To follow up on mistermix’s post about the libertarian lack of interest in faulty foreclosures, it’s pretty clear why libertarians don’t care about the issue: it involves abuse of power by companies, not the government.
Philosophically, libertarianism is about the rights of the individual. But in its current incarnation, it is just as often about the rights of corporations.
This is why libertarianism has no relevance in modern American politics. There are undoubtedly places in the world where governments have absolute power and corporations have very little. But this isn’t one of them.
Violet
Yes. Exactly.
This is the modern GOP and all of the wingnut punditocracy as well, including the entirety of rightwing talk radio.
El Cid
__
This would assume that they would agree that those companies are frequently abusing their power, whereas they view the mortgagees as most likely the abusers of their contracts. Not to mention that the property owners are those companies, not the mortgagees.
CaptainFwiffo
The market will take care of it! If a bank steals your house even if you’re not behind in your payments, you’re not likely to use that bank again, are you? Eventually, they’ll run out of customers to steal houses from and go out of business. It’s completely efficient and requires no heavy-handed regulation.
TR
Of course it is. Now that Scalia has declared that corporations are individuals, with all the rights associated to that status, the dutiful libertarian has no choice but to embrace his equal in the glorious struggle against food safety inspection and child labor laws.
WOLVERINES!
Xboxershorts
They’re all about “Trust the monopoly”…unless it’s their cable company
Just Some Fuckhead
Companies and corporations are collections of individuals so they are exponentially more good and powerful than a single individual.
Elvis Elvisberg
There seems to be an implication here that their lack of popularity has something to do with their lack of reason. But it’s not clear to me that popularity in American politics depends on intellectual coherence, relevance, or a memory longer than a fruit fly.
It is true, of course, that libertarianism, as advocated by most folks at Reason and the like, doesn’t have anything to do with a applying libertarian principles to situations where they might immediately benefit the nonwealthy. And it’s also true that a more sensible version of libertarianism would be eager to investigate the excesses of concentrated influence whether in government or elsewhere. It’s definitely a strange little cultural quirk.
eemom
hmmm……WERE you referring to this?
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/sahara/rightplacewrongtime.htm
The phrase is so generic I couldn’t be sure.
jwb
@CaptainFwiffo: I’m always encouraged when I learn a political philosophy basically reduces to the game of Monopoly.
jwb
@Just Some Fuckhead: I thought the libertarians were supposed to be against the Borg.
Kryptik
The problem here is the distinct fact that with US law the way it is now, and the political climate the way it is now, Corporations are more ‘people’ that people are. Corporations are guaranteed their voice, with actual people…not so much. Especially with ‘second amendment remedies’ in tow.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Cid: I understand your argument, but what the banks have done is taken advantage of the fact that someone paying a mortgage doesn’t own the property until the moment it is completely paid off. No, they haven’t been so even as to yank the rug when there are only three payments left, but they have relied on people thinking that all they had to do was pay on the mortgage regularly and eventually it would be theirs. What the lender did was just throw some paperwork together with a few boxes to sign, and call it a contract. And then robo-sign it. And then lose it. And then get all huffy when the mortgage payer wonders what they have been paying on.
And yes, I know there are people who have taken advantage of it. Both sides have done it (and it’s true and equivalent in this case). I don’t excuse either of them.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@Elvis Elvisberg:
I mean relevance in terms of having something intelligent to say, not in terms of popularity. They are also unpopular, but I think the reasons for that are different.
shortstop
@CaptainFwiffo: Outstanding.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@eemom:
Yes, I had a dream I was in New Orleans last night, so it was in my mind.
Napoleon
OT, what is up with the name DougJarvus Green-Ellis?
Zifnab
Meh. One has always struck me as a proxy for the other.
Take Saudi Arabia. The royal family has dictatorial power derived from massive oil profits generated by foreign oil interests. Who is really pulling the strings? The massive oil conglomerates or the quasi-religious police state? From a man-on-the-street perspective it hardly matters.
If you’re a big, tightly organized, authoritarian system then the titles “government” and “corporation” hardly seem to matter. A rose by any other name…
The glibertarian movement that protests Democratic policy isn’t fighting “The Man”. It’s just arguing for its own Man over the guy currently sitting in office.
beltane
I wish there was a movement dedicated to protecting the rights of the individual from the rapaciousness of all-powerful, unelected and unaccountable corporations. Now wouldn’t that be something.
WereBear
@beltane: I will join your movement! Newsletter implied.
Villago Delenda Est
@CaptainFwiffo:
This is essentially Rand Paul’s argument for dealing with racial discrimination in lunch counter seating.
That turned out really well, too.
jwb
@Zifnab: “The glibertarian movement that protests Democratic policy isn’t fighting “The Man”. It’s just arguing for its own Man over the guy currently sitting in office.”
Basically turning it into a sporting contest.
Kryptik
@beltane:
But don’t you get it. The fact that they’re unelected means they’re INFINITELY more accountable than politicians! Power of the purse, boycotts, and all that rot! Why do you think Republicans are so enamored with corporations over government! It’s all about accountability!
jwb
@Kryptik: “It’s all about
accountabilityaccounting!” Fix’t that for you.Jonathan
The function of government in pure libertarian ideology is to enforce contracts, and arbitrate disputes. If this function isn’t performed properly, the Libertarian ideology falls apart right there… you would think then that they’d be more concerned about this issue. But in this case, as one commenter mentioned, poor folks might win out, so it’s not their concern, because actual libertarian thought today is mostly about keeping government away from well to do people.
Elvis Elvisberg
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Ok, that makes sense. It’s true, there’s no way a reasoned look at our history, what with the sweatshops and the fires and whatnot, would compel the idea that the sum total of human experience is “governments = bad.”
Also, as God is my witness, I dreamed a couple nights ago that I was watching old Patriots highlights, including a clip of Scott Zolak passing to Adam Vinatieri out of the shotgun. Vinatieri dropped a pretty good pass, in my subconscious.
Villago Delenda Est
jcricket
@CaptainFwiffo: I know this was snark, but what’s funny is how many libertarians believe this, evidence be damned.
You’d think it’d be in corporations rational self-interest not to make fraudulent loans that end up with the company going bankrupt. But the combination of short-term thinking by the individuals involved (“I’ll get my bonus and be long gone”), securitization (“it’s someone else’s problem”) and mega-monopolies (“too big to fail or it actually hurts us all”) mean that companies can act as you described with impunity.
What’s even more pernicious is that they can basically perform a slow-mugging with usurious credit card rates and fees, and then lobby congress to keep people in virtual debtor’s prisons through “bankruptcy reform” – in essence short-circuiting and “feedback mechanism” by which the companies would actually be punished/avoided by consumers.
Even the venerated Adam Smith said that capitalism breaks down when companies are monopolies/istic and have more power than the gov’t/collected people. Hmm, sound like what we’re living?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I could have sworn I wrote evil.
Paul in KY
@CaptainFwiffo: The essence of Libetarianism right there!
El Cid
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): You aren’t disagreeing with me. I’m not defending a warped view of this matter. I’m not saying that I view the foreclosure fraud crisis as mostly people overblowing some minor cases when it’s all mortgagees failing their duties. I’m saying that this is the characterization I run into. I’m saying that there are patterns with regard to with whom ‘libertarians’ seem to identify and with whom they don’t.
Apathy
@CaptainFwiffo: The Meta Mollusk speaks wisely.
The libertarians are basically being useful idiots for a pro corporation policy set rather than pro free markets. The argument I received pointing this out was upwards of a third (100 million+ it was said) of Americans have some stock in 401k’s and IRA’s and thus corporations were owned by ‘the people.’
All basically boils down to arguing what is good for GM is good for the country. It’s a major blindspot..an epistemic closure if you will.
jcricket
On a funnier note, here are the 24 types of Libertarians
I find that most, despite protestations, are “Denial-icans” (otherwise known as Republicans who aren’t necessarily socially conservative or nutty, but are willing to go along with it, as long as it means tax cuts for them).
With basically the exception of Radley Balko, I find most of the true voices of individual liberty are on the left these days (Glenn Greenwald, for one). There’s nothing useful in the practical application of Libertarianism as I see it in American politics today.
They’re about as meaningful as the gay Republicans.
sidhra
The corporations are going all out to buy the government.
Tom Hilton
Libertarians rig the philosophical game by focusing on the word “coercion” rather than on more useful concepts like power or hierarchy, and then defining it so narrowly that it can refer only to actions by the state. So to libertarians, by definition only the state can act in abusive ways.
SiubhanDuinne
@eemom #8:
It’s the wrong time, and the wrong place,
Though your face is charming, it’s the wrong face;
It’s not [his/her] face, but such a charming face
That it’s all right with me.
— Cole Porter
Villago Delenda Est
Yet when shareholders, both individual and institutional, attempt to even voice their concerns at shareholder meetings, more often than not they’re gaveled into silence by management droids.
Corporate governance is a hot issue, and when shareholders actually act like they, as the nominal owners of the operation, assert their (you’d think) rights as owners, they’re told to STFU.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: Maybe individual shareholders don’t but institutional shareholders definitely do. However institutional shareholders don’t hold stock for a long time, and their interests closely align with that of the management.
scav
@Violet:
With the caveat that there is and traditionally was a left fringe under the libertarian banner, they are currently largely swamped by the GOP refugees seeking a better brand name to huddle under. Because there certainly seems to be a disassociation of principles and organizing themes from the labels that used to be stamped on party tins. The “Tea Party” is a wildly popular brand-name with no coherent underlying philosophy of its own (it certainly pushes mood buttons and fragments may have internally consistent positions). It’s not as though it matters what’s in the tin so long as the label moves the product.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@El Cid: My misunderstanding. I wasn’t picking up on the this-is-how-libertarians-think vibe. Too early in the day I guess.
Tim F.
