Libertarianism

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This article is about the individualist philosophy, which is supportive of private property. For other uses (including political parties associated with libertarianism) see Libertarianism (disambiguation).

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The term libertarianism usually refers to a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, as long as they allow others the same liberty.

There are broadly two types of libertarians: consequentialists and rights theorists.^[1] Rights theorists hold that it is morally imperative that all human interaction, including government interaction with private individuals, should be voluntary and consensual. They maintain that the initiation of force by any person or government, against another person or their property — with "force" meaning the use of physical force, the threat of it, or the commission of fraud against someone — who has not initiated physical force, threat, or fraud, is a violation of that principle. This form of libertarianism is associated with Objectivists, as well as with individualist anarchists who see this prohibition as requiring opposition to the state to be consistent.

Consequentialist libertarians do not have a moral prohibition against "initiation of force," but believe that allowing a very large scope of political and economic liberty results in the maximum well-being or efficiency for a society - even if protecting this liberty involves some initiation of force by government. It just so happens that such governmental actions are limited in the free society they envision. This type of libertarianism is associated with Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek.

Libertarians generally do not oppose force used in response to initiatory aggressions such as violence, fraud or trespassing. Libertarians favor an ethic of self-responsibility and strongly oppose the welfare state, because they believe forcing someone to provide aid to others is ethically wrong, ultimately counter-productive, or both. Libertarians also strongly oppose conscription.

Some writers who have been called libertarians have also been referred to as classical liberals, by others or themselves. Also, some use the phrase "the freedom philosophy" to refer to libertarianism, classical liberalism, or both.

Contents 1 Principles 1.1 Natural rights and consequentialism 2 Libertarian policy 2.1 Minarchism and Anarcho-capitalism 3 History 3.1 Libertarian philosophy in the academy 3.2 Left-libertarians 3.3 Objectivism 4 The Libertarian Movement 5 Libertarian politics 6 Criticism of libertarianism 7 See also 7.1 Libertarian think tanks 8 Footnotes 9 References 10 External links

[edit] Principles

Main articles: Libertarian views of rights and Libertarian theories of law

The central tenet of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership. To libertarians, an individual human being is sovereign over his/her body, extending to life, liberty and property. As such, libertarians define liberty as being completely free in action, whilst not initiating force or fraud against the life, liberty or property of another human being. This is otherwise known as the non-aggression principle.

Libertarians generally view constraints imposed by the state on persons or their property (if applicable), beyond the need to penalize infringement of one's rights by another, as a violation of liberty. Anarchist libertarians favor no governmental constraints at all, based on the assumption that rulers and laws are unnecessary because in the absence of government individuals will naturally form self-governing social bonds and rules. In contrast, minarchist libertarians consider government necessary for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of the people. This includes protecting people and their property from the criminal acts of others, as well as providing for national defense.

Libertarians generally defend the ideal of freedom from the perspective of how little one is constrained by authority, that is, how much one is allowed to do, which is referred to as negative liberty. This ideal is distinguished from a view of freedom focused on how much one is able to do, which is termed positive liberty, a distinction first noted by John Stuart Mill, and later described in fuller detail by Isaiah Berlin.

Many libertarians view life, liberty, and property as the ultimate rights possessed by individuals, and that compromising one necessarily endangers the rest. In democracies, they consider compromise of these individual rights by political action to be "tyranny by the majority", a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, and made famous by John Stuart Mill, which emphasizes the threat of the majority to impose majority norms on minorities, and violating their rights in the process. "...There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them..."

Some libertarians favor common law, which they see as less arbitrary and more adaptable than statutory law. The relative benefits of common law evolving toward ever-finer definitions of property rights were articulated by thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Richard Epstein, Robert Nozick, and Randy Barnett. Some libertarian thinkers believe that this evolution can define away various "commons" such as pollution or other interactions viewed by some as externalities. "A libertarian society would not allow anyone to injure others by pollution because it insists on individual responsibility."^[2]

[edit] Natural rights and consequentialism

Some libertarians such as Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard view the rights to life, liberty, and property as natural rights, i.e., worthy of protection as an end in themselves. Their view of natural rights is derived, directly or indirectly, from the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Ayn Rand, another powerful influence on libertarianism, despite rejecting the label, also viewed these rights as based on natural law.

