# What is libertarianism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 26, 2008, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693 "2008-10-26T23:16:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/21 "2008-10-28T17:16:21Z")
I can’t answer all of your questions, in part because I am right now in a hurry, but also b/c I’m not a libertarian and haven’t read all the relevant literature. But here are a couple of answers. > [@erislover](#): > > Quite as I envision it. > In what way do you suppose this distinguishes libertarians? To me it is like being against puppy-kicking. Of course coercion is not a good thing. Well, in fact, everyone who is in favor of redistribution is in a sense in favor of coercion. The wealthy must surrender, on pain of judicial action, a portion of their income to the gov’t for redistribution. They don’t have any say in the matter. They must either quit earning money, emigrate, go to jail, or pay up. > [@](#): > > Second, it does not explain why the principle of non-coercion is a standard we should adopt, it only illustrates a perceived consequence. Am I to assume that this is a consequentialist doctrine, that a laissez faire market is good, therefore non-coercion is good (or anything else that leads to a laissez faire economy)? The kind of libertarian I am thinking of quite explicitly rejects consequentialist reasoning (although there are consequentialist libertarians). Deontologist libertarians (like Nozick) argue that coercive redistribution is bad because it treats the wealthy as a means to advance the welfare of the poor (a Kantian argument) and because taxation is equivalent to forced labor (Nozick argues that there is no difference between the gov’t appropriating the wages of 5 hours of your labor and the gov’t appropriating 5 hours of your time by forcing you to work for someone else’s benefit). Laissez faire economics comes out as an outcome of these deontological reasons. I’ll say more tomorrow, unless someone else says it better and earlier, which I regard as very likely. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/22 "2008-10-28T17:57:10Z")
Being for punishing murders is also being for coercion. It’s a non-starter. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/23 "2008-10-28T18:08:59Z")
Also, it has been some time since I read _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_, so unfortunately I cannot comment on it directly. Also, Wikipedia’s entry indicates Nozik addressed some of the underlying foundational problems from that work in other works, which I have never read at all, unfortunately. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/24 "2008-10-28T18:10:38Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > Being for punishing murders is also being for coercion. It’s a non-starter. Well, like I said, I’m probably not the best person to mount a defense of libertarianism since I’m not one, but a libertarian will allow that you have a right to redress of grievances. If someone steals your stuff, you have the right to coercively take it back, or to have an agent do it for you, or (assuming you are out of the “state of nature” and in a libertarian state) have the state coercively take it back for you. Ditto for retribution. But for the libertarian, you can’t be compelled to surrender a portion of your possessions to someone you haven’t wronged. ---
**Author:** ![Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sophistry_and_Illusion)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/25 "2008-10-28T18:13:27Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > Also, it has been some time since I read _Anarchy, State, and Utopia_, so unfortunately I cannot comment on it directly. Also, Wikipedia’s entry indicates Nozik addressed some of the underlying foundational problems from that work in other works, which I have never read at all, unfortunately. ☹ This is my problem. I’ve read most of _AS&U_, but haven’t read his responses to critics. Nor can I say I am familiar with the work of consequentialist libertarians (as opposed to deontologist libertarians like Nozick). But there are some libertarians on this board who, one presumes, have read this stuff. Maybe they’ll be along soon. Anyone? Bueller? ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/26 "2008-10-28T19:20:38Z")
Some interesting questions, as a libertarian, I’ll try to take a crack at them. While I am also a capitalist, I try not to conflate libertarianism with capitalism. They do share many of the same principles, but one is not necessarily required for the other. Since libertarianism is about rights and non-coercion and all that, it’s theoretically possible that it could be paired with socialism, or any variant between the two. > [@erislover](#): > > 1. The free market will not produce enough education because a portion of the benefits of education do not accrue directly to those that provide education. Therefore, society seeks to promote education through a subsidy. The funds for this come from taxation. Who is being coerced? Is this ok for a libertarian society to do? First off, as a capitalist, I’m not sure I can agree with the supposition here, but for the sake of argument, I can assume that the theoretical Libertaria has agreed that this is true and to this solution. Second, the aparent coercion is that those who are not making use of the education system, like singles, childless couples, the elderly. However, that isn’t the case. Each of them, over a sufficiently long timeline, would have benefitted from the system themselves. Further, even if they didn’t, improved education improves society in inumerable ways, so they’re still benefitting. I would say that this could be coercion, and as it stands in our society I would say it is, but it is not necessarily. The real problem here is that this breaks down on anything larger than a small scale. In a country like the US, it is impossible to ensure that everyone is participating in the system freely; however, I think this sort of system can work on a small scale (say a small to moderate sized town). As such, I would say that I just don’t see a way to make education work in a large scale libertarian society except through capitalism, through a lot of autonomy by individual communities, or some sort of demonical self-regulating, non-governmental body, but the last of which I really cannot conceive. > [@](#): > > 1. I live on my farm and pay no taxes. All our libertarian society has is a consumption tax, and in my rugged, individualistic wisdom I have created a situation