Your post is a little too vague. Individual libertarians screaming in the wilderness are about all kinds of things. Some of them are Glenn Greenwald. Few to none of those libertarians have a big audience and a megaphone, simply because caring about powerless private individuals doesn’t bring in a lot of money.
Funded libertarians ‘care’ about the people who fund them. With that crowd, which includes most ‘libertarian’ faces that ordinary people know and love, the individual always loses out to a powerful private interest. Every. Fucking. Time. They will never admit that private firms ration health care because the private firm is making a lot of private money, and that private money is the gas that keeps libertarian thinktanks like Cato and Reason running. They don’t cash many checks from random schmucks getting their house siezed and trashed by BoA goons foreclosing on the wrong address.
If some young mother gets her policy canceled because she develops cancer, great! Wealthy people at BC/BS get a little wealthier. To them that’s the system working as intended.
Mr Stagger Lee
But… But…I thought……Libertarians…..say that government’s job…..is to protect us…..from foreign and criminal aggression and contractual FRAUD!!!
(Well at least their “jesus” Ayn Rand believed))
timb
@El Cid: Why don’t they pay the property taxes, then? Legally, the property owner is the property owner and the mortgage company has a lien against the real property if the mortgage isn’t paid. My bank does NOT own my house; I do.
E.D. Kain
This is just ludicrous. The crux of the libertarian argument is that government empowers corporations and monopolies to be even more anti-competitive and even more abusive than they would otherwise be, that government intervention more often than not backfires and disproportionately effects the least powerful people in society. Maybe libertarians are wrong about this – maybe each situation is different – but saying:
…is just entirely without substance. Libertarians tend to focus on abuse by government, but quite often they focus on the abuse of government and corporations working in partnership with one another.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@jcricket: “Someday me and my friends will quit updating our blogs and the economy will collapse.” Hilarious.
eemom
@Napoleon:
Ooo, ooo! I know that one!! There’s a football player named that! I even know what team — the Patriots!!
I knowz my football.
BTD
I’ve never been interested in libertarianism as it is, to borrow your phrase, simply glib.
But I think you make an error when you refer to the foreclosure issues as simply abuse of power by corporations, not governments. In fact, the government is an essential player in this abuse, through the denial of due process to homeowners. The famous “rocket docket” mistermix referred to in his post.
Libertarians (and, imo, misguided progressives) were outraged by the Kelo decision involving a government taking that, it was alleged, was done solely to benefit a private company, Pfizer.
They can be upset with the snatching of property when they want.
Their indifference to the foreclosure fraud issue and the abuse of due process is, in my view, merely another example of the basic lack of substance in the libertarian movement. It is basically a group of poseurs.
FULL DISCLOSURE – I supported Kelo (represented Wal-Mart etc.) and currently represent homeowners with regard to foreclosure issues.
jwb
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, the corporations do listen to the mutual and pension fund managers, since they have the power to vote large blocks of stock; and ironically enough most regular folks own stocks through mutual and pension funds. Unfortunately, most mutual fund managers are even more focused on the quarterly statement than is the corporate management. So those of us who own mutual funds are in a very real sense investing in our own oppression.
Dave
This post nails it exactly on the head.
From my understanding, a non-biased interpretation of honest libertarianism would be a defense of the individual’s rights against the coercive power of the state.
The problem is that in our modern society, that coercive power is wielded by the corporations and the state is more active in PRESERVING our rights against that coercive power. And modern libertarian thought has been unable to grapple with that shift. Or is simply unwilling to try.
Honest libertarian thought would recognize the issue isn’t “government versus individual” anymore. It’s more complex. Sometimes the government is the problem (drug law, Patriot Act, etc.) But sometimes it is the corporations (mortgage closings, health care).
In honest Libertarianism, the focus wouldn’t be dependent on who is doing the coercion. It would always be on the individual. And since they can’t make that adjustment, the whole political theory is bankrupt.
JPL
Who would have thought that American Libertarians funded run by the Koch brothers and Dick Armey would be more fascist in nature. Well just darn, I learned something today. duh!
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
I understood DougJ’s point to be asking why their is no libertarian interest in the abuse of the court system in this foreclosure mess.
Your comment seems off base to me and to utterly miss the point.
But I imagine DougJ can defend himself better than I can.
E.D. Kain
@Tim F.: I’ve read a number of pieces at Cato that critique the current model of healthcare as well. I don’t always agree with their solutions, but your comment suggests that libertarians are always fine with people getting screwed by insurance companies. I don’t think that’s true. I think that a lot of libertarians would say the system we have is a result of policies which have prevented health insurance from working properly, such as the employee insurance tax deduction. Again, I don’t think the libertarian answer to healthcare reform is good enough, but I think many of its components are quite helpful. My personal notion is that we should have implemented all the free market reforms we could on top of an expanded, more robust Medicaid.
Dave
@Napoleon: A homage to yet another prescient and awesome undrafted free-agent pickup by the New England Patriots. Ran for over a thousand yards this year.
Dork
The stones on these people:
Fuck you, Jack Ass.
scav
@timb: Actually, I’ve a feeling it depends by state who, in a technical sense, owns the property while it is mortgaged. Most states say the mortgagee owns it and the mortgager has the lien, but I think MA and a few others (CA??) only assign title when the mortgage is fully paid off. How they square that with the tax-paying part of the equation is more than my small brain can handle, certainly without very good coffee. I think I read this in discussions of the MA judges verdict as a reason while the ruling might have limited application elsewhere.
Villago Delenda Est
On the contrary.
The teabaggers DO have a coherent underlying philosophy.
“The Sheriff is near”
THAT is what the teabaggers are all about. Everything else is camouflage.
jwb
@E.D. Kain: “Libertarians tend to focus on abuse by government, but quite often they focus on the abuse of government and corporations working in partnership with one another.” That statement is just crying for evidence in links, kind sir.
BTD
@Tim F.:
This is true for more than libertarians, but your point is well taken.
joes527
@E.D. Kain:
If that were the case, E.D, then Libertarians would be all over this issue. But all we hear is crickets.
BTD
@jwb:
On the foreclosure issue, no such evidence exists.
The libertarian silence, after their Kelo craziness, is quite a thing.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
Examples? You never gave me one for my supposed “straw men” so I won’t hold my breath.
Maybe it’s time to write another pissy post at the League about how we’re all assholes over here.
BTD
@joes527:
Which I took to be DougJ’s point.
E.D. Kain
@joes527: Okay, so here’s a question: Should someone who is not paying their mortgage be allowed to stay in their home due to a paperwork error on the part of the lender?
schrodinger's cat
Free market Libertarians inhabit the La La Land of Say’s Law, where supply creates its own demand. Markets always clear etc. etc. Unfortunately this La La Land does not exist in reality, but they want to believe, like Fox Mulder, it is like religion, more like a cult actually.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m afraid E.D. Kain is demonstrating his gormlessness when it comes to the reality behind the ideology he embraces.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Actually I did give you examples about your straw men. And yes – it was SEVERAL HOURS LATER – because I don’t live online and my purpose for being isn’t to answer comments in a timely fashion.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: He doesn’t need no stinking examples. He wants to believe..
scav
@Villago Delenda Est: well, it’s a low bar for philosophy and, as a single, very short, statement, probably passes the internal consistency test (some of the longer ones fail). But it might fly. I still bet they can’t all agree on just who the Sheriff is. I dare you to run a police (snicker) lineup.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
Only if their lender can prove that they are, indeed, their lender.
You see how this works? The paperwork is NOT trivial. It demonstrates who actually is the lender.
You just waved your hand. Sorry, you’re no Jedi.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@E.D. Kain:
Hahaha, exactly Doug’s point. ‘Tarians don’t care about corporate abuses, only corporate abuses when they collude with teh ebil gob’mint. If only the government didn’t exist, corporations would never do anything evil, ever.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Also, you want examples of how libertarians write about the problems of government and private collusion? Have you ever heard the term “regulatory capture” before?
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
I must have missed them, then, sorry. Could you give a link?
joes527
@E.D. Kain: No. And I don’t know anyone here who is claiming that they should. But that straw man does distract nicely from the question of whether banks should just be given a mulligan on their responsibilities.
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
What is the libertarian’s answer to your question?
And I love the “paperwork error” trivialization of the issue.
I bet you would not have called it a “paperwork error” if it was about Kelo and some notice that was mailed to the wrong address.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
Give me examples of the specific libertarian articles you are referring to.
(EDIT: I don’t doubt that they exist, but I suspect the emphasis is on government abuse, the idea being that the Galtian geniuses of the magical free market would never abuse anything without big gubmint making them do it.)
scav
I guess paperwork, like taxes, are for little people.
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
The foreclosure crisis was precisely a classic example of “regulatory capture.”
Does the phrase “rocket docket” ring a bell?
Elvis Elvisberg
joes527 wrote: “If [libertarians focused on government enabling of corporate abuses, as Kain claimed], then Libertarians would be all over this issue. But all we hear is crickets.
@E.D. Kain responded, “Okay, so here’s a question: Should someone who is not paying their mortgage be allowed to stay in their home due to a paperwork error on the part of the lender?”
So, E.D., you presumably believe that joe527 is correct, and libertarians are not writing about this issue, contrary to what you’d said.
As to your hypothetical question, to whom does the person living in their home owe money? How do we know? “Should they be able to stay” elides the issue of who has rights, and against whom they can be asserted. Do you want the government to throw those people out of their home, even if no private company or individual has any rights to the home?
BTD
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ding!
E.D. Kain
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m sure nobody owns those houses, and there is no moral hazard involved in letting people stay in them without paying for them at all.
BTD
@scav:
For libertarians, apparently so.
Kain makes DougJ’s point.
Villago Delenda Est
One thing that is missing from the entire “corporations collaborating with the ebil government” thing is that corporations are entities of government. Just as property itself is an entity of government. Without government, both coroporations and property would not exist.
Therefore, libertarians should be intensely concerned with any abuse by a corporation, because it is in effect a form of government abuse.
