Libertarianism FAQ @libertarianism 0

by sidstuff and contributors, CC BY 4.0 (Why?)

Many defenses of libertarianism rely too much on notions of freedom and appeal only to those already libertarians. This FAQ aims to provide an introduction to and watertight defense of libertarianism acceptable to nearly everybody.

It is meant to be read from beginning to end for its arguments to be convincing. Answer people's questions by pasting excerpts from it, then strongly recomend reading it in full. The past should not hold back the future; section numbers, names, and contents may be changed.

Contribute by opening issues and pull requests at github.com/sidstuff/libertarianism.

Visit ourbigbook.com/libertarianism for a better reading experience.

Looking for studies, literature, quotes, and statistics to cite, well-informed libertarians, please contribute.

Memes are welcome as well, but only if it conveys without insults or hyperbole, an airtight argument. Humor should not come at the cost of the message and its accuracy.

Human desires are limitless. We can never have too much of something, so people would move into the remaining jobs and produce more of that. Workers would be paid less, but due to automation, everything would also be cheaper. This would work until the very last jobs are replaced. In a utopia where there is no need for labor, art, or science anymore, a market economy is no longer needed, but I doubt that day will come anytime soon.

Yes, most of the very rich have acquired their wealth through unfair means, be it through unfair government action like intellectual property, subsidies, bailouts, low-interest loans, etc., or violence, historic or current. Regarding pure socialism/communism, a war to fully redistribute the riches of the wealthy will likely never happen, and cause great devastation if it did.

In a libertarian system, even if everyone started out equally wealthy, some would end up richer than others, as people of differening competency and diligence should. But libertarianism makes things fair even if some are very wealthy.

One who owns a lot of resources can rent or loan it to others without much additional cost to themselves, and make a percentage return. But by making them compete with other rich people, assuming resources are plenty, the ones that offers it for the lowest price, ie., makes the closest to zero profit, will get all the customers.

As for why even partial wealth redistribution isn't preferred in a libertarian society, note that the company that provides the customer with the most value for their money wins. The riches of a wealthy person are assets to be used to finance their business, even if turned into houses or jewelery, since they can be liquidated when needed. Taking these away punishes the best company, which is counter-productive. If a lot of it is turned into stuff like parties and luxury vacations, the company isn't being very efficient, and will likely be replaced quickly in a free market. If not, that means people who can afford it are willingly transferring their money by overpaying due to their affinity for the entity, in which case libertarians would argue they have every right to spend that fairly earned money.

A third trimester baby can survive outside the womb with medical help nowadays, so aborting it could be considered wrong for that reason, but assume a time period or situation where this isn't the case. The bodily autonomy argument would mean that a (hypothetical) 9th month abortion is okay in the above situation.

This involves killing an intelligent human, and as mentioned before, almost no one would morally agree with this, except in situations where the mother’s life is at risk. And an argument which leads to a disagreeable conclusion, is itself disagreeable. So this argument for abortion isn't very good, but that doesn't mean other arguments for it aren't.

Libertarianism simply refers to the notion of a minimal state. However, the term, especially in the US, generally refers to right-libertarianism, which also advocates for strong private property rights and a free market, and is also the meaning with which this FAQ uses it.

An important concept to libertarians is the non-agression principle (NAP), which forbids the non-consensual breach of contract (i.e., fraud), or of property (which includes the body). Aggression is, however, permitted to the extent necessary to defend against the above.

Right-libertarianism has several variants based on how minimal the state is:

This FAQ aims to defend a minarchist model. All uses of 'libertarian(ism)' henceforth will refer to the same.

A government not supported by the majority cannot sustain itself without tyranny. They will eventually get rid of the current government and laws, even amend the constitution, if needed, to get their way. Thus it is impossible to maintain libertarianism by restricting voters or their power.

To achieve a libertarian country, either the majority of people in an existing country must be convinced of its merits, or libertarians must come together to form a new nation. And if the majority is libertarian, they will vote as such, maintaining the minarchy.

Everything we do is an investment, with the potential for profit and the risk of loss. The same applies to education. You invest money from loans or personal funds to undergo training. You take on the risk of flunking or the skill you learnt lessening in demand. The true value of any investment is the value people give to in a free market. There is no reason to forcibly transfer money via taxation and give extra favors to one type of investment, subsidising it by taxing (artificially and additionally disadvantaging) others.

