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.

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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.

This is really a question of how much of the rights of a human do we give animals? Giving them no rights doesn't make sense from an ethical perspective as they have sentience and the capacity to feel pain. And yet we don't grant them the right not to be confined or killed, not just because it would make meat-eating humans unhappy, but also because rights are a human concept, and animals in nature are so horribly brutal that it seems incongruous to try and make humans not confine or kill them.

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.

If simply concerned about wild species going extinct, and not their their occasional mistreatment (which is discussed above), species will be conserved by the free market to the extent that there is interest in them and the ecosystems that they support, eg., in zoos, wildlife tourism, forest products, etc.

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.

Anarcho-capitalists advocate for private (self/community/corporate) enforcement of the NAP, thus eliminating the government entirely. Doubts as to whether this will leave more people unprotected than a government solution keep people from supporting it, but this minarchist FAQ can be extended into an ancap one if/when sufficiently convincing arguments are collected.

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 is not an all-or-nothing philosophy. Different libertarians advocate for different levels of government intervention. An emergency situation, eg., a major war, disaster, irreplaceable resource exhaustion, etc. will almost certainly require a lot of government action. This FAQ aims to show that barring such extremely rare situations that can be handled then using exceptional measures, libertarianism works, and therefore they are no reason to forego libertarianism altogether.

To show this, we go through situations where it seems like the free market would be unfair, and explain why they won't be an issue.

There are several ways to make a profit, life would be pretty boring otherwise. Examples include:

But none of these factors are so powerful that a company in a free market can extract exorbitant profits from a customer unwillingly paying with no better choice. Note that intellectual property would not exist in a libertarian system. Of course, people sometimes buy products/services without doing their due diligence or simply not caring enough about ease of quitting, ease of repair, control, etc., and later face difficulties, but that is simply the consequence of their own decisions.

Firstly, it's actually legal in the US to yell fire in a theatre, and their theatres seem fine. Anyway, theatres just legally requiring customers not to make disruptions would have the exact same effect as the government banning it.

Defamation is not fraud because no one has a legal agreement with the public by default to provide true facts only. If defamation was legal, there would be so many false accusations and fake evidence of the same, that most people would actually learn to think critically and not believe something until it has truly been verified. If a majority of people gain this skill, their critical thinking would be the predominant opinion, and anybody blindly believing things would have to be willfully blind.

Insider trading can discourage investment, and cause CEOs to hide information from employees. While there have been arguments that insider trading makes share prices more quickly go to their proper value, the true solution is that if investors dislike insider trading, companies can legally declare that they will only work with those that legally agree not to trade its shares or facilitate insider trading. If someone unaffiliated with the company simply overhears or comes across insider information, this won't stop them, but even if it were illegal, it would be nearly impossible to prove such a case.

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.

For a stable society, people need assurance that they will not be spied on, so we must slightly extend the concept of private property to include personal space. Otherwise, someone repeatedly coming within a centimeter of you and using the "I'm not touching you" kindergarten taunt would be totally allowed. The extent of this personal space is context dependent, and could be the toilet, changing room, bedroom, underneath a skirt, etc. If someone's personal space is in overlap with your private property, you cannot immediately violate said space, but can ask them to leave, and take measures to remove them only if they don't comply within a reasonable timeframe.

If your pollution damages the property of others, that would violate the NAP, and a minarchy would be justified in collecting penalties for the same and distributing them to the people affected. This should incentivize the company to try and prevent or clean up its pollution as much as possible. We need to decide the extent of such penalties, and whether penalties other than monetary ones would be even more effective at preventing pollution.

It is important to note that nowhere is discrimination against every category prohibited. Nearly all businesses would turn down certain types of customers. Only discrimination against certain protected characteristics, usually (but not always) immutable ones, irrelevant to the business, is prohibited.

In a democracy, the passing of a law prohibiting discrimination against a certain group requires the majority to be against said discrimination. This means that this group won't be discriminated against by most people anyway. Those that do will suffer losses from missed customers. People strongly opposed to the discrimination may even counter-discriminate, boycotting those that do.

In such a situation, it doesn't seem all that necessary to legally prohibit discrimination, especially to libertarians, who believe that no one can be forced to serve another for whatever reason, even "social justice".

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.

By the Kickstarter model – if a high enough number of people agree to pay your desired price, you take all their money and give them all the product. Otherwise no one's money is taken and the product is never released. This latter condition is needed so people don't just wait for cheaper copycats.

The latter situation isn't a novel scenario, the company miscalculated the demand, spent resources developing a failed product, and will have to eat the losses, something that will always hapoen.

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.

In a free market, the one who provides a good/service for the lowest price gets nearly all the customers. The one offering the highest for the same job gets nearly all the employees. No one wants to let another do this and dominate the industry, so they all compete against each other for customers and employees. Employees can also form unions to demand payment almost equal to the value they bring.