Which makes the libertarian non-concern with bank fraud even more damning of their “philosophy” which has less to do with liberty and more to do with their god, Mammon.
negative 1
@E.D. Kain: I cry foul. I don’t see any evidence of your assertion that libertarians care about corporations and governments working together in any other way than just caring about governments restrictions.
The issue at stake economically is whether or not an unfettered “free” market will actually lead to freedom of most citizens. Speaking without any motives in this argument, it has been repeatedly shown that the “free” market for commodities will end up as an oligarchy when corporations are involved more times than not. This is precisely because of diminishing marginal costs and an ability to engage in anti-corporate behavior. I’m sure plenty of libertarians will argue that point on several fronts, I make no assertions that it is the only view. However, in the last 100 to 150 years corporations have formed oligarchies in many major markets (cars, utilities, retail, food production, transportation). This severely restricts consumer choice, and limits a person’s ability to produce any of these themselves or act as the kind of small-scale capitalist producer early capitalists envisioned. Our current economy looks nothing like what capitalism was planned as.
Whether or not libertarians agree it is certainly a viable argument and there is a real argument over whether or not government intervention is needed to allow for those freedoms of small producers and consumer choice. In other words, regulation may be needed to further freedom. But the current libertarian literature tends towards the “government bad!” arguments only and still says only “democrats are bad!”. This is why it is very difficult to take most current libertarians seriously.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Right. Because that’s what libertarians think – that the government makes corporations do bad things. It’s impossible to talk seriously with people who are so lacking in seriousness. Is this what you really believe that libertarians believe? If so, I’m afraid we will continue to talk past one another, your caricature of your opponents is so deeply ingrained.
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
You speak of moral hazard and demand that basic failures by lenders be excused.
Every comment you make strengthens DougJ’s point.
You care about personal responsibility but not corporate responsibility.
Whatever the failings of the corporation, they must be excused.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Also, If E.D. can find a single Cato institute paper (or libertarian paper anywhere) that decries the abuses of insurance companies without mentioning how it really is the fault of government regulation of the insurance companies, i’ll give him an internet.
jwb
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, if libertarianism did what E.D. said it would be far more interesting and, in DougJ’s terms, politically relevant. It may well be that libertarians actually believe what he says. But oddly enough my experience is that they rarely talk about government-corporation collusion or the government empowering corporations. If what he says is true, I can only imagine that the libertarians recognize their pay is tied to remaining silent about half of their philosophy.
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
I
That’s why talking to libertarians is generally a waste of time.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
Then the party foreclosing on the house with no payments being made should be able to document that they indeed have the right to foreclose. And that no payments have been made. There’s that annoying “paperwork” again that you’re so disdainful of.
Dave
@E.D. Kain: E.D., that’s exactly the problem. No one knows who owns that house. The only entity we are sure has SOME claim to the residence are the people living in it. The bank comes along with some bullshit memo that isn’t properly endorsed, hasn’t followed the law, but you want to give them the benefit of the doubt? There is a larger moral hazard in enabling large financial institutions with a lot of coercive power to take homes without following the law than letting a family of four live in a house until the law can properly be followed.
chris
Here is, for your delectation, yet another amusing evisceration of libertarians and their ism. Enjoy.
Elvis Elvisberg
@E.D. Kain: What is the moral hazard risk? There can be none, unless you think it was standard industry practice for lenders to throw away their rights with their paperwork (which would be an obvious case for enhanced regulation of lenders).
Is that what you’re arguing– that the Government should make people pay money even if there’s no demonstration that they owe it, because otherwise it would be bad for society?
SiubhanDuinne
@Dork #53:
Gosh. I wasn’t the *least* bit surprised to learn that Jack Harper is a Republican.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
I need examples. You can’t call just call me an asshole and be done with it.
My example is that they’ve written almost noting about the foreclosure crisis. You have to give me a good example.
That is how arguments work.
E.D. Kain
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not disdainful of paperwork at all. I’m just questioning the logic here that apparently those homes must be owned by nobody and any paperwork mistakes must mean that people can live the home without paying anyone for it at all.
BTD
@Villago Delenda Est:
Demanding respect for the rule of law should be an essential feature of libertarianism.
As Kain demonstrates in this thread, and as libertarians have demonstrated with their non-reaction to the foreclosure crisis, it isn’t.
That’s why they’re called “glibertarians,”
Hob
@E.D. Kain: You seem to be confused about the nature of the fraud cases that we’re talking about here. Robo-signing is not about paperwork errors, and in many cases it does not involve people who simply stopped paying their mortgage. The “lenders” in these cases are companies that either–
a) falsified documents to indicate that the buyer was in arrears when that wasn’t the case, or
b) did not issue the loan in the first place and do not have legal ownership of the property at all.
Oddly you don’t seem concerned with whether these criminals deserve to acquire a house– only with the possibility that the person living in the house doesn’t deserve to keep it.
I’ve had more patience with your posts here than some, but this is really vile.
Francis
@E.D. Kain: Depends on the nature of the mistake.
Is the mortgage currently owned by an entity in bankruptcy? Then the borrower stays in his house until the court can figure out who is running the entity and whether foreclosure vs. renegotiation is in the better interest of the creditor.
Is the paper trail so hopelessly confused that it cannot be determined who owns the note and mortgage? Then the lender gets to file a quiet title action on the note and mortgage, go through that court action first, and whoever wins gets to foreclose. If that’s too expensive, then the banking system eats the mistake and the homeowner gets a windfall.
Is the servicer utterly corrupt? Then the court can suggest to the homeowner to countersue, and write off a big portion of the debt.
Are the interests of the trust being adequately represented? Maybe the beneficiaries of the trust (those who bought the securities issued by the trust) should be telling the trustee to displace the servicer and put in someone who will renegotiate rather than foreclose.
etc.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
At least give me a link to your examples of my “straw men” earlier. Give me something to work with.
BTD
@Elvis Elvisberg:
The moral hazard is the reverse – to wit, the same one libertarians decried regarding TARP – banks screwed up and will not pay a price for their screwups.
The moral hazard argument works exactly backwards to what Kain is arguing.
Letting the banks get away with their failures on “the paperwork” is the policy that creates moral hazard.
Napoleon
@Dave:
I geuss I didn’t pay attention to the NFL this year.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Honestly, I’m not sure how much ink has been spilled on the foreclosure topic specifically by libertarians. I’m objecting more to your huge overgeneralization that all libertarians care about is the rights of corporations – a glib, all-too-common sentiment expressed around these parts. Here, why don’t you prove to me that this is all libertarians care about. Can you prove it?
BTD
@Francis:
To not do this is to create moral hazard.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
Those home, by LAW, are owned by the homeowner making the payments. The home itself is security for the loan.
If you can’t prove you hold the loan, you can’t foreclose on the home.
Hell, in Florida, apparently there is no need for a loan to even exist for a bankster to start a foreclosure process. The paper trail has been ignored by the “rocket docket” system. It’s like free lunch for thieves, and you seem to have NO OBJECTION to this.
E.D. Kain
@BTD: No, the moral hazard argument works both ways. I’m not saying the banks aren’t at fault in many of these instances. I honestly don’t know. What I’m asking is what do we do about it? Do we let people live in homes they aren’t paying for because of paperwork errors?
schrodinger's cat
@BTD: I think he has no idea about what he is talking about. Anyone who speaks in jargon, like ED here, (examples: regulatory capture, moral hazard), is usually spewing BS. Repeating what they have heard without really understanding it.
Edited for clarity.
Hob
And E.D., now that you’re showing up in the comment section– maybe you could explain why the doctrinaire libertarian answer to every goddamn thing in the world involves contracts between private citizens, if you’re going to sneer at those contracts as meaningless “paperwork” when it’s convenient to do so.
(ETA: You may need to find some other way to hijack the discussion, since Francis @97 has answered your questions… and those answers are not hard to find either; I’ve seen them addressed dozens of times, including on this blog. Which makes it look a lot like you never really gave the matter any thought beyond bringing up the specter of undeserving squatters as a “gotcha”.)
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
I admit I am using libertarian a bit broadly here. How about we define it as what can be read in Reason online? Then, yes, I can prove it.
Dave
@E.D. Kain: Yes. because they are the only party involved that we KNOW has an actual interest in the property. If the bank cannot follow the law and prove an actual interest, they they should have no standing. Otherwise you are encouraging financial institutions to break the law. Which is a larger moral hazard than a family in a home.
beltane
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Hey, give him a break. Upthread he said that unlike you, he doesn’t “live on-line all day” (only the part of the day that allows him to churn out unsupported assertions)
Elvis Elvisberg
@E.D. Kain:
Why? Why do you think there’s a systemic risk that people will live in homes and not pay for them?
Do you believe that it was standard industry practice for lenders to throw away their rights with their paperwork (which would be an obvious case for enhanced regulation of lenders)?
Do you believe that the Government should make people pay money even if there’s no demonstration that they owe it, because otherwise it would be bad for society?
TF79
@Francis:
Your knowledge of the housing mortgage market is no match for paeans to liberty! freedom! evil government! wolverines!
Previously I had enjoyed a number of E.D’s posts and comments (I’m an academic economist, full disclosure), but this is like a case study in sloppy libertarianism.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
Why don’t we at least get upset about the cases where people get kicked out of their homes for no reason, the way we get upset when the police raid a house for no reason? I think it’s about the same.
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
Do you believe in the rule of law? you ask “what do we do?”
In the first instance, we do WHAT THE LAW REQUIRES.
If we are discussing formulation of new policy, my own preference is for a policy that aims at keeping people in their homes (and if that requires payment schedules, government loans, writedowns etc, then of course we have to look at the right mix on that), not just because that seems the most decent policy, but because that policy is the one that would best serve the country.
