The ever-insightful-but-not-always-right Matt Yglesias gives a good argument why small government types (not himself) should vote libertarian:
If Bush loses to Kerry and the LP gets a historically large share of the vote (not a hard hurdle to clear) then the GOP will hear the message that they need to pay more attention to the small government vote. If Bush loses to Kerry and the LP gets its typically tiny share of the vote then the GOP will hear the message that it needs to try and coopt some Democratic issues (think -- pharmaceutical price controls and backing away from social security privatization) and will likely become even less libertarian.
Jane Galt is less than enthused.
I checked out the LP candidate's web site on economic issues. If only for aesthetic reasons I must side with Jane...
Consider this passage:
Establishment politicians don’t have solutions that work in the real world because they aren’t asking the tough question: “Why are jobs becoming scarce? Why do we have so much downsizing and so many corporate mergers?”
The answer is too much regulation and too much government spending. In the 1980s, the number of federal regulators fell from about 122,000 to barely 100,000. The private sector added 3,500,000 jobs as a consequence. The loss of each federal regulator resulted in the creation of more than 150 new jobs, enough to hire the ex-regulator, most of the unemployed, and some of the able-bodied poor. The nation prospered!
From 1987 to 1992, the number of regulators swelled once more to pre-1980 levels. The 3.5 million newly-created jobs were destroyed as a result. The number of regulators has continued to increase, costing additional jobs as well. Was your job among them? Will you be unemployed when the next wave of government regulation hits?
Where does one start? Shall I note that corporate mergers are not per se undesirable, nor is downsizing a source of job loss? Or should I note that the growth of the 1980s was not driven by the (supposed) loss of 22,000 jobs of regulators (N.B.: I cannot verify the numbers)? Or shall we move to the next paragraph? Throughout most of the 1990s employment rose and the degree of regulation rose as well. More generally, the extent of government regulation is not a major variable driving employment fluctuations, although it does influence long-run real wages.
Matt is right to think that the world will read an LP vote as sympathy for smaller government, no matter how off-base or crazy an LP candidate might be. Nonetheless I must offer p = 0 when I ponder the chance that I vote for Badnarik. If I don’t like a picture, I’m not going to hang it on my wall. I gladly supported Ed Clark in 1980, let’s hope that the LP once again puts up a serious candidate.
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