Anarcho-capitalism (anarcho referring to the lack of coercion and capitalism referring to the liberation of capital, also referred to as free-market anarchism,[2]market anarchism,[3]private-property anarchism,[4]libertarian anarchism,[5] among others (see below) and the short term "ancap") is a political philosophy which advocates the elimination of the state - which distorts market signals, breeds corruption, and institutionalizes monopoly - in favor of individual sovereignty, absence of invasive private property policies and open markets (laissez-faire capitalism). Anarcho-capitalists believe that in the absence of statute (law by decree or legislation), society would improve itself through the discipline of the free market (or what its proponents describe as a "voluntary society").[6][7] In an anarcho-capitalist society, law enforcement, courts, and all other security services would be operated by privately funded competitors rather than centrally through compulsory taxation. Money, along with all other goods and services, would be privately and competitively provided in an open market. Therefore, personal and economic activities under anarcho-capitalism would be regulated by victim-based dispute resolution organizations under tort and contract law, rather than by statute through centrally determined punishment under political monopolies.[8]

Various theorists have espoused legal philosophies similar to anarcho-capitalism. The first person to use the term, however, was Murray Rothbard, who in the mid-20th century synthesized elements from the Austrian School of economics, classical liberalism, and 19th-century American individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker (while rejecting their labor theory of value and the norms they derived from it).[9] A Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist society would operate under a mutually agreed-upon libertarian "legal code which would be generally accepted, and which the courts would pledge themselves to follow."[10] This pact would recognize self-ownership and the non-aggression principle (NAP), although methods of enforcement vary.

Anarcho-capitalists are to be distinguished from minarchists, who advocate a small government (often referred to as a 'night-watchman state') limited to the function of individual protection, and from social anarchists who seek to prohibit or regulate the accumulation of property and the flow of capital.

Anarcho-capitalists argue for a society based on the voluntary trade of private property and services (in sum, all relationships not caused by threats or violence, including exchanges of money, consumer goods, land, and capital goods) in order to minimize conflict while maximizing individual liberty and prosperity. However, they also recognize charity and communal arrangements as part of the same voluntary ethic.[11] Though anarcho-capitalists are known for asserting a right to private (individualized or joint non-public) property, some propose that non-state public or community property can also exist in an anarcho-capitalist society.[12] For them, what is important is that it is acquired and transferred without help or hindrance from the compulsory state. Anarcho-capitalist libertarians believe that the only just, and/or most economically beneficial, way to acquire property is through voluntary trade, gift, or labor-based original appropriation, rather than through aggression or fraud.[13]

Anarcho-capitalists see free-market capitalism as the basis for a free and prosperous society. Murray Rothbard said that the difference between free-market capitalism and "state capitalism" is the difference between "peaceful, voluntary exchange" and a collusive partnership between business and government that uses coercion to subvert the free market.[14] (Rothbard is credited with coining the term "Anarcho-capitalism").[15][16] "Capitalism," as anarcho-capitalists employ the term, is not to be confused with state monopoly capitalism, crony capitalism, corporatism, or contemporary mixed economies, wherein market incentives and disincentives may be altered by state action.[17] They therefore reject the state, seeing it as an entity which steals property (through taxation and expropriation), initiates aggression, has a compulsory monopoly on the use of force, uses its coercive powers to benefit some businesses and individuals at the expense of others, creates artificial monopolies, restricts trade, and restricts personal freedoms via drug laws, compulsory education, conscription, laws on food and morality, and the like.

Many anarchists view capitalism as an inherently authoritarian and hierarchical system, and seek the expropriation of private property.[18] There is disagreement between these left anarchists and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalists,[19] as the former generally rejects anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism and considers anarcho-capitalism an oxymoron,[20][21][22] while the latter holds that such expropriation is counterproductive to order, and would require a state.[8] On the Nolan chart, anarcho-capitalists are located at the northernmost apex of the libertarian quadrant - since they reject state involvement in both economic and personal affairs.[23]

Laissez-faire anarchists argue that the state is an initiation of force because force can be used against those who have not stolen private property, vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud. Many also argue that subsidized monopolies tend to be corrupt and inefficient. Anarchist theorist Rothbard argued that all government services, including defense, are inefficient because they lack a market-based pricing mechanism regulated by the voluntary decisions of consumers purchasing services that fulfill their highest-priority needs and by investors seeking the most profitable enterprises to invest in.[24] Many anarchists also argue that private defense and court agencies would have to have a good reputation in order to stay in business. Furthermore, Linda and Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can't desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.[25]

Rothbard bases his philosophy on natural law grounds and also provides economic explanations of why he thinks anarcho-capitalism is preferable on pragmatic grounds as well. David D. Friedman says he is not an absolutist rights theorist but is also "not a utilitarian", however, he does believe that "utilitarian arguments are usually the best way to defend libertarian views".[26]Peter Leeson argues that "the case for anarchy derives its strength from empirical evidence, not theory."[27]Hans-Hermann Hoppe, meanwhile, uses "argumentation ethics" for his foundation of "private property anarchism",[28] which is closer to Rothbard's natural law approach.

