Hardline Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Libertarianism

I think a lot of the discussion on a.p.l misses the moral aspect of
libertarianism: libertarianism is more than just another option in the
list of ideas created by humans to govern themselves.  Libertarianism
is the basis for a MORAL society, under three simple moral axioms that
seem very relevant these days.

With this in mind, I offer an alternative set of answers to those from
the FAQ.  I call this FAQ hardline because it does not use the warm
fuzzy approach used by the real FAQ.  Instead, it cuts straight to the
moral heart of the question and answers it.

By the way, I may or may not ever post this thing again.  Basically it
was just a fun exercise to go through and answer all of the FAQ
questions for myself; but then I thought about the moral angle and the
need of this newsgroup for a real FAQ, so I decided to post it.

-Leonard

Contents:

1.  What is libertarianism?
2.  Are libertarians liberal or conservative?
3.  How do libertarians approach the issues?
4.  What is the libertarian position on the military draft?
5.  Should the government regulate radio, TV, or the press?
6.  Why do libertarians want to repeal regulations on sex by consenting
    adults?
6a.   Does this apply to prostitution also?
7.  Does libertarian support of personal liberty extend to drug use?
7a.   But if drugs were legalized, wouldn't there be millions more drug
    addicts?
8.  Do libertarians support gun ownership as a personal liberty?
9.  How do libertarians want to handle immigration?
10. What position do libertarians have on subsidies for farm and business?
11. Are people better off with free trade than with tariffs?
12. What position do libertarians take on minimum wage laws?
13. What about the poor?
14. Don't we need affirmative action to keep bigoted employers from
    refusing to hire minorities and women?
15. How do libertarians feel about taxes?
15a.  I'm for cutting taxes, but as a practical matter, how do we do it?
16. Aren't you going too far?
17. Won't these ideas work only if everybody is good?

1. What is libertarianism?

Libertarianism is the political and social ramifications of a moral
philosophy rooted in three key principles.  These are the golden rule,
property rights, and an individualistic notion of moral application.

The golden rule is: "do unto others as you would have them do unto
you."  In particular, libertarians concentrate on the initiation of
force and fraud as unacceptable behaviors.

Property rights are another common concept.  The idea is that a person
(the "owner") should have the sole use of and profit of a thing (the
"property").  How exactly a person gains such rights in the first
place is a matter of some debate; however, most property is either
created by its initial owner, or found and claimed (often by use) by
him/her.

So far, libertarians would seem to be well aligned with the rest of
society.  The key difference between libertarian thought and that of
modern society is that libertarians reject the notion that the state
occupies a higher moral plane than the individual.  (I call this idea
"statism".)  Libertarians believe that the state should not be allowed
to make ANY actions that the individual may not.  In particular, the
initiation of force or fraud by the state is UNACCEPTABLE to
libertarians.

2. Are libertarians liberal or conservative?

Liberal.  (By which I mean that they value change over the status
quo.)

3. How do libertarians approach the issues?

Libertarians cut to the moral heart of the issue: "where is the
coercion?"  they ask.  If there is none, then libertarians believe the
issue should be outside of the realm of government action.
Individuals should be free to decide such an issue as they wish.  If
there is coercion, then libertarians look for the party initiating
force.  Then, they will desire to cut off the ability of this party to
initiate force.

Now, in most western societies, there are already fairly strong
property rights, and individuals are already (for the most part)
forbidden to initiate coercive actions.  On the other hand, most
states have a wide range of coercive initiation legally available to
them.  Hence, in most issues libertarians end up criticizing state
involvement.

4. What is the libertarian position on the military draft?

The draft is quite simply state coercion.  It is wrong.

5.  Should the government regulate radio, TV, or the press?

Nope.  Most libertarians believe speech, broadly defined, can not be
classified as initiation of coercion.  Regulation requires coercion.
Thus, regulating speech is wrong.

6.  Why do libertarians want to repeal regulations on sex by consenting
    adults?

Because enforcement of regulations requires coercion against people
who have not initiated it.  (Which is what "consenting adult" is all
about.)  

6a.  Does this apply to prostitution also?

Yes.  Whether there is cash, goods, favors, or other inducements
involved, the fact remains that these are not coercive inducements.

7.  Does libertarian support of personal liberty extend to drug use?

Yes, to the extent that drug users harm nobody (except themselves) by
using drugs.  Most libertarians believe that the degree to which drug
user hurt others would be very small if drugs were legal.

7a. But if drugs were legalized, wouldn't there be millions more drug
    addicts?

Millions?  Possibly.  More?  Definititely.  The implied argument here
-- that (1) addiction is bad; (2) bad things should be repressed by the
state; hence (3) addiction should be repressed by the state -- fails for
libertarians at step 2, not at step 1.

8.  Do libertarians support gun ownership as a personal liberty?

Yes.  Coercive tools are one of the few areas in which modern
capitalist states tend to limit the individual's property rights.  But
from a libertarian standpoint, just as I have no right to (coercively)
limit your right to own stuff, so the state has no right to limit
mine.

9.  How do libertarians want to handle immigration?

It takes coercion to keep people out of a country.  Since walking,
flying in airplanes, standing on a boat, etc, are generally agreed not
to be coercive actions, immigrants cannot be seen as forcing their way
into the country.  Hence, libertarians would end all immigration
restrictions.

10. What position do libertarians have on subsidies for farm and business?

Insofar as the state has the money to subsidize actions, there is no
problem.  Incentives are OK; coercion is the evil we are fighting.
(See 15, though.)

