Remind me again why I like Ron Paul?

I get the appeal of libertarianism. I get the draw of Ayn Rand's muscular individualism, of a country where you get what you earn and nobody tells you what to do. I get the distaste for contemporary Washington politics, and the appeal of simple laws and small government. I feel the emotional craving for cutting the BS, as libertarianism purports to do.

And it's surely true that Ron Paul has a few good ideas. Decriminalize drugs; deregulate marriage; no nationbuilding, no preemptive military strikes, stop policing the world, and (to other republicans) stop beating your chest while bellowing about how you're gonna bomb Iran. Moreover, his influence could shift the GOP from the anti-Democrat party into something that actually brings something to the national conversation: personal liberty, simple taxation, less theocracy.

But it's not at all clear to me that an America with small Paul government--with no EPA, no Department of Education, no intervention in Libya or Bosnia or Rwanda, no international accords on global warming or nuclear arms, no social safety net, no public health, no regulation of campaign finance or ads, no abortions (que?! donde el libertad personal?)--would be an improvement on the frustratingly comprimised world we live in today. Paul's made it clear that he puts principles above pragmatism. Take this CNN interview excerpt:

PAUL: ...Governments are there to enforce contracts, not to adjust the contracts to benefit of their constituency.

INTERVIEWER: Even if it works?

PAUL: Oh, especially if it works. I mean, if a criminal robs a bank and it works, you don't justify robbing the bank.

This is pretty important: Paul doesn't merely argue that the small, contract-enforcing government would benefit Americans. He claims that it doesn't matter; even if small government hurts most Americans, it's still the right form of governance. Paul's concept of political good is disconnected from the welfare of his constituency. For Paul, the government doesn't serve the people; the people and the government serve private contracts.

This is not what I want from my government. If we're gonna have state apparatus in the first place--and I'm not saying we necessarily should--then I don't want it to be an impartial observer of the contest between the powerful few and the laboring masses. In an economy which operates exclusively on private contracts, the rich and powerful are the ones who write those contracts, and the poor and disenfranchised have to take what they can get. The creedo of a libertarian economy is therefore, "Beggars can't be choosers." This isn't a conjecture about what might happen under deregulation: we've seen in the past several decades that the effects of privatization lead to a widening gap betweenn super-rich vs. everyone else. Deregulation does not lead to an Adam Smith-economy of Mom'n'Pop shops. It leads to plutocracy: the centralization of wealth and power into the hands of an ever-smaller, unelected group of businessmen. And, as we've also seen in the past several decades, this centralization of money ultimately erodes the neutrality of government (about which libertarians are ostensibly concerned), which becomes croney capitalism. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

If you're Dagny Taggert or John Galt, maybe you'll welcome the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few economic rainmakers (Rand's "new aristocracy"); and if you're Ron Paul or Francisco d'Anconia, maybe you're enough of an idealist to refrain from bribing/lobbying government officials. But in the America I live in, wealth is more a function of class and ruthelessness than hard work. In the America I live in, guys like Dick Cheney and Sam Walton are the rainmakers, and their game isn't production. It's exploitation.

You can see that I'm basically arguing for socialism. If we're going to have government of and by the people, then I reckon it ought to be for the people as well. If we're going to have government-regulated economy (and FYI, libertarians: that's what it means for there to be money. Cash is a legal fiction which presumes government regulation of private economic transactions), then shouldn't it be a democratically regulated economy? Shouldn't we all vote, together, as citizens, on what the rules governing economic transactions are? Whence the worship of private contracts? Shouldn't We the People (all 300m of us, plus maybe anyone else affected by our decisions) both control and benefit from our government? That's not to say that we can't have de facto private property, or that the fruit of Jesse Doe's labor shouldn't go to Jesse. I am not suggesting that we abandon meritocracy and adhere solely to the maxim of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." What I'm saying is that we ought not reify private contracts, as Paul and libertarians do. They are not sacred; they are legal fictions which ought to serve to the benefit of constituents.

A simpler way of putting this: democracy > capitalism. And if you believe this, as I do, then it follows that the libertarin's idea of small government, a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps small-business economy, and no BS is just as much a fantasy as the radical fantasy that someday the Revolution will come and end Oppression, or the neocon fantasy that America can liberate the rest of the world with the military and free trade. Undiscriminating deregulation and privatization will not lead to a golden age of freedom and prosperity; they'll lead to greater centralization of wealth, and all the evils pursent to it.

PAUL: ...Governments are there to enforce contracts,ssss not to adjust the contracts to benefit of their constituency.

MORGAN: Even if it works?

PAUL: Oh, especially if it works. I mean, if a criminal robs a bank and it works, you don't justify robbing the bankPAUL: ...Governments are there to enforce contracts, not to adjust the contracts to benefit of their constituency.

MORGAN: Even if it works?

PAUL: Oh, especially if it works. I mean, if a criminal robs a bank and it works, you don't justify robbing the bank