where my farm is self-sustaining, so I engage in no consumption with the rest of the economy and therefore pay no taxes. Our libertarian society uses consumption taxes to pay for national defense; I am now a free rider. You are paying to defend my farm. Is the consumption tax coercion which the farmer is shrewdly avoiding, or is the consumption tax not coercion, but my free riding is, by forcing you to pay for my defense? I don’t think there’s any coercion here, aside from allowing that everyone in the society has voluntarily agreed to this taxation system. You are not really costing someone else to defend your farm, at that point, your farm being protected is purely incidental and it doesn’t cost them any more to protect your property (unless it’s disproportionately massive). To give a slightly better example, let’s imagine we live in a libertarian neighborhood, where the police force is paid for by the citizens and you decide to opt out. As such, you rightfully don’t get any protection from that force, so that if a thief happens to break into your house and steal your things, tough luck. However, by virtue of the fact that most of the rest of the houses are protected you get the benefit that a potential thief doesn’t know which houses are and are not protected, so you probably get fewer burglaries than you otherwise would if the rest of the neighborhood wasn’t participating. Are you freeloading? Yeah, but everyone else is participating freely. But you might also say that if too many people realize this and stop paying, then it will effect those paying. Yes, it will, and they’ll have the choice to raise the rates they pay to cover for the policing to keep it up, or limit it, or any number of other choices. Obviously, if too many people quit, then the added benefit of your neighbors participating disappears and you would probably want it again because you’re now at higher risk. My belief would be that, in a system like this that most people would voluntarily participate and not actively try to mooch off their neighbors, and even if they did, it would eventually reach an equilibrium where the people who aren’t paying feel the risk is worth it, while those who are feel they’re getting their money’s worth. To relate that back, everyone in this society must have necessarily agreed to the taxation beforehand, and no coercion is going on because it really doesn’t cost a nation more to defend the entire nation than it does the entire nation minus a farm in Kansas. > [@](#): > > 1. Companies are compelled to leave a position available for any employee serving on a jury. Is this OK for a) the juror to be drafted to serve on a jury, b) the employer to be coerced to leave a job open? If (b) is ok, what about leave for pregnancy or other medical condition? This is sort of two different issues. Even though I’m a libertarian, I don’t really have any objections to the jury system since I consider it a very reasonable concession to the rule of law. As for whether there’s coercion here, I think you’re conflating being compelled with being coerced. A company shouldn’t HAVE to hold a job, but it’s terrible business practice not to do so because you could be losing a competent employee. For instance, we see a cellular company offer a new feature like push-to-talk or free nights and weekends, or whatever else, and within a short timeframe, most of the other ones have a similar feature available. They aren’t being coerced to offer that feature, but they’re compelled to do so because, otherwise, they may lose customers. The same is true here, if they have a valuable employee, but choose not to hold her position because she’s pregnant, then they run the risk of her going and working for a competitor. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/27 "2008-10-28T19:39:53Z")
Several people suggested (critically and ignorantly) that Libertarians were the “I’ve got mine” group. That, as far as I can tell, is not so. They tend to be middle-class or upper-middle class urbanites. This may put them somewhat above the curve, but we’re hardly talking out-and-out wealthy here. The real Upper Class tends to either skew pretty heavily leftist or old-style conservative, and more the former than the latter AFAIK. (New rich tend to be a mix, but old money is more often leftist.) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/28 "2008-10-28T20:36:49Z")
Being Middle/Upper-Middle is not incompatible with “I’ve got mine”. All that is required is that you not be a have-not. From where I sit, most of America qualifies. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2008, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/29 "2008-10-28T21:01:14Z")
> [@Sophistry\_and\_Illusion](#): > > That’s a feature, not a bug. 😉 > > But seriously, IMO the reason libertarians focus so much on the free market is that at bottom, libertarianism is a theory about the limits of coercive authority. Any transfer of wealth from party A to party B is immoral if it is coerced. Thus, the only transfers of wealth that are permissible are voluntary exchanges\* (wherein person A and person B decide how much of what to give each other). Thus, you get from morality to the free market in easy steps. > > Of course this is why many libertarians are social liberals as well, since they don’t want government coercively restricting other sorts of private behaviors. > > - And gifts, of course. Taxation would seem to transfer from A to a government, who could be a B. But in any event the government disposes of the money to various others. That is a transfer of wealth. That it is done correctly and done according to sound processes. That things are only done voluntarily is not going to work, because if it is voluntary, I will not give any money to a government that is conducting a war I don’t agree with (such as Iraq). But government cannot function with only voluntary donations. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2008, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693/30 "2008-10-29T02:31:10Z")