YMMV.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: You wrote:
It’s mainly the whole “centrist” bullshit. Any time you want to write off someone who isn’t easily castigated as partisan or a ‘wingnut’ you call them a ‘centrist’ and liken them to the Broders of the world. Don’t like a nuanced position? Just call it baseless centrism and voila! Problem solved.
jwb
@E.D. Kain: Well, if the paper work isn’t in order it may well be that the issue of ownership is undecidable. I don’t know what contract law would say about such issues, but I’m rather sure that it wouldn’t say, as you imply, that the moral hazard is all on the side of the mortgagee. There should be a moral hazard to not keeping your fucking records in order, especially when it was irresponsibly done to save costs on recording mortgage transfers.
ChrisS
Man, I would totally be over a libertarian website that focused on corporate abuse of power … instead the only ones I see are cranks and/or boot lickers. Nothing like a good ol’ discussion on the tyranny of seatbelts or smoking bans
Links?
liberal
@E.D. Kain:
You don’t get it. It’s not an issue of a “paperwork error.” It’s an issue of the bank not being able to prove it’s the party with a legitimate right to foreclose.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: I tend to agree – though when police raid homes and shoot and kill people or pets, it’s a little more traumatic than when people who aren’t making payments on their homes get kicked out. Should we fix the problems in the banking industry – fraud, etc.? Yes, absolutely. But what exactly do you expect libertarians to be saying? What should the libertarian line on this be? Can you point to a systemic problem in the banking industry that a specific policy might solve?
BTD
@schrodinger’s cat:
On the issue of regulatory capture – if you looked for perhaps the cleanest example of this – look no further than the Florida rocket docket, created to enable banks to avoid having to comply with the law.
beltane
@Dave: In the libertarian worldview, the worst possible outcome, the most heinous sin of all, is that one of the peon class should be at the receiving end of a little unjust enrichment. Therefore, it is preferable to enable the banks to fraudulently take everyone’s home than it is to follow established property law and entertain the possibility that Joe Epsilon gets a free house.
Dave
@E.D. Kain: The libertarian line should be protecting the individual from coercive power. Be it wielded by the State or a corporation. And the Florida “rocket docket” is both, with the State and corporations combining to run roughshod over individuals. How hard is it for you to see that?
liberal
@E.D. Kain:
You’re right; that statement is incorrect. A more accurate statement would be that libertarians are liberty-despising, crypto-feudalist scum.
BTD
I apologize for cluttering the comment sections on this post.
But it is an issue that I work on personally and frankly, have come to feel very strongly about.
I’ll leave y’all to your discussion.
Stillwater
@E.D. Kain: I’m sure nobody owns those houses, and there is no moral hazard involved in letting people stay in them without paying for them at all.
Dude, are you really as incapable of teasing out relevant distinctions in complex situations as it seems? Is you’re entire approach to advocacy based on conflating moral, legal, causal, institutional, consequential, factors? Do you always beg the question and miss the point this blatantly?
E.D. Kain
@BTD: I don’t know enough about the rocket-docket system to say whether it qualifies as regulatory capture. Are their regulations or regulators even involved? I’m pretty sure these are judicial proceedings.
Michael
@E.D. Kain:
God damn it – that’s ignorant bullshit. You’ve seen the explanation in pretty much EVERY FUCKING THREAd on this issue, and sneeringly repeat the lie again, like a chubby, sneering Ross Douthat cutting a greasy wet fart.
That piddling bit of paperwork is the material that gives you standing to be making claims in court in the first place – no track record, no complaint. You’re undoing a couple of hundred years’ worth of basic, understandable contract mortgage and procedural standards, all to fluff for special rights for dumbasses who decided that having enough people and infrastructure around to properly process the paperwork for their “innovative new investment vehicles” would cut too deeply into their profits. In other words, as usual, conservatives and libertarians create the moral hazard and then expect everybody else to pick up the tab.
Fuck you for repeating the zombie lie, asshole.
jwb
@E.D. Kain: Look at how you phrased that. Why do you presume that bank is the innocent party: How would you feel about letting banks take a home using fraudulent paperwork?
beltane
@liberal: Maybe if my neighbor doesn’t make his car payments I can just go over and take his car. That is essentially what these banks are doing when they seize a property they do not hold the mortgage on.
Dave
@beltane: Well, that’s why I say Libertarianism in its modern form is bankrupt. It refuses to adjust to the idea that corporations can be as much, if not a larger, coercive power against individuals. And that sometimes the government is actually our defender against that coercive power.
liberal
@E.D. Kain:
If you actually knew what you’re talking about, you’d know that there are also people making payments who have been kicked out. Even people with no connection whatsoever to the bank that raided their house and changed their locks.
Villago Delenda Est
Yes.
Because they own that home.
If the lender can’t prove that they have a legitimate, documented interest, they have no claim on that property. Period.
They.Are.Fucked. Too fucking bad for them. The “securitized mortgage” gravy train has derailed, and they’re left bleeding by the rails with both legs broken. The party was fun while it lasted!
E.D. Kain
@Dave: I have no doubt that the rocket-docket system could use some serious oversight. What exactly would you propose we do to reform it?
cmorenc
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
I understand the point you’re trying to make here, but you’ve framed it in a highly inaccurate way.
Libertarianism DOES have tremendous relevance in modern American politics, as a basic belief motivating what a great many Americans think the relationship between private individuals and the government ought to be. What’s wrong is the model in their minds of how libertarianism actually works out in modern American politics, especially in the economic realm. They conceive of an ideal Jeffersonian America of free yeomen, of small artisans and merchants, of a limitless frontier where individuals whose situation wasn’t working out to their satisfaction were free to pick up stakes and move to the frontier and claim a stake for themselves in new land or economic opportunities. Some Galtian libertarians DO understand the practical implications of modern economic libertarianism, which is that a deserving elite (from their perspective) rises and accumulates disproportionate control and wealth over most other people, with corporations being a conveniently necessary business vehicle toward this accomplishment. However, a large number of non-elites still have the Jeffersonian free yeoman ideal in mind, not realizing the uses to which their Galtian overlords are conveniently putting them to as political tools (or useful fools), throwing them some symbolic gold-painted peanuts of freedom along the way to keep them from understanding that society is actually being run as a corporate oligarchy in which most individuals have in fact very limited economic freedom (mostly the freedom to be jobless and fail).
BTD
@E.D. Kain:
IF your view of the phrase “regulatory capture” is strictly limited to the idea that the only regulators are executive agencies, then well, I have a different view of it.
The court system is a “regulator,” in that it determines, in some instances, what the government can do (including the regulators), resolves disputes between private entities etc.
If “government regulation” to you is merely the EPA and does not include the judicial process, then “regulatory capture” may not work for you as a phrase.
How about “judicial capture?”
Would that concern you?
E.D. Kain
@Villago Delenda Est: Can the home owner prove they own the property in these cases? Do they have paperwork that shows they own the property despite not paying for it?
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
You wrote for example:
It appears that he was specifically after Gifford, perhaps had a long grudge against her. Why? I don’t know. But neither do you.
And I think that your premature speculation about what motivated the shooter (speculation that may very well be right) was partly inspired by the desire to show that you are of no party or clique.
liberal
@Dave:
That’s not quite right. The problem is that most so-called libertarians think there’s no such think as coercion by any private parties, not just corporations.
Jay in Oregon
@Dork:
So does that mean it’s OK to start pointing fingers and making this a partisan issue now?
jwb
@BTD: And we’ve heard the proverbial crickets as the libertarian response to the rocket docket, I presume.
arguingwithsignposts
OT, but I seriously hope DougJarvis Green-Ellis hops on this: Wa-Po’s Fact Checker column is back:
I somehow suspect they won’t be starting with the thugs running their op-ed page.
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: True, it looks more and more like a personal grudge – but still not about her politics specifically.
Oh right. Because after the initial revelations which showed Loughner to be totally batshit crazy, the only POSSIBLE reason I could have for my speculations was to appear of ‘no party or clique’. And your statements that basically said the exact same thing were what?
liberal
@E.D. Kain:
LOL. You’re getting more and more pathetic.
scav
@E.D. Kain: You’re pontificating on about home mortgages and fraud and the bogey man of moral hazard blah blah blah and you don’t know about the rocket dockets? ! So is this all abstract posturing about ideals on your part with no tie-in to what’s actually happening? ‘Cause I don’t think you’re playing the dewy-eyed ingenue card.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
Libertarians don’t usually suggest any specific remedies for police raids either. But they still write about them (as they should).
schrodinger's cat
@E.D. Kain: Deregulation of the banking sector through the 80’s and 90’s is the root of most of the financial crises we have endured since then. We need to put the banking genie in its bottle, like it was after the Great Depression.
Deregulation good, regulations bad, philosophy is what hasn’t worked, though I still see Republicans/Libertarians/conservatives clinging to it. This philosophy has only helped the .001 of the population and not the economy in general. So it is logical to assume that libertarian philosophy serves wealthy interests and not the average person, especially where economics is concerned.
Dave
@E.D. Kain: Force a bank to follow the law and properly prove they have an interest in the property. The rocket docket was set up to allow banks to circumvent the proper procedures.
ChrisS
@E.D. Kain:
actually, I think what DougJ and a lot of people on this site would like to see is a libertarian approach to fixing problems with fraudulent foreclosures, including the “rocket docket”. What they’re decrying is that the libertarian mainstream really doesn’t give a shit.
NonyNony
@Michael:
And this dismissal of hundreds of years of contract law and property rights law is EXACTLY why people are coming to the conclusion that libertarians of the stripe over at Reason are not even serious about property rights – the ONE FUCKING GODDAMN THING that libertarians of all stripes are SUPPOSED to a) know about and b) care FURIOUSLY about.
I came to the conclusion 15 years ago that libertarianism was fucked up because they cared more about state coercion than corporate coercion (and in the modern day US corporate coercion is far more pervasive and affects us far, far more than state coercion does) but GOD-FUCKING-DAMNIT at least when I ran with the libertarian crowd in the 90s they would get fucking upset about someone claiming to own something without any legal standing to prove they fucking OWN it.