Other libertarians such as Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek justified these rights on pragmatic or consequentialist, as well as moral grounds. They argued that individual liberty leads to economic efficiency and other benefits, and is thus the most effective means of promoting or enhancing social welfare. They accept the use of some initiation of force, such as a state that violates the non-aggression principle by taxing to provide some public goods and some minimal regulation. Some libertarians such as Jan Narveson take the contractarian point of view that rights are a sort of agreement rational people would make before interacting.

[edit] Libertarian policy

Libertarians strongly oppose infringement of civil liberties such as restrictions on free expression (e.g., speech, press, or religious practice), prohibitions on voluntary association, or encroachments on persons or property. Some make an exception when the infringement is a result of due process to establish or punish criminal behavior. As such, libertarians oppose any type of censorship (i.e., claims of offensive speech), or pre-trial forfeiture of property (as is commonly seen in drug crime proceedings). Furthermore, most libertarians reject the distinction between political and commercial speech or association, a legal distinction often used to protect one type of activity and not the other from government intervention.

Libertarians also oppose any laws restricting personal or consensual behavior, as well as laws on victimless crimes. As such, they believe that individual choices for products or services should not be limited by government licensing requirements or state-granted monopolies, or in the form of trade barriers that restrict choices for products and services from other nations (see Free trade). They also tend to oppose legal prohibitions on recreational drug use, gambling, and prostitution. They believe that citizens should be free to take risks, even to the point of actual harm to themselves. For example, while most libertarians may personally agree with the majority who favor the use of seatbelts, libertarians reject mandating their use as paternalistic. Similarly, many believe that the United States Food and Drug Administration (and other similar bodies in other countries like Health Canada in Canada) shouldn't ban unproven medical treatments, that any decisions on treatment be left between patient and doctor, and that government should, at most, be limited to passing non-binding judgments about efficacy or safety.

Some Libertarians believe such freedoms are a universal birthright, and they accept any material inequalities or wanton behavior, as long as it harms no one else, likely to result from such a policy of governmental non-intervention. They see economic inequality as an outcome of people's freedom to choose their own actions, which may or may not be profitable. However, many libertarians believe that extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands is a result of state intervention in the first place, and that liberty ultimately leads to a more diffuse distribution though not necessarily an equal one. They often point to government granting special privileges to some businesses at the expense of other businesses and people as a prime cause of extreme wealth disparity.

[edit] Minarchism and Anarcho-capitalism

Main articles: Minarchism and Anarcho-capitalism

Some who self-identify as libertarians are minarchists, i.e., supportive of minimal taxation as a "necessary evil" for the limited purpose of funding public institutions that would protect civil liberties and property rights, including police, volunteer armed forces without conscription, and judicial courts. Anarcho-capitalists, by contrast, oppose all taxation, rejecting any government claim for a monopoly of protection as unnecessary. They wish to keep the government out of matters of justice and protection, preferring to delegate these issues to private groups. Anarcho-capitalists argue that the minarchist belief that any monopoly on coercion can be contained within any reasonable limits is unrealistic, and that institutionalized coercion on any scale is counterproductive. Any justification for the coercive state or alliance between business and the state, is said to result in a more efficient and thus more dangerous state - or crony capitalism.

The policy positions of minarchists and anarcho-capitalists on mainstream issues tend to be indistinguishable as both sets of libertarians believe that existing governments are too intrusive. Some libertarian philosophers such as Tibor R. Machan argue that, properly understood, minarchism and anarcho-capitalism are not in contradiction.

[edit] History

Main articles: Liberalism, Classical liberalism, and History of Libertarianism

The first known use of a term that has been translated as "libertarian," in a political sense, was by anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque^[3] who used the French term "libertaire" in a letter to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857.^[4] While many anarchists still use the term (e.g., terms translatable as "libertarian" are used as a synonym for anarchism in some non-English languages, like French, Italian and so on), its most common usage in the United States is unrelated to socialism.

Instead, libertarianism as a political ideal is viewed as a form of classical liberalism, a modern term often used interchangeably with libertarianism. This concept, originally referred to simply as "liberalism," arose from Enlightenment ideas in Europe and America, including the political philosophies of John Locke and the Baron de Montesquieu, and the moral and economic philosophy of Adam Smith. By the late 18th century, these ideas quickly spread with the Industrial Revolution throughout the Western world.

