Liberty? Beware of the Libertarians!

Libertarian. You may have heard the term, or not, but it is impacting on your life, every day.

The word liberty has been central to political thinking since the philosophers began considering the Rights of Man. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity was the mantra of the French Revolution. Liberty was the clarion call for those enslaved in the US. Europe was liberated from the Nazis. In today’s world the word is still used by politicians about freeing people from dictatorship.

But the word Liberty has been hijacked by people with absolutely no interest in your liberty. They are only interested in their own.

This is the definition:

“a political philosophy that advocates only minimal state intervention in the free market and the private lives of citizens.“

It sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t like less intervention by the government. A free market? What’s to lose? Freedom. Liberty.

But when you look under the bonnet there is a different story. The freedom that the libertarians are talking about; government regulations and taxation are there for you and me, for our wellbeing.

The need for government regulation arose as the industrial revolution took hold in the United Kingdom. Factories were a new concept, workers rights didn’t exist. People started work as soon as they were able, from the age of eight if they were big enough. People had to work up to fourteen hours a day, for a pittance. Children were literally being sent up chimneys. The working conditions were killing the workers. In mills the dust caused cancers and bronchial disease. In the mines death was an occupational hazard. Substances such as asbestos were used without a thought.

It was the beginning of capitalism as we know it, with the value added by the workforce resulting in profit for the owners of the factories.

But it also saw the beginning of social care. Politicians who saw that their job was to help the ordinary people in need of protection. Regulation began putting age limits on working, on the hours that could be worked, on the conditions of work, on the need for health and safety.

The other element of the Libertarian philosophy is a free market economy. The main area that they want to liberate is taxation. They don’t want to pay any. At all.

Who does? Who wouldn’t like to keep all of their income, have goods and services cheaper by removing taxes? You would be an idiot if you thought otherwise, wouldn’t you?

Except of course we wouldn’t have a country, a health service, roads, street lights, a planning service, local councils, clean water, the bins collected or anything else. And we wouldn’t have regulations so we would be back to the time when the factory owners could do what they like.

The two men at the top of the article are libertarians. David and Charles Koch. Oil billionaires who have invested in so many industries that there is hardly an American citizen who does not buy one of their products. They are the poster boys of libertarianism. They have invested millions of their oil billions in the promotion of their “political” ideas. Their companies are in a constant swirl of corporate legal disputes as they ignore multiple regulations, putting their workforce and wider society at risk. They pollute, pay fines and then pollute some more.

They are part of a group of libertarians that have one thing in common, they are all extremely rich. And greedy. They don’t want to pay taxes, even though it would make not a jot of difference to their lives to contribute. They don’t want regulations because they cost them money to implement, even though the costs are almost irrelevant to their profitability.

To understand the full impact of the libertarians is mind blowing. While they will reject any regulation and want all taxes removed, they are happy to invest in their philosophical ideas with abandon. They fund universities, they support ground level right wing political groups, they own media channels, they own politicians, they spend millions on lawyers to fight regulations that cost them a tenth of the legal fees.

In the US their contributions are now called “outside money” as it is not spent directly on elections, but on multiple think tanks, ‘research’, media channels and more. They oppose the idea that climate change is caused by human activities. They reject Democratic bi-partisan politics, even if they agree with it, because they do not want a single win for their opponents.

Reagan was their guy. He fast tracked Murdoch as a US citizen and changed the laws of media ownership. He de-regulated Wall Street which resulted in the greed insanity that created the 2008 cash. Lobbyists prevented regulation of the sectors that most needed it, particularly oil and gas. Money money money, used to land grab power into a few very very wealthy hands.

And they have won.

The anti-government populism now seen around the world is a direct result of libertarian infestation of US politics. Under the banner of liberty they have convinced people who benefit from government regulation to oppose it. Their calls for no taxation are echoed by people who will lose out. Families on the poverty line have been persuaded to oppose tax increases for the top four percent of the US population, in the cause of ‘freedom’.

People in work have been convinced that removal of regulations designed to protect them will be beneficial. The decimation of communities by pollution is ignored as they elect politicians who support the polluters.

Politics in the UK has also been diseased.

Tax increases for those earning over £250,000 per annum are rejected by Tory MPs elected in previously Labour constituencies. None of the main parties in UK politics can come out and say they are going to increase income tax without being met with a deluge of negative media coverage, so they no longer try. The media owners? Tax exile billionaires.

Brexit is a libertarian achievement. Look at the language. Freedom from EU regulations! What ordinary person has ever been impacted by regulations? The freedom wanted is to reduce food standards, health and safety, businesses having to consider their workers before profit. But for you and me, there are now more regulations. Travelling on holiday to Europe is now more regulated. Businesses in GB are now more regulated than ever if they sell into the EU. But Liberty was the cry. Liberate us from the terrible EU!

The driving force is not liberty, it is greed. The reductions in regulations are to deliver more profit for business owners. To ensure that taxes are no longer progressive dependent on income (the imposition of a National Insurance rise is a perfect example, let every one pay more, not the rich.)

Words such as woke are promoted in the billionaire press to attack social justice, used as an insult. It is a fightback against the anti-racism anti-sexism of the past fifty years. Health and safety is attacked as having gone too far, yet it is there to protect you and I from carelessness about our health and safety.

We have literally been bought. Huge amounts of money have been spent to take power in the 21st Century. Day after day we see and hear libertarian messaging. In the newspaper headlines that are read out on radio and television news programmes. In politicians talking about tax implications. In the acceptance that “woke” is bad, that political correctness has gone “too far” when both have been central to addressing discrimination.

The next time you hear these phrases and ideas, and about Liberty, remember this. You are invisible. The benefits are for the very rich, not you. Nothing in your life will be improved, but a lot will be worse.

The best liberty for you and me is from these greedy people.