Even ED Kain, who I thought might be sensible and well-informed on this, has proven himself to be nothing more than a corporate apologist shill for people who want to claim property that they have NO right to because they decided to sidestep the legal bits and pretend like they actually own property they can show no documentation that they own. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this at all, but I am.
liberal
@cmorenc:
That’s the key to the reason why so-called libertarianism is incoherent as a system of political/economic thought. They think there’s nothing wrong with privileged parties owning (rent-producing) assets like land, which are not in fact the fruit of their own labor.
Violet
@E.D. Kain:
The powerful ‘libertarians’ such as the Kochs are much more about protecting their power and money than they are anything else. They work hand in hand with people like Murdoch and Ailes to craft messages to make it seem like protecting corporations is the same thing as protecting the rights of the individual.
These concepts trickle down to the population and are sold as “libertarian ideals.” If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, etc. long enough you’ll see this pattern. At this point even his callers decry the horrible taxes on the corporations and how unfair it is to CEOs not to be paid huge salaries.
I’m sure there are some libertarians out there who are doing great intellectual work on how libertarianism protects individuals and markets solve everything, but in the real world where the rubber hits the road libertariansm = corporatocracy, most especially enriching those at the very top of the corporations.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Only one side had the power to make it so the system allowed this in the first place. And one side also has the lawyers and the financial expertise that is meant to help them find the charlatans trying to game them. So I have no problem whatsoever if we give the banks all the blame. They didn’t have to make it so easy for scammers to get a mortgage.
schrodinger's cat
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: He is Broder in training, Broder has to retire sometime, he is not getting any younger. EDK here can be Washpost’s reasonable conservative. Its a good gig if you can get it!
I definitely think he is much better than torture apologists who currently inhabit the Washpost Op-ed pg.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
Given the axiom that possession is 9/10ths of the law, then, I think the question is answered, right then and there, don’t you?
If you had an ounce of intellectual integrity you’d surrender, right now.
But, like most glibertarians, you have none at all.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
I started to say “if you made me say what I think was going on with the shooter…”, then realized, I just don’t have any idea. I don’t what influenced him, I don’t know who he talked to. I don’t know what makes you so sure that he wasn’t in some way influenced by something he saw on Glenn Beck or whatever.
We just don’t know. Except you think you do.
EDIT: All right, if I was forced to express an opinion on this, I would say that it’s fairly likely that this had nothing to do with any right-wing rhetoric. But honestly, I just don’t see how we can know that no. And I don’t understand why you think he didn’t specifically target Giffords.
Omnes Omnibus
@Villago Delenda Est: There are indeed two sides here. People who are not paying may deserve to lose their house to the people who hold the mortgage and note, but since they have an equitable title in the place, they have superior rights to anyone else. In order to take the house from them, the bank needs to prove that they hold superior rights to the homeowner; that is, they need to show that they hold the mortgage and note. One cannot just say, “Hey, these people are behind 180 days on their mortgage; I shall take their house.” You need, or should need, to prove that you have the right to take. It is not that fucking complicated.
scav
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis: Some complete lines of documentation of ownership need to proved while others do not.
liberal
@E.D. Kain:
That, in itself, is revealing. You apparently can’t even imagine the situation of a corporation or other private party abusing someone with no help from the government, so you don’t even raise the logical possibility.
Stillwater
@E.D. Kain: And your statements that basically said the exact same thing were what?
Er, no. You said that the evidence indicates that he had no particular party affiliation. DougJ said that the lack of definitive evidence requires that we refrain from attributing a party affiliation.
See how those two things are different?
E.D. Kain
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
Sure they do. The biggest policy suggestion is ending the war on drugs. Others are making police records more transparent, allowing the video-taping of police, etc.
El Cid
@timb:
In real world terms, you have responsibility for the home as part of your mortgage contract, but you own the house only in so far as the mortgage holder agrees to continue those terms. If it does not agree to do so and to terminate your provisional ownership, and if the government (via agencies or courts) does not block their foreclosure on your home, then it is no longer provisionally yours and you will be thrown out by the coercive power of law enforcement.
This is the practical view. This is the way it works. Anyone can cite reams of legal precedent and US or state code provisions, but it works as above.
KG
@El Cid: some libertarians would definitely argue that point. I’m not one of them, I’m a libertarian who is skeptical of power concentrated anywhere, oligarchy is as dangerous as tyranny. A more free society is the goal and abuse of power from either the private or public sector leads to a less free society.
The general problem I have with much of the libertarian movement is that it came of age in the 1970s when overregulation was a legitimate concern. But that is no longer the world we live in, unfortunately, many libertarians (like many conservatives generally) want to continue to believe it’s 1978.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
Okay, I am out of here for the next three or four hours.
liberal
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
I thought there were 10th Amendment shibboleths in his writings.
E.D. Kain
@liberal: If corporations abuse power they should be held accountable for breaking whatever laws they may break. If government abuses power they are often shielded from the law because they write the law. If corporations abuse the law with the backing of the government they are likewise shielded from legal ramifications. Therefor it is important to limit the power the government has to shield corporations and itself from legal repercussions.
I mean, of course corporations abuse their power, attempt to coerce, etc. But only the government can use violence legally. So the real threat is these two forces combining – giving corporations the legal use of violence against ordinary people. That’s why private armies and private prisons are among the most troubling institutions in modern society.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain: Look up the concept of equitable title.
NobodySpecial
@cmorenc: Then that’s because your second group are really incredibly dumb. In Lincoln’s time, the small businessman was being subsumed by large corporations. That Jeffersonian model was dying 150 years ago.
scav
OT: but if anyone needs a giggle about the unintended consequences of rhetoric, a part of Assange’s arguement against rendition to Sweden is that
insert me chortling hysterically here
ericblair
@Dave:
Exactly, as per hundreds of years of property law. The whole “rocket docket” was developed to get around these pesky technicalities, as the banks screwed up the foreclosure process so badly with so many mortgages, proper treatment of these cases was going to take a long, long time.
The idea that libertarians are this blase about parties knocking on the door with a half-assed form with errors and perjury on it and taking people’s property is amazing. You guys should be crapping your pants with anger at this violation of core libertarian principles.
jwb
@E.D. Kain: Why do you shift the burden of proof to the people living in the home? Surely, a properly conservative answer would be that unless someone can prove otherwise, ownership is presumed to reside with the occupant. That proving otherwise: that’s what the fucking paperwork is about, which is why the banks were irresponsible in their handling of it and why they should be materially damaged for their irresponsibility. I think the moral hazard carries far more risk in rewarding the bank than the homeowner. Hell, maybe the banks will even learn that they need to properly record their mortgage transfers. What a concept!
gwangung
@KG: Hm. Isn’t that the point that matching individuals against a corporation/collective organization is inherently unequal? The collective has more money. It has more time. It can specialize and more easily draw upon experts. It can easily exhaust the individual’s resources regardless of the situation’s justice.
Plenty of room for abuse there.
Mike Kay
@DougJarvus Green-Ellis:
O.T.
David Brooks was on PBS Newshour last night and he was outraged that people are calling on the right wing and palin in particular to stop using violent rhetoric, saying critics are being “irresponsible” in linking violence to violent rhetoric.
HA! That’s a hot one.
I bet David feels differently when radical moooslim clerics use violent language.
sidhra
@E.D. Kain:
Can the home owner prove they own the property in these cases?
The County Courthouse usually has this paperwork stuff called “Deeds” that are recorded with the Court naming the property owner in question. That could be a start.
Elvis Elvisberg
So, in this thread, E.D. Kain has made the following points:
– libertarians do too care about corporate abuses (no I don’t know of any examples.
– the moral hazard problem does too apply to people in homes (no I can’t explain why).
– How can anyone prove that anyone owns anything, really, if you think about it?
– I am mad about an unrelated issue from another thread a few days ago.
Listen, I think you’ve taken some unnecessarily harsh criticism around this site generally, E.D., but in this thread, you really don’t seem to care about getting to the bottom of any facts or ideas at all.
El Cid
@E.D. Kain: Georgia’s new Republican super-conservative financially troubled governor Nathan Deal suggested in his brief inaugural address that an exclusive ‘war on drugs’ approach was no longer the best thing for Georgia.
It’s not a war on the war on drugs, but given that now so many rural white Georgians have been devastated by the meth plague, it’s not seen as just a problem related to blacks, hippies, and illegal Latino immigrants.
[Oh, I forgot this statement:]
Clearly he’s revealed himself as a weed-loving hippie RINO.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@E.D. Kain:
…and I have a magic rock that keeps away tigers.
One of libertarianism’s flaws is that it is deeply ahistorical, which is why libertarians have so little in the way of actual evidence to point to supporting their political philosophy – large and complex libertarian societies being rather rare in the historical record, to put it mildly.
The US is at the libertarian end of the spectrum of OECD countries in terms of having a deeply ingrained cultural hostility towards government power and a bias in favor of unrestrained corporate power. If the libertarian utopia hasn’t been obtained yet and in fact is not even currently within sight, right here in the contemporary US, and that coming after 30+ years of strident anti-government rhetoric broadcast from numerous sources of cultural and political power and influence (including at various times the chief leaders of the government itself, e.g. Reagan and Gingrich), then it’s not going to happen.
The US in the last quarter of the 19th Cen was the libertarian utopia. That is as close as you are ever going to get. And the society we have today is the result in part of people in the US exercising their collective wisdom in trying to fix all of the manifest and intolerable problems that came with that utopia.
E.D. Kain
@jwb: I think I’d have to look at it on a case by case basis honestly. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have someone do a real investigation of these cases to see what’s actually going on.
NobodySpecial
@E.D. Kain: And yet, they vote against Democrats between 60 and 70 percent of the time, even when the Presidential candidate for the Democrats is a man who wrote legislation mandating videotaping of police interrogations and his opponent was a supporter of increasing the War on Drugs.
