Why is libertarianism wrong

News U. Politics Joe Biden Congress Extremism. Special Projects Highline. HuffPost Personal Video Horoscopes. Follow Us. Terms Privacy Policy. Part of HuffPost Politics. All rights reserved. The Gadsden Flag. Well then, you might be a libertarian… Or you might not. This is what happens when the poor majority revolts against the wealthy minory Lamartine in front of the Town Hall of Paris rejects the red flag on 25 February by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux.

Equitable Growth supports research and policy analysis on how strong competition among U. Equitable Growth supports research and policy analysis on how unequal access to care, 21st century work-life policies, and education undermines stable, broad-based economic growth. Equitable Growth supports research and policy analysis on how trends in economic inequality and mobility and changes in the economy have affected the concentration of wealth, income, and earnings, and how these distributional shifts have affected the promise of economic security and opportunity.

Equitable Growth supports research and policy analysis on how tax and macroeconomic policies can promote stable and broad-based economic growth. Should-Read : I think the very smart Jeffrey Friedman gets this… not quite right. The case for the empirical benefits of capitalism is very strong—but only if one is willing to remove libertarian blinders and focus on eliminating the market failures in distributions, in aggregate demand, in externalities, in information, etc.

Libertarianism retains significant potential for illuminating the modern world because of its distance from mainstream intellectual assumptions.

But this potential will remain unfulfilled until its ideological superstructure is dismantled…. A one-person boycott of meat will not stop the slaughter of animals. In reality, the individual is powerless in the face of the market - and without some decision-making power there is no real moral autonomy. The implicit position of most libertarians is that this must be accepted - that the outcome of the market is morally legitimate, even if it does not correspond to the conscience of the individual.

Certainly, all libertarians distrust even limited interference with the market: many reject it entirely. But even to simply enforce the outcome of the market, the apparatus of a state would be necessary - an army to prevent invasions, a police force to suppress internal revolt, a judicial system. Most libertarians go much further: they want a libertarian regime. Some of them have written complete and detailed constitutions.

But like any state, a libertarian state will have to enforce its constitution - otherwise it will be no more than a suggested constitution. Even if the state is founded on the planet Mars as some libertarians suggest , someone else with different ideas will probably arrive sometime. The libertarian constitutions might work in a freshly established libertarian colony, inhabited only by committed libertarians.

But sooner or later there will be an opposition, perhaps resolutely hostile to the founding principles. States, which fail to enforce their own political system against opposition to the state itself, ultimately collapse or disappear. If libertarian states want to survive in such circumstances, they will use political repression against their internal opponents. In the case of libertarianism within existing states, the position is much clearer. There is no question of a fresh start with a fresh population.

It is an imposition, and can not be anything else. Unless they are prepared to accept the division of the country, they will have to deal with millions of anti-libertarians, who reject the regime entirely. They might call the riot police the Liberty Police, they might call the prisons Liberty Camps, but it's still not 'political freedom'. Arguing from results is not generally considered sufficient to justify a political philosophy. The attitude of British and American fascist sympathisers was caricatured in the expression "Mussolini made the trains run on time".

Most libertarians favour a drastic deregulation and full privatisation of the economy, and this is typically where the instrumental claims are made. The libertarian reforms will, they claim, improve education and medical services and make better and cheaper products available. Similar claims are made by almost all liberals. However, like David Friedman's 'bad trucks' argument, they rely on a value judgment. There is no neutral common standard of what is good and bad, in consumer goods or education.

Different economic systems and different societies produce different types of goods and services. Libertarians implicitly claim that their preferences are the right preferences, and that the economic system itself should be chosen to produce their preferred goods and services.

They don't want Soviet-style goods in the shops, so they want a non-Soviet system. Perhaps you don't want Soviet-style goods in the shops either. The point is: did they ask you? All instrumental arguments are paternalistic. The fascist sympathisers who praised Mussolini's train timekeeping, assumed that was the most relevant factor to judge Italian fascist society.

For themselves - but also for their listeners. Libertarians assume everyone wants an American-style economy directed to consumer goods. Some people do. But other people have different tastes, and different priorities. Libertarians ignore these differences, and simply assume that everyone wants exactly the same, from the economy, from health care, from the educational system.