Yes, every four or five years, a single government is elected that does every single one of the thousands of government functions. Voters don't perform a careful analysis of how efficiently these thousands of fuctions were performed compared to the previous ruling party. Since these governments also have the power to make various laws with sweeping societal effects, here's what actually happens:

Thus the incentive for the branch performing each function to do so efficiently is extremely small. A highly specialized and efficient agent is hindered by having to join, obey, and share in the outcomes of, this inefficient behemoth. In a libertarian system, the sole function and power of the government would be the enforcement of the NAP. This is best done at the local level. Any subjective laws passed will be based on local opinion, eg., laws protecting those incapable of consenting (children, the mentally disabled, etc.), laws against endangering others' safety, etc. The best performing government in each region can be elected, as opposed to the best one averaged across all regions. This is why libertarians want powers transferred from the federal to the local government.

Besides the libertarian argument that one has the right to transfer their property to anyone they want, including their family, note that children have been raised and molded by the parent from birth, knowing that they will inherit the family business. As weird as it might seem, simply consider them a continuation of the dead parent; they will now continue administering the business. Then the same arguments as above for respecting private property apply.

Banning data/information and its use, literal 0s and 1s, is not just a violation of the free market, but of liberty itself. It is nothing short of tyranny. Keep in mind that by the law of supply and demand, data once created has no monetary value, since it can be duplicated infinitely. Any such value is thus something artificially maintained by the state using force to restrict its duplication. It lets companies charge whatever price they want for data and products built using said data, without competition for decades, which is terrible.

The justification given for such an infringement upon our freedoms is that it promotes creativity and innovation. We will discuss how in today's world, the idea that art and science would be significantly hindered without IP protections is untrue. The aforementioned monopoly caused by IP is a much worse effect than any benefits it may possibly have.

At first glance, it would seem pretty ironic for an FAQ that lambasts intellectual property rights to place restrictions on its own distribution, even if just attribution. But asking for attribution is consistent with libertarianism.

It is to prevent people passing this FAQ off as their own work, as they could get social/monetary benefits from doing so, and that should be considered fraud. Even if they don't explicitly claim to be the author when using its contents, that is likely to be assumed by most readers, so not explicitly disclaiming it should be treated as fraud.

This does not mean that anyone who doesn't provide attribution must be sued into oblivion; the punishment must be proportional to the crime, after all, and in most cases, any personal clout gained from omitting attribution will be negligible. But for the very few cases where it's not, the license facilitates the prosecution of such fraud in the current legal system.

Libertarian morality is as follows: According to the principle of homesteading, each man owns his
own person, and he therefore owns the things which he produces – those parts of nature hitherto unowned and which,
when mixed with his labor, are transformed into productive
entities. The only moral ways for these entities to change ownership are voluntary trade and gift-giving.

Those who are productive with their property become
responsible for more and more, since they can afford to buy up additional property with their earnings. The overall productivity therefore, will rise.

If the wages for a profession seem too low, it's because there are too many workers in the industry – the free market is just disincentivizing wasted human effort. Leave the job – if you have no other skills, invest in education. If enough people do, wages should rise. Of course, wages won't go beyond the profit each worker can generate, but that shouldn't be the limiting factor for the vast majority of jobs. If it is, and not enough people are willing to work for those wages, the companies will have to come up with some way of improving worker productivity.

When you enter a building, buy a product, or avail a service, you have a reasonable assumption of safety and efficacy. If this is not true, not providing a clear warning is fraud. Private organizations that verify the same will naturally pop up. Obviously, them making false assurances would be fraud as well.

A customer that can afford it may willingly overpay for a product due to brand affinity/prestige. Even otherwise, there are 8 billion people on the planet. Getting $10 profit from 100 million people means a billion dollars in profit. None of the 100 million people need to have been poor or exploited; small profits per person can result in a billionaire simply due to the large human population. This is not to say that all current billionaires obtained all their wealth through such innocent means – many have used violence or state assistance – just that it is possible.

While corporate-owned roads are certainly possible, they would require continuous tracking of vehicles to charge them, and the tracking infrastructure would be a privacy nightmare and great additional cost. For the true solution, consider that all the currently needed roads have already been built by the government; the only required cost is to maintain them, and very rarely, build new ones. Upon transitioning to libertarianism, government roads will be transferred to the people, and maintenance costs will be paid for willingly by those whose lands are accessed via those roads.

Since a government already went ahead and used our taxes to build roads, we'll have to decide upon transition exactly how shares of the entities controlling different roads should be distributed among the people, and locals will have to plan collective payment for maintaining the roads. But it is doubtless that people will not let the roads leading to their land fall into disrepair, as it would discourage visitors to their businesses and homes.

Let's say company X spends $14M to discover a much better production method, and starts using it to sell cheaper/better goods in the market. Big company Y decides to spend tens of millions to discover it themselves, and at great speed, hiring many scientists, and conducting lots of trials simultaneously. It looks like it'll take Y only 60 weeks to make the discovery, and 20 weeks to bring it to production.