Color me not impressed with fancy rhetoric when at the ballot box they vote for tax cuts uber alles.
schrodinger's cat
@gwangung: But they can’t kill you or put you in prison, only the govt can do that, so its OK according EDK’s arguments in this thread.
Downpuppy
@schrodinger’s cat: Broder will never retire. His columns can be written for the next decade using 20 lines of software. And
the PostKaplan will go on printing them, just like comics pages everywhere still run Beetle Bailey.Barb (formerly Gex)
@E.D. Kain: I think there is much greater moral hazard in letting these banks run around taking homes that they don’t own. There are people who have paid their mortgages in full who have been losing homes because the banks don’t have the paperwork in order. If you think any given individual who takes advantage of the moral hazard here is as great a threat to the proper functioning of the economy than banks learning they can just take property so long as they say “we don’t know what happened to the paperwork”, I’m going to have to vehemently disagree with you. The more powerful organizations have a greater ability to abuse their power.
rikyrah
LIBERTARIANS live in a dream world.
I know this is mean, but considering what state it’s in,
WHEN the next mining accident happens in the state of Kentucky, and their Senator tells them to sit down, shut up, and that the ‘accidents happen’, I don’t want them to say a word – they voted for the clown.
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain: In other words, you are spouting off about general principles without having any real understanding of property law or its applications. Here is a general legal principle for you: Homeowners have superior rights in their property over everyone except those who can prove that their rights trump those of the homeowner. Almost tautological, isn’t it? What proves the homeowner’s right, you ask? Deeds, at the County Registrar’s Office.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@E.D. Kain: Your willingness to let banks without paperwork take homes from people seems evidence enough.
Michael
@E.D. Kain:
Fuck you – you’re a dishonest information peddler.
@E.D. Kain:
Hahaahahahahaahhaahahahahahah….
Hold them accountable after the fact, and you’ll hear squeals about the desperate necessity for tort reform from your asshole crowd. Try and hold them accountable by regulation, and your asshole crowd squeals about tyranny. Try and hold directors and officers accountable via third party and shareholder suits, and they’ll hide behind multiple walls of statutory and SCOTUS created immunity and defenses, and your asshole crowd will squall about the economic necessity of giving them a free hand for innovative risk taking.
jwb
@Mike Kay: Actually, it’s more or less the same argument as violent films and video games with respect to causing violence. In this respect, Palin’s gun sight poster might be marginally acceptable as metaphor (even if it’s still not advisable); but I still don’t see any way that talk about second amendment solutions, for instance, can be understood as anything but actual threats.
ericblair
@E.D. Kain:
Absolutely. Except the whole point of the rocket docket is to make sure that nobody does a real investigation. From Taibbi’s article here, Jacksonville’s Judge Soud’s goal was to resolve 25 foreclosure cases per hour. Not a typo. That’s not a lot of room for investigation there.
Francis
@E.D. Kain: OK, now you’re not even trying. Every person who buys a house gets a piece of paper called a “deed”. If the buyer receives even moderately competent advice from his broker, he checks his mail carefully about a month after the purchase, whereupon he gets a copy of the “recorded deed”. If a copy of the recorded deed never shows up, he should call his broker.
And now, tada! the homeowner can lose every last document regarding the purchase, because he can go to the recorder’s office and establish that a deed for that property exists in his name.
So yes, it is dead easy for a person to determine who owns what property. In fact, most deed registries are now online, so I could, if I wanted, see what real property you own, ED.
E.D. Kain
@Elvis Elvisberg: Okay, so you think libertarians don’t ever write about corporate abuse? Here’s a link from a very brief google search.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@E.D. Kain: Much better to let random banks run around kicking people out of houses just by claiming they are owed money.
This inability to see the qualitative difference between the two competing moral hazards is why libertarians are considered to prefer powerful corporations over the individual. If you were concerned with individual liberty, you would be upset about property being confiscated without proof. Instead you are worried that individuals might be getting something free from the banks. That is why Doug says libertarians care more for corporations than people. This isn’t just like repossessing someone’s boat. These are HOMES. There are kids sleeping in bedrooms.
The banks surely can let those children sleep in their beds while they track down the paperwork, can’t they?
Whatever. Hopeless hopeless hopeless.
Johannes
@E.D. Kain: Yes. It’s called a deed. Damn, Kain, you’re lack of comprehension on this specific issue is staggering. Let’s recap:
1. Homeowner owns house. See pretty document called a “deed.”
2. Lender has security interest (not ownership) which can cause ownership to shift if (1) HO defaults and (2) Lender retains security interest.
3. Uh-oh; Lender transfers its security interest to Entity, which does the same an unknown number of times. None of them complies with legal requirements for said transfer. Original files are lost or destroyed. Indeed someone has right to collect and/or foreclose, but who? HO cannot determine this, as s/he never received notice, and Servicer’s records conflict.
4. Can’t prove you own the security interest? Can’t foreclose–it’s caused due process.
Do the research, willya?
E.D. Kain
Gosh, I wonder what it’s like in these threads when there’s nobody to disagree with?
jwb
@Barb (formerly Gex): Libertarians know who signs the pay check.
Stillwater
@E.D. Kain: It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have someone do a real investigation of these cases to see what’s actually going on.
Time moves quick, EDK, and you seem to still be stuck in the starting blocks. This (only one example) from a quick Google search (from the Vermont AG):
E.D. Kain
Also – how much of this is just based on the Taibbi article alone? Do you guys have any other sources to show that actual fraud is going on?
Michael
@E.D. Kain:
Awesome – a libertarianspit wrote something critical about big business four years ago.
And yet the author did manage to get in the bugaboo about big, evil government – which, of course, is the only entity with the ability to tamp the abusive nature of our immortal masters.
How about something more recent, with some criticism of how certain sectors have demonstrated indifference to both their customers and the public at large?
Omnes Omnibus
@E.D. Kain: This isn’t disagreeing with someone; this is correcting fundamental errors in understanding so that a reasonable discussion is even possible.
Chyron HR
@E.D. Kain:
Ombudsman’s on the case!
schrodinger's cat
[email protected]
I iz in Ur comments section, being smug.
Villago Delenda Est
@E.D. Kain:
There you go again, attempting to wave your hand.
You are no Jedi. Don’t even try.
gwangung
@E.D. Kain: You could do some homework.
But that’s indicated in any event. (Really, now. Isn’t it kind of obvious you will get served your head when you don’t do that? Because there are people WHO KNOW MORE THAN YOU DO. Intellectual principles loses out to emprical knowledge).
Francis
@E.D. Kain: The Ibanez case, out of Mass. Any number of posts at Naked Capitalism or Calculated Risk. Any number of newspaper articles on the investigation of the Stern law firm. Any number of blog posts and newspaper articles on robosigners.
Geez, ED, I would have thought that as the ‘ombudsman’ in charge of defending libertarianism on this blog, you’d be a little more on the side of accuracy and fairness in the judicial process.
gwangung
@E.D. Kain: This is an astonishingly ignorant comment.
Kryptik
@jwb:
See, I thought about this before in that context, and in my view, it’s different.
The argument with the violent movie and game stuff is that said media are teaching kids and people to emulate behavior there, simply because it looks fun and has no consequences unlike in real life.
The key difference between that and the arguments made about violent rhetoric is that the violent political rhetoric strikes me much like violent religious rhetoric. The catalyst isn’t so much behavior to emulate (as it’s less likely there’s behavior to see and emulate explicitly) as it is appeal to both emotion and morals. The very idea that this HAS to be done, it’s RIGHTEOUS for it to be done, because of the consequences if it’s not done. It’s not emulation of behavior, but an appeal to personal safety and well-being, a much more pernicious catalyst than simply saying a kid stomped on a turtle because he saw it on TV. It’s much more complex too since often times you can’t simply point to a behavior and then point to similar on the surface behavior from some media. It’s about the rhetoric and the rationale that have to be traced back. Which makes it much messier to diagnose, but also much more dangerous, both as a problem and a diagnosis, than saying kids are beating hookers because they played too much GTA and now beating hookers looks fun to them.
sidhra
@E.D. Kain:
Bloomberg, Oct 13, 2010. Before Taibbi’s November Rolling Stone article. There is more than MT’s account out there. A lot more.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-13/florida-s-foreclosure-rocket-docket-may-slow-to-a-crawl-with-fraud-claims.html
ericblair
@Michael:
Except the article finishes with “If this sounds like an attack on big business, it is not intended to be.” So, government regulations have been used to unfairly promote the interests of big businesses (no shit), and apparently big businesses just can’t help themselves to bribe/encourage lawmakers to make them. No solutions were offered; I suppose, going out on a limb here, that means Regulations are Bad.
KG
@gwangung: absolutely. I’ve actually litigated mortgage fraud cases, on behalf of borrower plaintiffs. The abuse of the system by large corporations, and the banks/servicers in particular was absolutely disgusting. The most frustrating part is that often times the court’s would allow the abuse of the system by the large corporations because, I suspect, they are represented by the large firms that have the representation of being the best firms.
The goal is to find the proper balance between public and private. I’m not sure where that balance is, but I know we aren’t there right now.
Martin
@E.D. Kain: Every state is currently investigating fraud. Wells Fargo has been settling fraud cases all across the nation in the last few months, to the tune of $2B just to California recently. Fraud is widespread. Anyone paying attention to this issue in recent months would see this quite plainly.
scav
Poor ol Kain. People are disagreeing with me again is, at best, a rhetorical flourish along the lines of puppeh eyes, not a valid reason you’re correct. People have defended you, maybe not so many in this thread. At least you’re in the comments trying: points for that.
Elvis Elvisberg
@E.D. Kain: Thanks for reading and responding, E.D. That article has some interesting points, and some… less interesting ones (“Enron was a tireless advocate of strict global energy regulations supported by environmentalists.”). It was also paraphrased in Liberal Fascism!
