Good Lord.

Tyler Cowen of the Cato Institute and the New York Times has a blog called Marginal Revolution that is usually interesting, and, at times, extremely provocative. Of course, it is libertarians who are provoked, not “moderates.”

On March 11th he posted a rather jaw-dropping essay over at Cato Unbound, entitled “The Paradox of Libertarianism.” No doubt many think they see a whole host of paradoxes in libertarianism, but Cowen is talking about one paradox in particular, one that is particularly prone to refutation. He calls it the “package deal”:

…Those developments have brought us much greater wealth and much greater liberty, at least in the positive sense of greater life opportunities. They’ve also brought much bigger government. The more wealth we have, the more government we can afford. Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will demand. That is the fundamental paradox of libertarianism. Many initial victories bring later defeats.

I am not so worried about this paradox of libertarianism. Overall libertarians should embrace these developments. We should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don’t have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal.

Gulp.

There are some other doozies, including this one:

…No matter what our views, I don’t see any uniquely libertarian approach to the resulting questions of intellectual property. More and more economic value is being held in the form of intellectual property. The new libertarianism will have to be pragmatic at its heart.

Pragmatism, the old standby! Nobody’s trotted that out as an argument against classical liberalism for at least five minutes. Thank goodness Cowen resuscitated it before it was lost forever.

Some contrarians might say that you can’t patent an idea, but evidently Cowen is not among them. I hope the Democrats don’t take out a patent on pragmatism, because that would mean the future libertarian movement is doomed!

I’m being very sarcastic, but honestly, I think Cowen should leave the libertarian movement already, since he clearly has done so intellectually. I’m sure the social democrats would be happy to take him in, since his philosophy is beginning to look indistinguishable from theirs. It would be more honest than smuggling in social democracy under the guise of liberalism.