their pocketbooks where their mouth is, that the market would correct for pollution. But markets do have weaknesses, particularly in markets where the cost of entry is high and there are few market participants.

To take it back to science though, I think as libertarians we have to deal with the scientific majority in a more honest way. We can’t just stick our heads in the sand and side with a small minority of scientists because we feel it suits our economic model. This keeps us on the fringe and out of the main public discourse, which is that these scientific conclusions are real, at least as good as we can determine at this time, and how do we incorporate them into our political, social and economic framework? Most libertarians favor minimal government, but that government does have its place, and it is not honest to reject government just because it is government.

I know that this little rant doesn’t make me the poster child for libertarianism, but to me libertarianism is sound, rational political and economic policy, and most libertarians I know are sound and rational people. To me that sounds like a great match for scientists, who base their lives on science, which is a discipline based on logic and rationality. Some days I wish it was just as easy as libertarians having a little more faith in the scientific community and scientists having a little more faith in economic principles.