That paternalism is incompatible with the moral autonomy and economic freedom, which libertarians claim to promote. That is an inconsistency in libertarian claims to political power. It is a separate issue from the accuracy of their predictions about the wonders of deregulation and privatisation.

If libertarians say, for instance, that global deregulation will lead to increased electricity production in Ghana in , there is no point in discussion.

No-one knows anyway. The instrumental arguments of libertarians are untested, since no country has a fully libertarian economic system. There are partial neoliberal and libertarian 'experiments' - deregulation and privatisation. But, as the Californian electricity crisis showed, if the experiment fails, its supporters will simply claim that it was not sufficiently neoliberal or libertarian.

So even the evidence for the instrumental claims of libertarians is a matter of interpretation and preference: it would be futile to use it as a basis for discussion.

On one side is libertarianism, on the other totalitarianism and dictatorship. The historic examples cited are almost always Nazism and Stalinism, the historic figures are Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. If it is not just a style of argument, then it is a specific from of utilitarianism: the legitimation of libertarianism by the presumed prevention of the horrors of totalitarianism.

That would imply a libertarian claim, that even if libertarian society is unpleasant for everyone, they should accept it - to avoid the Gulag. As a style of argument this is very common, but it is hard to judge whether its users seriously think that there is a 'two-way switch' built into recent history. Certainly libertarianism is a largely North American phenomena, and European libertarians are usually Atlanticist.

But the question is, whether the USA is the promised land for libertarians - the only possible location of their libertarian revolution. And if it is, would they accept a strategy of 'libertarianism-in-one-country'? Libertarianism is ultimately a universal ideology: that implies that a libertarian USA would become a vehicle for global libertarianism. In other words, when the USA went libertarian, libertarians would proceed to an expansionist war of conquest. However, I have never seen such a proposal: in fact US libertarians seem only vaguely aware that there is anywhere outside the USA.

The differences between libertarian image and libertarian reality are summarised in this table. The values of libertarianism would have to be enforced, like those of any other political ideology. These political structures would be found in most libertarian societies Many libertarian propaganda texts begin by stating the principle. In libertarian argot, 'aggression' is defined as the initiation of coercion, and 'coercion' is defined as force, fraud or duress; coercion exercised in self-defense or restitution is defined as retaliation, not initiation.

And Charles Murray writes in What it means to be a Libertarian p. I may have the purest motive in the world. I may even have the best idea in the world. But even these give me no right to make you do something just because I think it's a good idea. This truth translates into the first libertarian principle of governance: In a free society individuals may not initiate the use of force against any other individual or group.

Now it is logically inconsistent, to demand a 'noncoercive principle of governance'. Unless someone coercively enforces it, it will be meaningless. And libertarians have a narrow and specific definition of coercion anyway see below.

But leaving that aside, this principle has an important political characteristic. It carries an implicit secondary claim, that any veto on coercion is legitimate. In a libertarian world, any person could exercise a veto over any project, if it required their coercion. And as protesters have discovered, you can place yourself in a position where that coercion is required.

By literally or metaphorically 'sitting in front of the bulldozer', any project can be blocked. To evade this, libertarian theorists would have to create exemptions to the non-coercion principle, and probably exemptions from these exemptions. I have not seen any libertarian attempt to do this. However, there is a good comparison with rights theory - where every right can be matched by a claimed counter-right. In political practice, this has led to an inflation of rights which can also be found in some libertarian proposals.

The question is, to what, to whom? This is the problem which rights theorists faced, when people started claiming rights for animals, for species, for ecosystems, for land, and for rocks. The non-coercion principle also has a limits problem.

May fish legitimately be coerced into nets? Is it coercion to demolish a building? May collectivities benefit from non-coercion? In other words, is the principle of non-coercion exclusive to natural persons? Some libertarians do say that, but even this is unclear. Libertarians can not agree on whether an abortion is initiation of force, because they disagree on whether the fetus is a natural person. Certainly libertarians insist that the State should respect the non-coercion principle.

Some libertarians might concede that the State is also protected by the principle, especially the so-called minarchists. For instance, they might condemn extortion from the government as coercion, force or fraud. If they concede the existence of a government at all, it will need protection against force in order to function.

But if they concede this extension, why not extend it further to clubs and associations, which also need protection in order to function? Or to ethnic minorities? Or to species?

A libertarian society needs to define the limits of the non-coercion principle, in order to apply it. These limits must then be enforced.