Locke developed a version of the social contract as rule with "the consent of the governed" derived from natural rights. The role of the legislature was to protect natural rights in the legal form of civil rights. Locke built on the idea of natural rights to propose a labor theory of property; each individual in the state of nature "owns" himself and, by virtue of their labor, owns the fruits of his efforts. From this conception of natural rights, an economy emerges based on private property and trade, with money as the medium of exchange.

At around the same period, the French philosopher Montesquieu developed a distinction between sovereign and administrative powers, and proposed a separation of powers among the latter as a counterweight to the natural tendency of administrative power to grow at the expense of individual rights. He believed this separation of powers could work just as well in a republic as for a limited monarchy, though he personally preferred the latter. Nevertheless, his ideas influenced America's Founding Fathers, and would become the basis upon which political power would be exercised by most governments, both constitutional monarchies and republics, beginning with the United States.

Adam Smith's moral philosophy stressed government non-intervention so that individuals could achieve whatever their "God-given talents" would allow without interference from arbitrary forces. His economic analysis suggested that anything interfering with the ability of individuals to contribute their best talents to any enterprise--a reference to mercantilist policies and monopolistic guilds--would lead to an inefficient division of labor, and hamstring progress generally. Smith stated that "a voluntary, informed transaction always benefits both parties," such that "voluntary" and "informed" meant the absence of force or fraud.

During the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers of the United States substantially enshrined the protection of liberty as the primary purpose of government. Thomas Jefferson said that "rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."

The Marquis de La Fayette imported American ideas of liberty, although some might say re-imported, in drafting the French Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789, which states:

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.

John Stuart Mill, in a reformulation of Jeremy Bentham's notion of utilitarianism, stated that, "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." Mill contrasts this with what he calls the "tyranny of the majority," declaring that utilitarianism requires that political arrangements satisfy the "liberty principle", whereby each person would be guaranteed the greatest possible liberty that would not interfere with the liberty of others, so that each person may maximize his or her happiness. This ideal would be echoed later by English philosopher Herbert Spencer when he espoused the "law of equal liberty," stating that "every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon advocated an anarchist version of social contract which was not between individuals and the state, but rather "an agreement of man with man; an agreement from which must result what we call society". One of his famous statements is that "anarchy is order." In his formulation of mutualism, he asserted that labor is the only legitimate form of property, stating "property is freedom", rejecting both private and collective ownership of property "property is theft!". However, he later abandoned his rejection of property, and endorsed private property "as a counterweight to the power of the State, and by so doing to insure the liberty of the individual."

By the early 20th century, mainstream thought in many parts of the world began to diverge from an almost exclusive focus on negative liberty and free markets to a more positive assertion of rights promoted by the Progressive movement in the United States and the socialist movement in Europe. Rather than government existing merely to "secure the rights" of free people, many began to agitate for the use of government power to promote positive rights. This change is exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, two of which are negative, namely restricting governments from infringing "freedom of speech" and "freedom of worship," and two of which were positive, declaring a "freedom from want", i.e., government delivery of domestic and foreign aid, and a "freedom from fear", i.e., an internationalist policy for imposing peace between nations.

As "liberal" came to be identified with Progressive policies in several English-speaking countries during the 1920s and 1930s, many of those who espoused the original, minimal-state philosophy began to distinguish their doctrine by calling themselves "classical liberals."

In the early 20th century, the rise of Nazism in Germany and communism in Russia were generally seen as distinct movements, with the latter bearing more resemblance to the Progressive movement in the West, and gaining much sympathy from many of its advocates. A group of central European economists called the Austrian school challenged that distinction between various brands of totalitarianism by identifying the common collectivist underpinning to their doctrines, and claiming that collectivism in all its forms is inherently antithetical to liberty as traditionally understood in the West. These thinkers included Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Walter Block, the latter describing the "non-aggression axiom as the linchpin" of libertarianism. The Austrian School had a powerful impact on both economic teaching and libertarian principles. In the latter half of the 20th century, the term "libertarian," which had earlier been associated with anarchism, came to be adopted by those whose attitudes bore closer resemblance to "classical liberals."