I think most libertarians (me among them) agree on the general
principle that the state should leave the market as free as possible,
i.e. it should avoid incentives as well as coercion.  However, this
does not appear to me to be a ramification of our basic moral stance.

11.  Are people better off with free trade than with tariffs?

Free trade.

However, this has no bearing on whether libertarians are against
tariffs.  We are against them because they are WRONG, not because they
don't work.

12.  What position do libertarians take on minimum wage laws?

Repeal them.  As long as there is no coercion involved, people should
be able to sell their labor at whatever price they want.

13. What about the poor?

In contrast to current statist practices, libertarians will never seek
to forcibly prevent people from helping the poor, nor will they seek
to prevent the poor from helping themselves.  

Indeed, as with the question about subsidies, there is nothing in the
libertarian moral position that would prevent the government from
handing out money to whoever can vote it to themselves.

14. Don't we need affirmative action to keep bigoted employers from
    refusing to hire minorities and women?

No.  Libertarians believe that the free market will also have this
effect.  It will take longer, but (unlike affirmative action) it is
morally acceptable.

15.  How do libertarians feel about taxes?

The state must initiate coercion to tax.  As such, taxes should be
abolished.

15a. I'm for cutting taxes, but as a practical matter, how do we do it?

This is not a practical FAQ.  Morally speaking, we should end all
taxes first and figure out how to solve the resulting economic mess
later.

16.  Aren't you going too far?

For those in the statist mindset?  Yes.  But you see, they DON'T
BELIEVE in one of our basic moral axioms.  

For us?  No.  Once you identify what is moral -- what is acceptable
and not -- then logic compels you to accept the social and polical
effects of your morality.

17.  Won't these ideas work only if everybody is good?

Good stuff.  Might be hard for people to swallow, but gets to the
point (which I, at least, have learned to prefer).

Small nits:

Strangely, I find this particular 'moral' approach much more logical
because the core of the matter can't be hidden behind anything.  For
example, tarrifs are wrong because they are coercive.  They also
happen to not work.  But they don't work *because* they are coercive.
And this can be shown via logic.  So in many cases, the 'moral'
argument and the logical argument are intimately related.

But, the golden rule does not apply in general.  It's usually
invoked as a defense of courtesy or generosity.  While those are
not necessarily bad things, I (as a libertarian) have no
intention of returning courtesy where none is given.  Nor do I
feel any injuction to be generous just because I want others to
be (this does not preclude my being generous).  This is contrary
to the golden rule.

More generally, I have read some other libertarians making the
argument that private charity would take over the current
function of government charity in a libertarian society.  Whether
or not this is true can only be decided by an appeal to the facts
of the case, but as a procedural argument it seems flawed to me.
The basis of socialism is that everyone will be 'nice' and
'cooperate' ("from each according to his ability").  One of the
bases of libertarianism is that people will be greedy and
maximize their own profit, and this is a good thing for society
as a whole.  This does not preclude individual libertarians from
being generous of course.  Arguing that voluntary cooperation in
libertaria will produce desired results is a precarious argument.

Another instance of this is the argument that boycotts of racist
business establishments will prevent racism in libertaria.  This
too requires that people will sacrifice something to a common
good, e.g. a racist diner might have to lower prices to attract
more clientele after scaring away some and its lower prices are
what its owner pays to enjoy his racism.  As part of a boycott I
would be expected to forego savings on my meal for the supposed
common good.  But, should I refuse to save money by eating there
because I don't like the owner's views?  Am I to behave like the
PC crowd and boycott everything I don't think meets my political
standards?

Nonetheless, I have found that arguing market dynamics is not very
effective with the average statist.  See, many of them have
contradictory beliefs.  On the one hand, they don't coerce others nor
do they commit fraud, and they don't think others should do so to
them.  Furthermore, they often get resentful over state intrusion into
their lives, both in terms of "having" to do taxes, register cars, do
jury duty, etc, and in various annoying laws like speed limits, sex
crime laws, marijuana illegality, abortion restrictions, etc.  But at
the same time, these people hold the belief that the state has a right
to exert force because it represents "them", the people, and indeed,
that the state and its actions are generally good.  And furthermore,
they believe there are certain altruistic actions that MUST be done
somehow.

If you come to such a person saying the "the state is screwing thing
up by forcing us to pay taxes", they think "How can we pay for stuff?
We need X, Y, and Z!  Without taxes, we can't.  What is wrong here?"
Then you say, "the market this!  the market that!", and they think,
"this guy is a heartless greedhead, or a fool."  Then they shut off.
Click.  End of argument; anything you say beyond that just adds "bore"
to the list of negatives they think about you.  People WILL NOT LISTEN
to others they perceive as heartless greedheads or fools.

But if you say to people "coercion and fraud are BAD", they AGREE!
Then, you may be able to get them to agree that certain coercive
actions of the state are bad.  Now, this is a far cry from converting
them to a libertarian.  They still can maintain a conceptual
distinction between what the state is allowed to do, and what the
people are.  Certainly the two entities are very unlike each other.
But they MIGHT, just maybe, see the contradiction.  And even if they
don't, if you can make plain to someone that YOU don't think the
state's agents should have any additional rights by virtue of being
so, then they probably won't think you a heartless, foolish, greedy
bore, or at least not so much.  

And let's face it: our ideas are good.  But they won't spread very
fast through books and internet news.  They need to be talked about to
spread.  But how many of you have refrained from discussing them at
some point, because you KNOW how others will be likely to respond?  I
know I have.

Now, whether there would be more drug addicts at any given time, is
more debatable.  I personally think there would be; however, it is
possible that legalization would make treatment sufficiently easier to
obtain that more people would go through brief addictions, and make
recoveries.