Once again the claim to neutrality is undermined. The libertarian state would have to be maximal enough, to enforce their particular view of who deserves non-coercion. In such a world, power would rest with those who define 'coercion' or 'initiation'.

The Libertarian Party Principles state: We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose. In other words, interference with the lives of others is permitted, so long as it is not forcible.

Anti-coercion libertarians do not simply oppose coercion, they also claim to legitimately define it. Their definition excludes much that others would see as coercion. Most explicitly, market forces are not defined as coercion by libertarians. Some take this to extremes - proposing for instance a free market in children, or the return of indentured labour and contract slavery. On the other hand, any attempt to restrict market forces or competition would be defined by most libertarians as 'coercion'.

Yet again the claim to neutrality is undermined: the libertarian state would also enforce their particular views of what constitutes non-coercion. Cynically defined, a libertarian is a person who believes that all humans should live in total and absolute submission to market forces, at all times from birth to death, without any chance of escape.

Only liberal ideologies claim that living in a free market is equivalent to living in a free society. Charles Murray writes in What it means to be a Libertarian p. This characteristic of a voluntary and informed exchange makes a free society possible. No, it does not. There is a huge gap in the logic here. The characteristics of the exchange do not determine the form of the society in which it takes place.

A society is not a two-person transaction. A voluntary and informed exchange between two parties may already have dramatic consequences for a third party.

Billions of free-market transactions result in some 'third parties' starving to death: that is neither voluntary, nor informed, nor an exchange. A simple example: two islands exchange crops, to reach a minimum healthy diet. Soil conditions mean that a full range of crops can not be grown: without the exchange the inhabitants of both islands will die. Then an external trader arrives, and sells the necessary crops to one of the islands. The trader sells honestly at fair prices: both parties trader and one island are satisfied with the deal.

Nevertheless, the inter-island exchange ends. On the other island, the population dies of malnutrition. Obviously, they never contracted to this, yet some libertarians would claim that they are in some sense more free. To allow 'freedom' in the sense that no-one finds themselves in a non-consensual condition as a result of transactions, would require the effect on all persons is known predictability , or at least the risks to all persons are identified all those affected are informed, and all those affected consent.

Even in a small village with a barter economy these conditions are impossible. Libertarians must know that free markets are not 'pure' transactions in a social vacuum. The voluntary and informed nature of a contract can, in reality, never extend beyond the contracting parties. But its effects can. Even if every single transaction is voluntary and informed, the resulting society might disadvantage everyone.

If, and only if, all its members have contracted to accept any and all outcomes of all transactions collectively, can it be a 'free society' in the sense implied by Charles Murray. Otherwise, the image of the voluntary transaction as a metaphor for society, is false and propagandistic. In libertarianism, it is found in the non-coercion principle. Since humans have not freely chosen the world into which they were born, a truly non-coercive philosopher would demand that the cosmos disappeared - and only re-appeared, when everyone consented in writing to its existence.

The real world is not so helpful. Libertarians take the existence of existing society as given. That makes it unfairly privileged - since attempts to abolish it can be legitimately described as coercion. In other words it gets a head start over all possible other societies: they have to prove 'non-coercion' before coming into existence, the existing society does not.

Libertarians appear to reject destructive force in general, including the destruction of tradition, and of traditionally venerated objects. Prohibiting the destruction of the existing is, by definition, a form of conservatism. Libertarianism appears to be 'anti-iconoclastic' in this sense, but specific libertarian condemnations of revolutionary iconoclasm are hard to find. Nevertheless, like most liberals, libertarians not only claim to be value-neutral themselves, they explicitly promote value neutrality.

The standard model of human rights is a classic example of liberal value neutrality. The whole point about human rights is that they are universal - and therefore deliberately amoral. Good humans and evil humans get equal human rights: the rights are equally valid when used for good or evil.

Some libertarian philosophy rejects all moral judgment. No statement, it claims, can be more than an opinion. Almost all libertarians claim to reject the imposition of values by the State and other external authorities. They reject personal moralising, for example interference in the sex life of individuals by religious groups.

Since libertarianism is so concentrated in the USA, school prayers, pornography, abortion and gun control are the typical issues. However, ethics is not only about adult videos: there is a huge range of fundamental moral issues, submerged beneath the consensus of western societies.