LIBERTARIANISM libertarian lih-ber-tair’-ee-un An individual who demonstrates a

LIBERTARIANISM

libertarian lih-ber-tair’-ee-un

An individual who demonstrates a preference for one or more of the definitions of Libertarianism.

Libertarianism lih-ber-tair’-ee-un-ih’-zum (noun)

–“Roderick Long defines libertarianism as “any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals”, whether “voluntary association” takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives.”—

However, Rod Long’s definition, by using the term ‘voluntary association’ is imprecise because it does not contain the purpose or consequences of that allocation of property to individuals who can form voluntary associations. That purpose is that individuals can associate and voluntarily organize production in an expanding division of knowledge and labor, and that individuals contribute to production what they can, as they wish. Unless property is allocated to individuals, then the voluntary organization of production is impossible. And the voluntary adaptation of production to the multitudinous changes in scarcity and preference is impossible.

CAUSES OF LIBERTARIAN PREFERENCES

1) SENTIMENT: A sentiment giving precedence to individual liberty above the competing sentiments of care-taking and order — which are the respective priorities of left and right.

2) POLITICAL BIAS: A range of political biases that express the precedence for liberty as the freedom from organized coercion through the minimization or elimination of monopolistic government — and therefore maximizing the self organizing civic virtues and norms.

3) ECONOMIC BIAS: An economic philosophy that seeks to maximize human prosperity by increasing the opportunity for entrepreneurial trial and error by advocating the inviolability of individual property rights, free trade, and sound money.

4) GENERAL POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: A set of political philosophies which give liberty (freedom from coercion) the highest moral preference, over all other moral preferences, and seek to minimize both government and reduce or eliminate the state by distributing all property rights to individuals who then voluntarily organize production and distribution.

5) INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK: An framework of political institutions that seeks to replace the monopoly of the abstract state and its attendant bureaucracy with private formal institutions and public informal institutions that are subject to the pressures of market competition.

i) Classical Liberalism – state, government of divided powers, and private property under common law.

ii) Minimal Statism – minimum state and government and private property under common law

iii) Private government – no state, private government, and private property under private law

iv) Anarchy – no state, no government, and private property under common law.

Each of these models relies upon an explicitly articulated political philosophy that reduces all rights to property rights, where property has been obtained by the processes of homesteading, manufacture, and voluntary exchange, which are necessary for peaceful human cooperation because they facilitate the emergence of a market for goods and services where prices convey information that we can use to determine our actions.

These rights are enforced by some variation of the common law, and are inviolable and unalterable by the state or government. This leaves the function of government limited to the facilitation of investments in the commons, and the resolution of disputes between groups and classes.