In 1955, Dean Russell wrote an article pondering what to call those, such as himself, who subscribed to the classical liberal philosophy of individualism and self-responsibility. He said,

Many of us call ourselves "liberals," And it is true that the word "liberal" once described persons who respected the individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify themselves and their program of more government ownership of property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in the uncorrupted classical sense. At best, this is awkward, subject to misunderstanding. Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trademark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word "libertarian."^[5]

[edit] Libertarian philosophy in the academy

Seminars in libertarianism were being taught in the U.S. starting in the 1960's, including a personal studies seminar at SUNY Geneseo starting in 1972. The Freedom School, later renamed Rampart College, was operated by Robert LeFevre during the 1960s and became a significant influence in spreading libertarian ideas.

Philosophical libertarianism gained a significant measure of recognition in the academy with the publication of Harvard professor Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974. Left-liberal philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that Nozick's libertarianism was 'without foundations' because Nozick's libertarianism proceeded from the assumption that individuals owned themselves without any further explanation.

Jan Narveson aimed to meet this challenge. Based on the work of David Gauthier, Narveson developed contractarian libertarianism, outlined in his 1988 work The Libertarian Idea, and then extended in his 2002 work Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice. In these works, Narveson agreed with Hobbes that individuals would lay down their ability to kill and steal from each other in order to leave the state of nature, but he broke with Hobbes in arguing that an absolute state was not necessary to enforce this agreement. Narveson argues that no state at all is required. Other advocates of contractarian libertarianism include the Nobel Laureate and founder of the public choice school of economics James M. Buchanan, and Hungarian-French philosopher Anthony de Jasay.

By contrast, J. C. Lester aimed to undermine the challenge by defending libertarianism without foundations in the form of critical rationalist libertarianism, most notably in his 2000 work Escape from Leviathan. In particular, that work applies critical rationalism to defend the thesis that there are no systematic practical clashes among instrumental rationality, interpersonal liberty, social welfare and private-property anarchy.

[edit] Left-libertarians

Main article: Left-libertarianism

There is also a camp of libertarians in American political philosophy who hold egalitarian principles with the ideas of individual freedom and property rights. They call themselves "left-libertarians". Left-libertarians believe that the initial distribution of property is naturally egalitarian in nature, such that either persons cannot legally appropriate property privately and exclusively or they must obtain permission of all within the political community to do so. Some left-libertarians use the Lockean proviso in such a way as to promote redistributive types of justice in ways compatible with libertarian rights of self-ownership. Some left-libertarians in modern times include Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, Noam Chomsky, Philippe Van Parijs, and Michael Otsuka, whose book Libertarianism Without Inequality is one of the most egalitarian leaning libertarian texts currently in publication.

Criticisms of left-libertarianism have come from both the right and left alike. Right-libertarians like Robert Nozick hold that self-ownership and property acquisition need not meet egalitarian standards, they must merely follow the Lockean idea of not worsening the situation of others. Gerald Cohen, an Analytical Marxist philosopher, has extensively criticized left-libertarianism's virtues of self-ownership and equality. In his Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen claims that any system that takes equality and its enforcement seriously is not consistent with the robust freedom and full self-ownership of libertarian thought. Tom G. Palmer of the Cato Institute has responded to Cohen's critique in Critical Review^[6] and has provided a guide to the literature criticizing libertarianism in his bibliographical review essay on "The Literature of Liberty" in The Libertarian Reader, ed. David Boaz. ^[7]

[edit] Objectivism

Main article: Libertarianism and Objectivism

Libertarianism's status is in dispute among those who style themselves Objectivists (Objectivism is the name philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand gave her philosophy). Though elements of Rand's philosophy have been adopted by libertarianism, Objectivists (including Rand herself) have condemned libertarianism as a threat to freedom and capitalism. In particular, it has been claimed that libertarians use Objectivist ideas "with the teeth pulled out of them".[1]

Conversely, some libertarians see Objectivists as dogmatic, unrealistic, and uncompromising (Objectivists do not see the latter as a negative attribute). According to Reason editor Nick Gillespie in the magazine's March 2005 issue focusing on Objectivism's influence, Rand is "one of the most important figures in the libertarian movement... Rand remains one of the best-selling and most widely influential figures in American thought and culture" in general and in libertarianism in particular. Still, he confesses that he is embarrassed by his magazine's association with her ideas. In the same issue, Cathy Young says that "Libertarianism, the movement most closely connected to Rand's ideas, is less an offspring than a rebel stepchild." Though they reject what they see as Randian dogmas, libertarians like Young still believe that "Rand's message of reason and liberty... could be a rallying point" for libertarianism.

