Libertarianism FAQ @libertarianism 0

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.

If you're literally penniless and need immediate funds, see the section on welfare. Only join companies that allow employees to unionize. Or find funding and form a cooperative. If enough people join the union that there aren't enough ununionized empoyees left, the employers will have no choice. If that is not the case, either the conditions must not be so bad, or there are more people than needed in the industry, which means some people need to leave and libertarianism is just preventing wasted human effort.

The current system is dominated by government action, so fixing problems often requires even more government action. This does not say anything as to the feasibility of a fully libertarian system. Private entities take time to develop and immediately dismantling entire government institutions may not be the best move, hence why companies benefitting from government aid and intellectual property also need antitrust legislation, and why suddenly cutting subsidies/welfare can hurt a lot of people.

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.

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.

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.

All claimed land will be privately owned; patronize places (neighbourhoods, restaurants, streets, beaches, parks, etc.) which implement the rules that you want. Such places also have an incentive to enforce said rules to not just attract but keep their target customers.

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.

This is an unsolvable problem because there's no way to extract large amounts of value from a person without cruelty, and even with cruelty, there's a limit to how much you can extract.

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.

If you believe unverified information, you will lose money.

If someone buys up a lot of the food and medicine and tries to resell it at a high price, people will have to buy it, since unlike for non-essentials, they can't just wait for the market to make more, they need it immediately. But this can be solved easily by the community signing an agreement with the supplier before production.

Price fixing would require every single company selling something to cooperate. And if they do, another person sick of them can start a new company and undercut them. Price fixing would also destroy any goodwill towards these companies and many customers wouldn't patronize them even if they lowered their prices again.

We have to distinguish between two types of creations. We'll discuss how the cost of coming up with both can be recouped without intellectual property and its awfulness.

If the resource is replaceable, like fossil fuels, the free market will invest appropriately in alternatives as and when needed. As for irreplaceable resources, it would be a very rare situation for there to only exist a few sources of it globally, controlled by a few entities, and for them to all stop competing and fix prices. This would be a global crisis requiring international action and co-operation for diplomacy, sanctions, and acquiring new sources/technologies. Clearly not a usual scenario that can be used to dismiss libertarianism.

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.

The owners of roads are incentivized to set reasonable rules so that people want to use their roads.

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.