> [@Blaster\_Master](#): > > Some interesting questions, as a libertarian, I’ll try to take a crack at them. While I am also a capitalist, I try not to conflate libertarianism with capitalism. My initial post was focused just on right libertarians, so it’s all good. > [@](#): > > it’s theoretically possible that it could be paired with socialism, or any variant between the two. While I will take your word for it, I find the thought very surprising. > [@](#): > > First off, as a capitalist, I’m not sure I can agree with the supposition here… > Second, the aparent coercion is that those who are not making use of the education system, like singles, childless couples, the elderly. However, that isn’t the case. Each of them, over a sufficiently long timeline, would have benefitted from the system themselves. I agree they benefit; you disagree that they must be coerced to pay (I’m assuming taxes are coercion by definition, and we seem to agree given the rest of your post). This is an interesting topic in itself, so I won’t try to delve much deeper. However, I will delve into the coercion part, because your sort of partial explanation is that they weren’t coerced because they were receiving a benefit. Now, I’m not trying to suggest that you’ve posited this as some kind of rule, but it will inform my judgment of the coercion idea, overall. Like, say, when we discuss my hypothetical farm… > [@](#): > > I would say that this could be coercion, and as it stands in our society I would say it is, but it is not necessarily. So, we have that bearing a cost unwillingly is not _necessarily_ coercion. Adults without children and those covering free riders, while assuming an involuntary cost, are not strictly being coerced. Or maybe: unwillingly bearing a cost is not sufficient evidence of coercion? I will return to the rest of the response on this hypothetical at the end, because it is damned interesting. > [@](#): > > This is sort of two different issues. Even though I’m a libertarian, I don’t really have any objections to the jury system since I consider it a very reasonable concession to the rule of law. What about having professional juries? > [@](#): > > As for whether there’s coercion here, I think you’re conflating being compelled with being coerced. Just trying to understand a means of evaluating a proposition relative to non-coercion, though in practice I’m not sure I see a difference between being compelled and being coerced, that is true. > [@](#): > > A company shouldn’t HAVE to hold a job, but it’s terrible business practice not to do so because you could be losing a competent employee. For instance, we see a cellular company offer a new feature like push-to-talk or free nights and weekends, or whatever else, and within a short timeframe, most of the other ones have a similar feature available. They aren’t being coerced to offer that feature, but they’re compelled to do so because, otherwise, they may lose customers. I guess I feel like the difference here is not between “compel” and “coerce” but between what is “compelling” or “coercing.” Even so, it isn’t like I could say, “In this context, non-personal forces can’t coerce” because the competion is nothing but personal forces. Perhaps you can help me out here. In any case, I guess your position is, jury or otherwise, no employer should be forced by law to hold a job position open under any circumstances. > [@](#): > > The same is true here, if they have a valuable employee, but choose not to hold her position because she’s pregnant, then they run the risk of her going and working for a competitor. Right, but we know in practice that this is a risk companies are perfectly willing to bear. I guess that’s my hidden agenda there. 😉 Now, to your law enforcement counter-hypothetical… > [@](#): > > To give a slightly better example, let’s imagine we live in a libertarian neighborhood, where the police force is paid for by the citizens and you decide to opt out… Are you freeloading? Yeah, but everyone else is participating freely. But you might also say that if too many people realize this and stop paying, then it will effect those paying. Yes, it will, and they’ll have the choice to raise the rates they pay to cover for the policing to keep it up, or limit it, or any number of other choices. Obviously, if too many people quit, then the added benefit of your neighbors participating disappears and you would probably want it again because you’re now at higher risk. My belief would be that, in a system like this that most people would voluntarily participate and not actively try to mooch off their neighbors, and even if they did, it would eventually reach an equilibrium where the people who aren’t paying feel the risk is worth it, while those who are feel they’re getting their money’s worth. As a lover of capitalism and the free market myself, I am absolutely sure an equilibrium will be reached, but I’m not so sure it will be the one you envision. I consider people, as a whole, as good. Bad people are the exception. When I consider setting up my little hypothetical utopias, I assume this, and I think it is a very fair assumption (as fair as the rational man assumption). But I also consider it the case that people respond to incentives, and there is nothing at all that suggests there won’t be bad incentives. To me, this system reeks of bad incentives for police. There won’t be thieves, there’ll be cops, and the cops, by virtue of voluntary support, will know who their customers are, and who their customers _aren’t_. Even good people do bad things with incentives like these. But it gets worse still. Once they’ve harassed an appropriate number of people into buying into the system, there are incentives yet to raise rates and turn from a police force to a protection racket. I’m not trying to pull a slippery slope here: we _know_ that protection rackets form in absence of strong law enforcement and a strong court system. In fact it is actually this class of problems that has turned me away from libertarianism. Everywhere I look, minimalist states seem loaded with externality problems and terrible incentive structures. Even if we except externalities as a purely economic issue (which I don’t think it is, purely), incentives are inherent to existence. Whatever society we set up is going to have incentives. Hell, even in anarchy there are incentives… it’s the whole Lockean/Nozickean development of a minimalist state arising out of a state of nature or ultraminimalist state. So it seems to me that, if there is a point of contention anywhere, it is _not_ that there are incentives inherent in a state of nature to create an ultraminimalist state, nor yet that there are incentives in an ultraminimalist state to lead to the minimalist state. Where we disagree is: perverse incentives stop here. I have come to feel that a minimalist state, while–ostensibly!–strongly supporting a commendably broad conception of human rights, destroy much of the benefits of human rights via incentive problems. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-libertarianism/469693.md?page=1)