It’s not clear to me that that one article from a few years back on the general topic of big business wanting big government counters DougJ’s original point that Reason et al are ignoring the foreclosure abuse issue, or that the libertarian-industrial-funded complex ignores non-government-related corporate malfeasance. But it’s something, thanks for passing it along.
jwb
@gwangung: And priceless that E.D. is demanding additional evidence, when he basically refuses to provide any of his own.
Omnes Omnibus
It is interesting that E.D. Kain has not yet responded to anyone who has explained how home ownership, recording of deeds, or security interests work. Suddenly, smug and snide comments rule the day. I am disappointed. People answered his question, yet no acknowledgement, substantive argument, or correction has come down the pike. I wonder why.
schrodinger's cat
My grandma used to say, you can wake somebody up if they are sleeping but not if they are just pretending to be asleep.
Stillwater
@Omnes Omnibus: This isn’t disagreeing with someone; this is correcting fundamental errors in understanding so that a reasonable discussion is even possible.
Exactly right. And when people strenuously argue for a position based on ignorance, they inevitably get defensive because other people just aren’t hearing them. So they shout louder.
Michael
@jwb:
He’s a dishonest asshole, but that’s pretty much the rhetorical and moral core of the social order offered by libertarians – basically warmed over conservatism with a thin veneer of concerned noises.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus:
Why? Because like all glibertarians, E.D. Kain has the intellectual integrity of a nematode.
If he concedes the point, he’ll doom his chance to get on the wingnut welfare gravy train.
scav
@schrodinger’s cat: If there was ever a context for the quote “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”, ahhh
jwb
@Kryptik: I agree with you, and thanks for your interpretation, which I find well stated and very helpful. In any case, I was just trying to point out that even if you grant an affinity with violent films and video games that it would still rule much of the violent political discourse out of bounds since (unlike Palin’s poster) it doesn’t really lend itself to metaphorical interpretation (i.e., what’s the metaphor of a second amendment solution?).
Greg
If you want to see a demonstration of what a sham Libertarianism is, just come visit me in Texas. Lax gun laws and and no income tax!!! Yay! Other rights? Who cares?
mclaren
@E.D. Kain:
The answer, obviously, is “YES.” A homeowner caught up in one of these situations has a plethora of paperwork to show that s/he owns the home. Evidently you’ve never owned a home, or paid for a mortgage on one, so here’s a quick rundown of the paperwork showing that you actually have a right to live in that piece of property:
[1] The title to the home recorded in the county recorder’s office. This is what property tax records work off of when it comes time to assess property tax. The property tax bill doesn’t get sent to your neighbor’s dog, or to a homeless guy who lives in a dumpster down the street. It gets sent to you. Because you own the fucking property.
[2] The annual property tax bill from the county where you live. Here’s a question for ya, E.D.: If the homeowner doesn’t own the property in these cases, why is the county asking the homeowner to pay property tax on it? Riddle me that one, legal Batman.
[3] The plat of survey record with surveyor’s marks showing the boundaries of the property. It doesn’t have Elvis Costello’s name on it, it has the name of the current owner attached to it. The plat itself is only numbered, but the paperwork associated with and filed with that plat of survey shows who currently resides there. This is the info that gets used in case there’s a dispute over property boundaries, i.e, if a neighbor builds some addition that cuts into your property line.
Furthermore, even if the homeowner doesn’t have any of these documents in hi/r possession (the county will have copies, by the way, unless there’s a catastrophic fire or flood), the law doesn’t work that way. You’re not guilty in a court of law until you prove you’re innocent and you’re not assessed as not owning a property until you can prove that you do. If the law actually worked the way your question suggests, we’d take anyone who was arrested by the police and throw them immediately into prison for life and then give them access to law books and an investigator to see if they could come up with enough evidence that they’re innocent to get out of prison. As you can deduce, that isn’t the way things work.
Likewise, if things actually worked the way your question suggests, no county would send out property tax bills until the person living at that address provided evidence that they owned the property. And if a homeowner did get a property tax bill, he could just throw it in garbage and laugh, “I haven’t provided any evidence that I actually OWN this home, so I don’t have to pay you any property tax!” As you can readily deduce, that wouldn’t work, which is why it’s not the system we use.
Kain went on to remark:
Require that the court comply with the law by demanding [1] that any plaintiff who appears before the court have standing to actually appear, and [2] that the plaintiff must provide a full legally documented chain of title before a judgment can be entered for the plaintiff.
The standing issue proves paramount because in the rocket docket courts, MERS entries were used in lieu of an actual title deed. But MERS entries are just electronic records. They’re a database. And as we know, databases are chock full of errors. Not long ago I went to the library and checked out a book and I was told that I had a whopping huge fine because I hadn’t returned a previous book I’d checked out. I told the librarian, no, I returned that book. The librarian said the database showed I hadn’t so I owed them a fine. I got on the elevator, went up to that section, and pulled the book I had returned off the shelf and went back down and presented the book to the librarian. “You mean this book? This book I’m holding in my hand right here? This is the book that the database says I never returned? Is that correct? Is that what you’re telling me?” The libraried um’d and uhh’d and looked sheepish. “The computer said…” the librarian muttered so I leaned forward and said “Mr. Computer says go jump off a cliff, so you do it, is that right? Are you a fully functioning adult, or a three-year-old? If Mr. Computer tells you to eat Silly Putty and sand, you do it without thinking twice? Is that what you’re telling me?”
There is an awful lot of “Mr. Computer Says…” in today’s society, particularly at epicenters of insanity like TSA checkpoints, where 6-year-olds get ID’d by some cockamamey database as terrorists and dumped onto a no-fly list they can never be removed from. There are children who are 12 years old now and who are on a no-fly list who were 2 years old when 9/11 happened, and they’ve been on that no-fly list for 10 years and no one can get them off it. This is a classic case of “Mr. Computer Says…” and it’s pure 100% bullshit. A computer is just a dumb machine. It says whatever some minimum-wage slacker high-school-dropout employee keys into the computer because he’s not paying attention because he’s looking at that pretty girl’s tits in the next cubicle.
This is why you can’t substitute some crap database entry like MERS for a fully authenticated legally valid chain of title. Any minimum wage slacker can key any damn thing into a goddamn database. There’s a reason why we have legal procedures involving people’s lives or real property in courts of law. The reason is so that Beavis and Butthead working at Burger King aren’t the arbiters of our fate. We’d like to make sure that, y’know, when you send out a fucking property tax bill, the person who gets billed actually owns the fucking property. Or when you issue a search warrant that, y’know, the person you arrest is actually someone suspected of a crime, instead of some innocent person with a SWAT team breaking down their door and slamming their ass to the ground and shooting their dog during a family dinner because some Beavis & Butthead minimum wage mope got the person’s last name wrong as it was Thomson when it was supposed to be Johnson.
Kain, if you think you want to live in a society where the real property and criminal justice systems get run like Beavis and Butthead ran the Burger King when they fed Mr. Anderson a deep-fried rat, well, good luck to you with that one, skippy. Here’s a hint: you’re not gonna like living in that kind of society, buckaroo.
Y’know, there are places in the world where that kind of Three Stooges behavior goes on in the real property legal system and the justice system. In India, for example, your relatives can bribe a judge to have you declared dead and then they can divide your property amongst themselves.
See “Indian farmers declared deceased by unscrupulous relatives must prove they’re alive to regain their land,” TIME magazine Asia, 19 July 1999.
As for the the original point at the top of this article, there are a lot of countries in the world where the government has all the power and corporations have very little. Putin’s Russia, for example, is a state in which the oligarchs are completely under the thumb of the politburo guys. Putin didn’t like the way the oligarchs were acting so he threw a bunch of ’em in jail and confiscated their monies and their property. That sent a message. It’s very different from America. In Russia, there isn’t a strong civil society tradition with ironclad property rights. In Russia you only own something as long as you can pay the kickbacks and do favors to the commissars. If someone in the government decides you’re not toeing the line, they grab your property and you’re SOL.
The same goes for China. There are no strong independent corporations in China, all the big corporations are arms of the state. Foreign corporations come into China and think they can act the way they do back in America or Britain, by swinging their big dicks around and threatening to leave China and remove their tech and their factories, and boy, do those foreign corporations get a fuckin’ education. What the Chinese government does then is to arrest the foreign corporation’s on-site managers and VPs for espionage and seize all the company’s assets. China is a like a giant goddamn mafia operation. You get to operate in China as a foreign corporation only so long as you kick back new technology and allow part ownership of the factories to Chinese. If you’re some foreign company like Philips or Intel or whatever and you don’t agree to do that, the Chinese will arrest your ass for espionage and seize all your corporate assets in China and suddenly your ass is on a jet heading back to the Netherlands and some nephew of Deng Chiao-Ping is running your brand new semiconductor factor in Guangdong Province as the newest Chinese States Chip Manufacturing Plant.
The Rio Tinto case was a classic example of this kind of Chinese mafia-like operating procedure. The mining company basically refused to play ball and kick back the required land rights and monies so the Chinese government, so the Chinese government set up a fake show trial and made an example of that Australian company to show what happens if a foreign corporation comes into China and tries to swing its big dick around and act like it’s in charge. Corporations aren’t in charge in China. The Central Committee of the communist people’s republic of china is in charge.
Lastly, Kain asked:
Yes.
It’s the same situation as if you buy a car but the guy who sells you the car never gives you a pink slip. Then it turns out the car is stolen. Should the person from whom the car is stolen be allowed to take it from you just because of a paperwork error?
You bet your ass, skippy. That “paperwork” is called the rule of law. If you don’t follow it, it’s your ass on the line. And just as you should never ever ever hand over money for a car without getting the pink slip, no bank should ever ever EVER accept a homeowner’s mortgage payments without making damn sure they’ve recorded a completely valid chain of title for that property. If the bank doesn’t do that, it’s their ass on the line, just as it would be if the bank handed over a bunch of goddamn cash for a car but didn’t bother to ask for a pink slip.
