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Libertarianism

7 min read

Part of Ideas.

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Every episode (28)

Who argued it

Nick Gillespie ×2 · David Boaz ×2 · Timothy Sandefur · Vít Jedlička · Bob Levy · Marc J. Victor · Michael Tanner · Jeff Hewitt · Jacob Sullum · Alex Nowrasteh · Michael Edelstein · Will Wilkinson

Federalism · Commerce Clause · Property Rights · Administrative State · Constitutional Law · Criminal Justice Reform · COVID-19 · Economics

Background

Definitions and core principles

Across the show’s episodes, guests define libertarianism as a political philosophy centered on individual choice and skepticism of government coercion. Jeff Miron, identified as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, says that at the most fundamental level being a libertarian means having a lot of respect for individual decisions and for people’s ability to decide for themselves what is in their own interest, along with a huge suspicion of government’s ability to make people better by coercing individuals into doing things they do not want to do America’s Student Loan Problem (2012). Miron places the view outside standard Republican and Democratic positions, noting that libertarians are against drug prohibition, tolerant of gay marriage, and against severe restrictions on abortion. He characterizes liberals and conservatives as at some level the same, calling them authoritarians who want to impose their views on how people should run their lives, whereas libertarians want people to choose for themselves.

Walter Block, a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, offers a narrower account. Libertarianism, he says, is not about morality; it is a narrow philosophical perspective that focuses only on what just law should be How the Free Market Will Save the Planet (2014). Block states that he personally considers marijuana, heroin, prostitution and pornography not good, but that libertarianism has nothing to do with that. Instead it asks what the law should be, and answers that just law consists of the non-aggression principle — keep your bloody mitts to yourself.

The non-aggression principle and property rights

Block describes the non-aggression principle as one half of libertarianism: you have to keep your mitts off other people and their property unless you have their permission, and anything between consenting adults is legitimate How the Free Market Will Save the Planet (2014). Bob Zadek extends the principle’s scope, arguing that the “you” includes not only individuals acting alone but individuals acting collectively through government, so that no entity acting under color of government has the moral right to interfere with another’s enjoyment of their person or property. Block agrees, calling this position anarcho-capitalism or very radical libertarianism, and distinguishes it from minarchists or minimal government libertarians who would exempt government from the rule. Block says he and Zadek are radical libertarians who would allow no exceptions.

The second half, Block says, is property rights, because deciding whether grabbing a hat off someone’s head counts as aggression depends on who owns the hat. He adheres to a theory following John Locke and Murray Rothbard: you own yourself; you own any part of nature you homestead or mix your labor with; and you own anything else you achieve through voluntary means such as buying and selling, gifts and gambling. Zadek summarizes homesteading as adding labor to land that otherwise belongs to nobody, thereby acquiring ownership. Block corrects him only slightly, noting that virgin land still exists on mountaintops, in Alaska, and on the moon, Mars and the oceans.

Libertarianism as a political, not moral, philosophy

David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the Cato Institute, cautions against calling libertarianism a moral philosophy, describing it instead as a political philosophy and not a complete philosophy of life or an ethical guide to how to live David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015). He sums up its rule for living together in kindergarten terms: don’t hit other people, don’t take their stuff, and keep your promises. Libertarianism, he says, is the philosophy of freedom, about the relationship between the individual and the state, holding that people should be free to live their lives any way they choose so long as they respect the equal rights of others. Boaz notes that libertarians arrive by different routes — some through a belief in individual rights, others through studying economics and concluding that respecting property rights and market exchange produces a well-functioning and growing economy.

Boaz says he wrote The Libertarian Mind for three purposes: to give libertarians a deeper understanding of their own philosophy, to provide a book they would want to give to friends and family asking what libertarianism is, and to reach Americans who are basically libertarian or more libertarian than consistently liberal or conservative David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015). He cites polling in which half of Americans call themselves fiscally conservative and socially liberal, a weak kind of libertarianism, and argues that tens of millions of such people should think of themselves as part of the broad libertarian group.

Across episodes

The topic recurs across four episodes spanning 2012 to 2018, and the episodes show a consistent treatment rather than a development: Miron, Block and Boaz each stress that libertarianism is a narrow political philosophy rather than a moral or economic system, with Block supplying the non-aggression principle and property theory and Boaz the framing of freedom and the individual’s relationship to the state. No excerpt shows a later guest revising an earlier guest’s definition.

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