Libertarianism FAQ @libertarianism 0

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

That the person you're about to attack may have a gun on them will deter the majority of attackers. If nobody had guns, only melee weapons, it would be easy for a group to attack someone, say with baseball bats, etc., suffer little to no injury themselves, and get away. If everyone has a gun, you can ambush someone on the street, but will likely get killed by bystander. If you target someone in a location where they see/hear you coming, like their home or workplace, the attackers will suffer more harm than the "victim". This is more effective deterrent and solution to attacks than the police, who can almost always arrive only after the crime is over.

In countries with gun rights, like the US, the chance of someone not involved in crime being killed in a shooting is very low, and the number of victims in suicidal mass shootings can be minimized if even more bystanders have guns. It is unfortunate that it is impossible to quantify the number of attacks/muggings that never happened because the possibility of people being armed stopped them. This number is almost certainly huge.

Moreover, one otherwise cannot guarantee that the government will never ever turn tyrannical. An armed populace almost certainly can.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When a company begins selling a product, the price starts off higher to recoup the cost of development, advertising, equipment, land, etc. Some costs don't increase proportionately to the number of units sold, so the cost of making each unit goes down as more are made. Thus a new company entering the market will have to charge higher prices. Does this mean that the existing companies will be able to get away with charging high prices forever because the barrier to entry is even higher?

Let's say that a company needs to charge a total of $100M more than their final prices to recoup initial costs. But by using investor funds to pay said costs, the new company can collect this $100M over, say 10 or more years, instead of 2 or 5, making the additional cost of each unit from the final price very small. Thus they can beat the overcharging company. Big investors are surprisingly ready buy billions worth of stock of companies that have been losing billions every year, if they believe it's a necessary sacrifice that will more than make up for it in the future.

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.

Some sewage systems, power generation, forests, beaches, etc., may currently be government owned. They can also be redistributed similar to roads and the water supply. Any profits gained by these will be distributed proportional to the shares owned.

The state takes a portion of your money and decides for you how it should be spent, imposes innumerable restrictions on you, and destroys your life if you disobey. On top of that, not only is the public sector less efficient than the private sector due to the lack of competition, private entities are burdened by unnecessary regulations. The justification given for this is that it improves the average well-being in several ways. But what if all the human effort spent on government is actually harmful? What if we're better off using it elsewhere if we want a more fair and prosperous society? That is what this FAQ aims to convice you of.

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.