US military operations in Iraq have highlighted the tensions between Objectivism and the views of many libertarians. Objectivists have often disagreed with the non-interventionism (often misleadingly called "isolationism") of many libertarians. They have argued that it is right for the state to take pre-emptive military action when the evidence suggests a genuine risk that another state will initiate coercive use of physical force. Many also would like to see the state more aggressively protect the rights of US individuals and corporations abroad - including military action in response to nationalization.

Objectivists reject the oft-heard libertarian refrain that state and government are "necessary evils": for Objectivists, a government limited to protection of its citizens' rights is absolutely necessary and moral. Objectivists are opposed to all anarchist currents and are suspicious of libertarians' lineage with individualist anarchism.

[edit] The Libertarian Movement

The Libertarian Program is an international project to define and document key current and potential voluntary replacements of government programs.

Some, such as David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian U.S think tank, the Cato Institute, argue that the term classical liberalism should be reserved for early liberal thinkers for the sake of clarity and accuracy, and because of differences between many libertarian and classical liberal thinkers. Nevertheless, the Cato Institute's official stance is that classical liberalism and libertarianism are synonymous; they prefer the term "liberal" to describe themselves, but choose not to use it because of its confusing connotation in some English-speaking countries (where most self-described liberals prefer a mixed economy rather than a free market economy). The Cato Institute dislikes adding "classical" because, in their view, "the word 'classical' connotes a backward-looking philosophy." Thus, they finally settle on "libertarian," as it avoids backward implications and confused definitions.

Libertarians and their allies are not a homogeneous group, but have collaborated to form think tanks, political parties, and other projects. For example, Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard co-founded the John Randolph Club, the Center for Libertarian Studies, and the Cato Institute to support an independent libertarian movement, and joined David Nolan in founding the United States Libertarian Party in 1971. (Rothbard ceased activity with the Libertarian Party in 1985 and some of his followers like Lew Rockwell are hostile to the group.) In the U.S. today, some libertarians support the Libertarian Party, some support no party, and some attempt to work within more powerful parties despite their differences. The Republican Liberty Caucus (a wing of the Republican Party) promotes libertarian views. A similar organization, the Democratic Freedom Caucus, exists within the Democratic Party, but is less organized. Republican Congressman Ron Paul is also a member of the Libertarian Party and was once its presidential candidate.

Costa Rica's Movimiento Libertario (Libertarian Movement) is a prominent, non-U.S. libertarian party which holds roughly 10% of the seats in Costa Rica's national assembly (legislature). The Movimiento Libertario is considered the first libertarian organization to achieve substantial electoral success at the national level, though not without controversy. For example, Rigoberto Stewart, co-founder of the party and founder of "The Limón REAL Project" [2] for autonomy in a province in Costa Rica, and director of INLAP[3], a libertarian think tank, lost his influence within Movimiento Libertario and support for "The Limón REAL Project". As perhaps explained by Public Choice Theory, while accepting money from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a German liberal foundation, the party compromised on their libertarian principles in return for more power, turning to anti-libertarian positions. [4]

There are other Libertarian parties that have had various amounts of success throughout the world. Libertarianism is emerging in France with the inception of Liberté Chérie ("Cherished Liberty"), a thinktank and activist association that has 2000 members. Liberté Chérie gained significant publicity when it managed to draw 80,000 Parisians into the streets to demonstrate against government employees who were striking.

