They're not 'libertarians', follow-up

I posted recently on the fact that some on the hard-line pro-capitalist Right call themselves by an epithet that suggests, wrongly, that liberty or freedom has some privileged place in their politics.

I argued that their claim about privileging liberty was tendentious, and that what they really cared most centrally about was defending capitalism and private property. Hence why I suggested that they stop calling themselves 'libertarians'. It's sort of like taking whatever your political view is and slapping a label like "freedomitarian" on it.

I'm sick of people on the Left granting the absurd wish from these people that they be called 'libertarians'. Call them something that reflects their fetishization of neoclassical economic theory and their love-affair with capitalist social relations. 'Libertarian' is ridiculous.

So this got me thinking. These so-called 'libertarians' are completely hostile to the idea of democracy. What I mean is that they consistently complain when democratic institutions (i.e. the State in a representative democracy) make policies, when they ought to just let private market forces work their magic. Democratic institutions should be ultra-minimal and small, whereas capitalist institutions should be extensive and hegemonic. Markets and capitalists should make all of the big decisions. Letting everyone have an equal say leads to 'irrational' outcomes that markets, thankfully, avoid.

This is the view defended by a long line of hard-Right 'Austrian economists', but most recently in Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter".

The basic thrust of his argument is simple. Most people are basically irrational and don't know what's best. Markets, on the other hand, are rational and do 'know' what's best. To the extent that people who vote don't know this (that they're irrational, that markets are what's rational), they cause democracies to be irrational. The conclusion we should draw is that democratic institutions ought to have far less of a role in the basic structure of society, and market-based institutions ought to have the lion's share.

Caplan, who took inspiration to study economics from reading Ayn Rand, has produced an argument of great interest to the ardent Right-wing Cato Institute, as well as the perhaps more extreme Von Mises Institute. In fact, according to the linked article from VMI above, the problem with Caplan's argument isn't that he is anti-democratic, but that he's not anti-democratic enough. Power, after all, belongs in the pocket-book, not at the polling station.

So as I said earlier, this has got me thinking.

Since we've seen that liberty does not have a privileged place in 'libertarianism', and that, alternatively, these folks are strongly against democracy, why not incorporate the latter insight into their public label?

Why not be upfront about their anti-democratic convictions? I know "anti-democratarian" doesn't have a nice ring to it, but it's at least more accurate. Or how about the (redundant) label "capitalist anti-democrat" or some Latin phrase that means "lover of markets, hater of the people". I leave it to others more witty than I to iron out the details, but it seems to me that the basic framework is in place to correct the situation...