Why I am a Libertarian

I wanted to take some time to talk about why I am a libertarian.  First, what is libertarianism?  Libertarianism is a political philosophy.  It does not tell you how to live you life.  It only defines how people should interact with each other in political or economic situations.  It does deal with the best way a person should lead his or her life.

The essential principle of libertarianism is that all interactions between people should be voluntary.  No coercive interactions between people are allowed.  The consequence of this principle is that all private invasions of persons and property are not allowed.  Thus, all theft and rape and murder are against libertarian principles.  Most people are in agreement with libertarians on this point.  However, this principle is also anti-government.  All government interaction involves some form of violence.  Taxes are the use of force to take private property.  Regulations restrict free exchange between private individuals.  Many individuals believe that government should have the ability to impose taxes and regulations.

What is interesting about libertarianism is that it is based on principles - it is not a utilitarian philosophy.  While there are many utilitarian reasons to support libertarianism, the core principle is one of nonviolence and voluntary action.  True libertarians would believe in libertarian principles even if they would result in a poorer society (although we argue that they make society richer).  For example, if A has a factory and is producing cars for B, but in the process causes air pollution on C, under libertarian law, A would be required to full compensate C or stop polluting.  With the government, the pollution is allowed, but the factory needs to pay the government a tax to do it.  Libertarianism treats all people equally: all of their property rights are equally protected.  With the government, the factory is permitted to invade other people's property with air pollution so long as it pays the government a tax, and thus it does not protect all people's property rights equally. 


The idea of equality of rights is something that is unique to libertarians, at least those that believe in the anarchist form of libertarianism.  In libertarianism, nobody has more rights than another.  Nobody many invade another person's property, force another person into slavery, or force somebody to buy another person's product.  Under the government however, we create a special group of people, government officials, that have more power than private citizens.  The government can draft people which is a form of slavery.  There are example of governments forcing people to buy healthcare insurance against their will.  Taxation is a form of theft.  Private citizens cannot print money, but the government can through its central bank.

It is often believed that communism is the opposite of libertarianism.  I disagree.  I believe it is possible to have communist societies within a libertarian society.  The only difference with the communist societies we know is that they would have to be purely voluntary.  Communist societies did exist in 19th century America.  If we had an anarchist society, the superior society will natural evolve to dominate the majority of the population through purely voluntary means.  If communism is better, then more people will move to the communist areas until they controlled most of the land and resources.  This would be true for any ideology.  If however, different ideologies suit different people, then I can see many different ideologies operating peacefully in a libertarian society.

Many people feel that government is necessary to improve upon society.  The government wants people to earn more so it imposes a minimum wage.  The government wants affordable housing so it implements rent control.  The government imposes numerous safety regulations on goods.  It imposes occupational licensing for many services.  Libertarians are against all of these.  Libertarians believe that all government interference in the free market backfires and has the opposite effect - it makes the situation worse for those people it tries to help.  Minimum wage laws increase unemployment and hurt the poor.  Rent control makes lower income housing more rare and hurts the poor.  Public schools teach children poorly and hurt the poor.  Safety regulations slow the rate at which products get safer and hurt the poor.  Occupational licensing reduces the supply of services making it harder for the poor to provide those services and receive those services.

Government services always result in costing more while the services provided get worse.  When the government provides goods and services, it does so through coercion, not through voluntary behavior.  In the free market, the consumer is king.  Companies will continuously lower prices and improve the quality of products in order to attract your business.  Governments operate for the benefit of themselves at the expense of consumers.  Consumers have no choice but to continue to fund government operations, no matter how inefficient or how rudely they are treated.  Look at goods and services provided by the free market: Google search and maps, personal computers, Amazon.com, lasik eye surgery.  And compare them to government services or private services that are influenced by government subsidies and regulations: the post office, the department of motor vehicles, public schools, the legal system, the military, colleges and universities.  All of these services are costing more while their quality has been reduced over time.  The reason is that there is no way of punishing them for poor performance.  We are forced to pay for public schools and send our kids there, even if they are terrible.  But in a free market, the poor public schools would go bankrupt and be replaced by highly effective schools.

Another argument for why we need a government is because of externalities, both positive and negative.  An negative externality is when some negative consequences happen to a third person not involved in another transaction.  As explained above, if person A had a car manufacturing plant and is building cars to sell to B, but A's factory causes air pollution onto C's property, this air pollution would be an externality.  What the government supporters argue is that the state needs to tax A so that the costs of pollution would be considered by A.  A would then reduce the supply of cars because costs would increase, which would increase the price of cars and reduce the amount of pollution produced.

There are a number of problems I have with the externality argument.  First, if there is an externality, the person suffering from it should be able to sue the person causing it.  In a libertarian society, all invasions of property need to be either stopped, or compensated to the satisfaction of the person suffering from the externality.  Thus, in the example above, person C would sue person A for the factory air pollution.  The judge would rule in favor of C and force A either to stop production completely, or pay A an amount such that A wouldn't mind the pollution.  This is better than a government tax because the person suffering from the pollution, C, gets compensated.  In the tax example, the government gets the benefit from the pollution tax (which means it has more money to waste on its bureaucracy) and C gets no compensation whatsoever. 

Many people feel the government needs to provide a legal system and a police force to implement the legal system.  Without the government providing universal laws for a given territory, people could implement whatever laws they want, some of which conflict with other people.  One group of people may make certain drugs illegal, while another group may make them legal.  Without a government decide who is right and who is wrong, there will be conflict between these groups which could end in violence.  Thus, they argue a libertarian society will increase violence.  This point even persuades many libertarians and is the many split between libertarians.  One group that continues to support the complete elimination of the state (they believe there are private means of handling these kinds of disputes) are called anarchists.  The second group believe that some minor form of government still needs to provide this legal function and are called minarchists. 

In future blog posts, I would like to go through articles criticizing libertarianism and address some of their points.