Within that time, X realizes they won't be able to make $14M profit. So they decide to sell the discovery to Y for $12–14M on the condition that Y waits 40 weeks before launching the product. Y agrees, because they save time and money. During those 40 weeks, X makes $6M profit, bringing their total to $18–20M. The $4–6M is a more than excellent return for the time X spent discovering it.

Now that both X and Y have the discovery, they can either compete against each other, in which case all is good, or they can act as one and fix prices. In the latter case, big company Z decides to spend 10s of millions to discover it themselves and beat XY's pricing, in which case the story repeats.

The use of exact numbers makes it seem like this example is attempting to fool you somehow, but the only essential part is another company having the capability to rediscover the method. They won't even have to try, Y can just offer to buy it, with the implication that they will go all out trying to rediscover it unless X agrees to sell.

Thus no human effort is actually wasted discovering the same thing multiple times. Now things might not work out this way all the time, but in a free market, it will most of the time, and that's enough. Remember, the alternative we're trying to prevent is one company being able to charge whatever price they want for a potentially must-have discovery, for decades.

Today, shipping costs are so low (eg., $0.50 per kg for US-China shipments) that for most goods, the market is global.

But what if the main water supply in a region is owned by a single entity, and they charge exorbitant prices? Unlike food, bringing in water from faraway regions would be too expensive. Of course, people moving out would result in the entity going out of business and selling the water supply to someone more rational, but due to various reasons, moving out isn't always easy.

Here's the true solution. Currently, the water supply in most countries is owned by the government. Upon transition to libertarianism, the water supply in each region would simply be an entity with ownership distributed among the residents. If some of them sell their shares of the water supply to a company that then jacks up the prices, they'll have to move out, but that is simply them facing the consequences of risking putting their water supply in another's hands.

What if the water supply was sold by the government to a private entity currently subject to regulations? Would a libertarian transition remove those regulations? Note that this situation is caused by having to transition from big government to libertarianism. If a libertarian society arose naturally, rights to natural resources would be distributed among the community via the principle of homesteading. And as before, anyone selling their rights must be moving or have another source ready, othewise accept the potential consequences.

To fix the issues caused by a non-libertarian government, non-libertarian measured may be needed. The government had no right to the water, nor to sell it to the private entity. It may need to be taken back.

The libertarian opposition to government-funded welfare is based on of course, ideals of voluntaryism, but also on the efficiency of private entities. Simply giving the poor money is not the best way to end poverty. With private charities, the ones that can actually cause change in a neighbourhood will get donations, and inefficient ones won't. This will likely involve putting conditions on the money given, eg., that the able-bodied and able-minded must participate in education/employment. There's also the task of making such initiatives as efficient as possible.

If a pseudo-libertarian government were to forcibly collect money for welfare, it would be best to decouple the voting for the NAP-enforcing and welfare-providing branches, but there would still be a big problem.

If contributing to welfare was compulsory and the welfare provider was voted upon democratically, the votes of wealthy charity givers that want to see change would be drowned out by the votes of the poor that would prefer to receive money with no strings attached, and the votes of the upper and middle classes that want their contributions reduced. And if the voting isn't democratic, the system will be overthrown by the people. But reducing compulsary welfare via the votes of the upper and middle class is currently possible if all of them could be convinced that it is misplaced kindness.

The main concern people have regarding abolishing welfare is whether enough money will be donated to cover all poor people. The rich who can afford to donate large amounts already do, be it out of kindness or to acquire goodwill, and people would certainly donate a lot more if they didn't already have to pay half their money in income, property, value-added, excise, and numerous other taxes, for the "betterment of society". Libertarians believe that this, combined with the fact that the best performing charities will be the ones donated to, mean that poverty will be alleviated with less money needing to be spent.

We can't definitively prove this yet, so why not first test things out by slowly reducing the scope of government welfare? It must not all be cut suddenly, since time will be needed for the culture surrounding welfare to shift as people pay less in taxes, and for private charities to strengthen and become effective.

First let's discuss the argument against abortion. Most people would save the life of an infant over that of an animal, even if the animal is more intelligent. The only unbiased reason to do this is that given nutrients, the baby will develop into a more intelligent lifeform in the future. Thus wanting to save a "clump of cells" isn't as irrational as it may seem.

But our hypothetical above assumes that both the baby and the animal want to live. By not killing themselves, all conscious creatures have implicitly expressed their desire to continue living, and most people agree that that is to be respected, at least for humans. Which is why killing a person painlessly while they're unconscious is still considered wrong. But this desire does not apply to fetuses before the third trimester, which have never been conscious. This is the moral argument for abortion. There is also the obvious utilitarian argument for it.