This is what I don’t like about libertarians. They demand that the individual dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, otherwise the individual gets screwed, blued, and tattooed. Forgot to get the pink slip? Too fucking bad! It’s not your car! Should’ve paid attention, numbnut!
But the instant we start talking about a giant fucking corporation, suddenly, for libertarians, the goddamn rules that applied to the little guy, the ordinary individual, don’t apply anymore. Don’t have a pink slip? Nooooooooooo problem, we’ll ignore that. Didn’t pay actual money for the car? Hey, we’re friends here, don’t worry about. You want immunity from having the original owner seize the car because it was stolen? Sure, we’ll set up a special court for that because you’re a giant fucking corporation and the laws that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you.
That’s not libertarianism, Kain. That’s being a leg breaker for the corporate mafia. “Oh, yeah, we had to break that guy’s legs and take over his store, because he owed us vigorish on that loan shark money we loaned him.” Bullshit. That’s mafia crap, that’s not the way the legal system works in the United States of America.
DougJarvus Green-Ellis
@E.D. Kain:
It gets pretty boring.
Ailuridae
@Barb (formerly Gex):
If you were concerned with individual liberty, you would be upset about property being confiscated without proof. Instead you are worried that individuals might be getting something free from the banks.
Thread winner. It is positively absurd to look at the foreclosure crisis and at once claim to be for personal liberty and to think there is a greater hazard in allowing a homeowner stay in a house they may be in arrears on than let a bank take property they can’t prove they own. The first is akin to squatting, the second is more similar to outright theft.
And that ignores the broader point, that much like he did in the “HOLY SHIT AZ TOWN WANTS TO MONOPOLIZE TRASH COLLECTION” threads ED is starting from his conclusion and reasoning backwards. Further, he’s pretending there isn’t a pretty clear legal system regarding property law that, as others, have pointed out, ends nearly all disputes at the registrar of deeds office.
Silver
Stop just stop.
Just stop.
You guys probably beat up the helmet kid for kicks in grade school too, didn’t you? This whole thread is aggravating my gastritis.
Ailuridae
@Omnes Omnibus:
When your response to any question starts from an untestable set of first principles looking through the weeds for the specifics that actually relate to the issue at hand is pointless. ED knows he is right on this issue specifics be damned. Why? Because libertarianism broadly can never be wrong, only failed by insufficiently pure application.
ED Kain has just realized he is starting out of his depth and is going to resort to snark and witty rejoinders rather than address specific questions or claims. Here’s the thing” from an individual rights/property rights or a property law perspective the burden should be on the bank to establish ownership and a broken contract. In so much as libertarianism ought to care about property rights Reason et al have been completely silent on this issue (much to my own disappointment as having more voices pointing out the abuses can only help) and that is wholly inconsistent with what libertarians are supposed to care about. Doug has asked a pretty simple “Why is that?’ question to which the only reasonable libertarian response would be “Oh shit, you’re right, let me look into that and write on it.” Instead, it’s more equivocation and asking irrelevant questions, calling into question the reporting itself etc. Same shit as always, different issue.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@schrodinger’s cat: That poor girl that Haliburton locked in a trailer after being raped by her fellow employees would disagree. And I think there were actually death threats too.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@E.D. Kain: We don’t need to worry about sources. You started talking without sources.
Without specifics we have banks foreclosing on homeowners. Some of those homeowners are paying their mortgages, some are not. Banks are trying to foreclose on homeowners, but we don’t know if they are paying mortgages or not. You don’t. And neither do the banks because of the paperwork problems.
So without having to cite any actual real world situations – in what circumstances should a bank with no proof of ownership be able to walk up and take your house whether or not you are making payments?
The Matt T. article at least points to a few cases of abuse by banks. You have shown us ZERO cases of abuse by homeowners. And have yet to show why it is more dangerous for the individual moral hazard to go unchecked than it is for the moral hazard of banks taking homes away from people without proof that they have any right to do so.
As I said earlier. Hopeless.
Zifnab
@Ailuridae:
Clearly, it is DougJ’s fault that libertarians don’t voice their outrage at big banks stealing houses through a corrupt judiciary system.
Damn you, DougJ, for silencing the voice of the people with your pogrom of incivility.
schrodinger's cat
@Barb (formerly Gex): I was just paraphrasing EDK. I do agree that corporations have become too powerful in the current era.
Midnight Marauder
@E.D. Kain:
This statement perfectly represents how intellectually unserious you are, E.D. Do you honestly believe that every home being foreclosed on involves people who haven’t made their payments? And do you honestly believe having your home illegally taken from you is not a traumatic incident? You really want to get into the semantics of whether having your pet killed in front of you or having your entire fucking home taken away from you is more traumatic than the other?
Midnight Marauder
@E.D. Kain:
Don’t worry. I’m sure Cole will put a post in a few hours once again weepingly defending you from the mean people calling you on your bullshit.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Ailuridae: Plus, Kain hasn’t, as far as I have read, told us why the banks can’t sort out the paperwork before filing suit. WTF?
Hopeless.
handy
@Silver:
Helmet kid, as far as we know, didn’t glibly suggest to people being forced out of their homes by “men with guns” (a favorite line of libertarians), “Too bad you shoulda paid up moochers.” Oh I know E.D. wasn’t making that argument. Actually, what argument is he making at this point?
Adrienne
@E.D. Kain:
Whatever moral hazard there is in letting people stay in houses they didn’t pay for is certainly dwarfed by the moral hazard of allowing banks to dismantle and destroy the bedrock principles of property and contracts law.
Further, you do recognize that not all the people in these homes are behind, right? Please tell me you’ve heard the horror stories of people who’ve actually paid their homes off only to discover that some bank they’ve never even heard of is trying to foreclose right? All we’re saying is that to avoid these horror stories, the banks need to prove they OWN the fucking mortgage before they can take the home. Why is that so difficult? If they can’t, well, they didn’t hold up their end so why should they get to demand that the homeowner has to?
Silver
@handy:
I don’t actually read anything Kain writes anymore, so I don’t know. I was smart enough to figure out after a couple of his front page gems that he might be even more a fucking idiot than McArdle.
I’m just doing a PSA, trying to point out that you don’t have to actually turn the pinata into quarks-breaking it up into microscopic pieces is sufficient :)
LJM
Democrats shouldn’t pretend to care about poor people when their leaders are doing this on a regular basis.
Of course, those aren’t American victims, so no worries, right?
I’m not a libertarian, but libertarians are against killing poor people for no good reason in foreign countries. I wish Democrats were.
Binzinerator
Ok call me sophmoric but I laughed.
A Real Libertarian
“the libertarian lack of interest in faulty foreclosures,”
“But in its current incarnation, it is just as often about the rights of corporations.”
These are bold face lies. You obviously can’t tell the difference between libertarians and republicans because you it doesn’t serve your political cause. Just a minimal amount of searching at CATO, Reason, and IJ will show you that every assumption you have made is absolutely incorrect.
Kathy in St. Louis
I had a son-in-law who fancied himself a libertarian. His idea of a lively conversation was to disagree on every subject. He talked incessantly about the rights of the individual. I don’t believe I ever heard him discuss the responsibilities of the individual. It was strictly a one way deal…all rights, no responsibilities. He was against welfare, the income tax, any form of taxation really, any regulation by the government, gun control, speed limits, etc.
He certainly didn’t mind borrowing money off his in-laws and attempting to never repay it, which I’ve got to say, seems a whole lot like personal, non-governmental welfare to me.
I don’t know enough about libertarianism to know whether this is part and parcel of their philosophy, or if he was just a king-sized jerk. But it certainly never spoke well of the movement to me as an outsider.
Chris
/sigh
you guys make it sound like our country is libertarian, has been and always will be… which troubles me because it has been the republicans and democrats who made most of the troubles this country has to deal with.
But you have a problem because Reason didn’t write about one particular story…
Brandon
@El Cid: Property rights include the right to contract, so the homeowners are covered as well as the mortgage holder.
Brandon
@Kathy in St. Louis: You’re ignoring the fact that he borrowed money from you, which you leant him willingly. That is between you and him. If he had taken it at gunpoint, then it would be analagous to government welfare.
maus
@Brandon:
His willingness to break contracts is what makes him a good libertarian.
PIGL
@E.D. Kain: when the “paperwork” error constitutes daylight fraud, maybe yes. Let’s turn it around. Suppose the property owner paid the mortgage holder in cash, which turned out to be counterfiet? Should they get to stay in that case? It’s just some small inadequacies in some pieces of paper, after all.
Your intellectual error, it seems to me, is a propensity to characterise as mere paperwork errors, systematic abuses intended to subvert the law of property and contract and to escape due diligence, in order to defraud all of the parties to all bargains except the middlemen. What would lead to this?
PIGL
@BTD:
FIFY.
lunchstealer
But who’s getting abused here? Is it the homeowner? In at least one of the cases, it’s pretty clear that he did in fact default on his loan.
“Regardless of recording issues, there is little dispute that Antonio Ibanez, a special education teacher in Springfield, Mass., defaulted on his loan for $103,500. He did not even fight the foreclosure when it came in 2007. ”
So it sounds like the question isn’t whether he should lose his house, but just a question of who he should lose his house to. If there’s any loser here, it’s the people who paid good money for a mortgage only to have the seller of the mortgage screw them over by half-assing the paperwork.
I’d love to see the middlemen who screwed up the paperwork get sued into oblivion by the people they sold the mortgages to, and maybe even spend some time int he pokey for fraud. I’d also love to see some banks go out of business over all this, but the libertarians* in control of Congress and the White House bailed them out.
*well, this is balloon juice after all, so the definition of libertarian is ‘anybody who helps out a corporation’.