In 2001, the Free State Project was founded by Jason Sorens, a political scientist and libertarian activist who argued that 20,000 libertarians should migrate to a single U.S. state in order to concentrate their activism. In August of 2003, the membership of the Free State Project chose New Hampshire because of its friendliness to libertarian causes (Note the state motto: "Live Free or Die"), limited government, citizen legislature (paid only $100 per year) and history of political activism. Despite the lower than expected rate of growth, the Free State Project has seen moderate success. They saw their first member elected to the New Hampshire legislature in 2006 and successfully completed the "First 1000" pledge in 2005, which signed up 1033 people to move to New Hampshire by 2008. Some of the original Free Staters (about 1,000) were discontented with the choice of New Hampshire. Some have started rival projects, including the Free West Alliance, Free State Wyoming and North to the Future, a project for a Free Alaskan Nation, to concentrate activism in a different state or region. There is also a European Free State Project.

[edit] Libertarian politics

See also: Controversies within libertarianism

Libertarianism is often viewed as a right-wing movement, especially by non-libertarians in the United States. Under the concept of fusionism, American libertarians tend to have more in common with traditional conservatives than American liberals, especially with regard to economic and gun control policies. However, many describe libertarians as being "conservative" on economic issues and "liberal" on social issues. (For example, most libertarians view Texas congressman and former Libertarian U.S. Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-14) to be a philosophical libertarian, even though he is technically affiliated with the Republican Party.)

A historical example of libertarian politics would be discrimination in the workplace. Libertarians could be expected to oppose any laws on this matter because these would infringe on the property rights or freedoms of either the business owner or the just-hired employee. In other words, one should be free to discriminate against others in their personal or business dealings (within the constraints of principal/agency agreements); one should be free to choose where they accept work, or to start one's own business in accordance with their personal beliefs and prejudices; and one should be free to lead a boycott or publicity campaign against businesses with whose policies they disagree.

In a more current example, conservatives are likely to support a ban on same-sex marriage in the interests of preserving traditional order, while liberals are likely to favor allowing same-sex marriage in the interest of guaranteeing equality under the law. Libertarians are likely to disagree with the notion of government-sanctioned marriage itself. Specifically, they would deny that the government deserves any role in marriage other than enforcing whatever legal contract people choose to enter, and to oppose the various additional rights currently granted to married people.

Instead of a "left-right" spectrum, some libertarians use a two-dimensional space, with "personal freedom" on one axis and "economic freedom" on the other, which is called the Nolan chart. Named after David Nolan, who designed the chart and also founded the United States Libertarian Party, the chart is similar to a socio-political test used to place individuals by the Advocates for Self Government. A first approximation of libertarian politics (derived from these charts) is that they agree with liberals on social issues and with conservatives on economic issues. Thus, the traditional linear scale of governmental philosophy could be represented inside the chart stretching from the upper left corner to the lower right, while the degree of state control is represented linearly from the lower left to the upper right.

[edit] Criticism of libertarianism

Main article: Criticism of libertarianism

Critics of libertarianism from both the left and the right claim that libertarian ideas about individual economic and social freedom are contradictory, untenable or undesirable. Critics from the left tend to focus on the economic consequences, claiming that perfectly free markets, or laissez-faire capitalism, undermines individual freedom for many people by creating social inequality, poverty, and lack of accountability for the most powerful. Criticism of libertarianism from the right tends to focus on issues of tradition and personal morality, claiming that the extensive personal freedoms promoted by libertarians encourage unhealthy and immoral behavior and undermine religion. Libertarians mindful of such criticisms claim that personal responsibility, private charity, and the voluntary exchange of goods and ideas are all consistent manifestations of an individualistic approach to liberty, and provide both a more effective and more ethical way to prosperity and peaceful coexistence. They often argue that in a truly capitalistic society, even the poorest would end up better off as a result of faster overall economic growth - which they believe likely to occur with lower taxes and less regulation.

[edit] See also

[edit] Libertarian think tanks

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Libertarian FAQ
• Open Directory libertarian links
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on libertarianism
• Australian Libertarian Society
• Black Libertarians
• Libertarian Wiki

Critical appraisals

• Critiques Of Libertarianism (includes sub-sections presenting anti-libertarian arguments from different political standpoints, as well as more general arguments)
  • A Non-Libertarian FAQ
• Comparison of Libertarians and Anarchists (Humor)
• What's wrong with libertarianism
  • We Have Met The Gummint And He Is Us; or, Is government evil?
• Libertarianism Makes You Stupid
• Why is libertarianism wrong?
• Libertarianism: Opposing Views at the Open Directory Project (suggest site)