I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual. Anarchists oppose the State because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.

Rothbard in Society and State

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Anarcho-capitalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I typically describe myself as a libertarian anarchist. People who dont understand what either word means will essentially assume that Im doubly insane. Libertarian is a more friendly word; anarchist is generally perceived to be hostile. Libertarians are usually considered fringe; anarchists are usually considered dangerous. Yet some people, especially people who are libertarian or anarchists, view the words as essentially the same thing. Analytically speaking, it seems there should be a distinction even if the situation likens itself in many cases to a square being a rectangle, but rectangle not necessarily being a square.

Libertarianism is an ethical doctrine. It is concerned with rights. Most commonly this right is referred to as the right to self ownership which includes the right to the product of your labor. For some (probably most) libertarians, this is essentially a faith based, though not necessarily theological, concept. It is taken on faith that men are imbued with this right through nature or that that these rights are implied by the nature of truth, knowledge, existence, reason, etc. What is ironic about this faith based libertarian concept is that it is widely accepted on face value by most participants in modern (classical) liberal societies. It is conservative (not as in American Conservatives, but as in historically organized society) culture that refutes the idea of self ownership by subjecting the behavior of the individual to the enforced law of the moral majority. However, the concept of self ownership is thoroughly ignored by most in society even while they champion it as the bedrock of their modern culture of tolerance. This is because most of society is conservative and Rightist as opposed to liberal and Leftist. This betrayal of self ownership is implied by the aggression of the government that is condoned by the populace. Even commonplace policy positions in support of a state single payer health care system or a central bank or drug prohibition demonstrate the contempt the populace shows to the individual who libertarians argue should hold sole dominion over his own life. The popular opinion demonstrates a fondness for collective ownership of individuals - a collective slavery, if you will - that the scope of control over humanity extends past ones own fingertips to some degree.

The other form of libertarianism holds that libertarianism is a desirable ethical standard because it results in the most beneficial outcomes. Consequentialists do not operate on faithful assumptions about the nature and rights of men. Their considerations are directed towards a scientific standard that observes and deduces that greater degrees of self ownership and liberty result in a flourishing of society in terms of wealth and culture. While not completely comfortable throwing myself into either category (since I do believe in Divinely granted human rights to self ownership), I probably fit best in the consequentialist camp.

The libertarian principle of non-aggression simply is a means of asserting the premise of self ownership. The non-aggression principle states that one may/should not use coercive physical force to violate the self ownership of any other person. The principle clearly understood merely asserts that all actions should be voluntarily untaken. Likewise, toleration is a key characteristic of libertarian ethics. Libertarians are not required to approve of the actions of others, but, so long as those actions are non-coercive, persuasion is the only ethical outlet for change. The use of force is illegitimate for libertarians. Only the initiation of such force justifies the use of force and only as retaliation. What is clear is that libertarians oppose government. Government is any actor, individual, or collective that negates the liberty of self ownership - any entity that claims control over another person or persons. Libertarians generally concede the necessity of institutions that may seek to prevent violations of liberty in advance through the use of defensive tactics. The purest and most cogent form of libertarianism is anarchistic because the existence of a State requires the involuntary submission to pay for the monopoly services of that State, an obvious violation of liberty.

Anarchism has nothing to do with rights or ethics. The concept of philosophical anarchism may, but that is very similar if not the same as libertarianism. Anarchism is a political concept that promotes ideas hostile to the State. The State can essentially be viewed as a self enforcing monopoly with power over a specified although possibly indefinite region. Because governing institutions are most effective at depriving individuals of liberty, they are well equipped to claim dominion over and submission to itself, while aiming to protect itself from competition. The most effective tool at the disposal of a State or a government that wishes to obtain or maintain Statehood is propaganda which to reinforce its Laws through pop justification. Statist institutions maintain their monopoly through force and through the repeated demonization of competing government and defensive services. Usually, States will seek to expand their role from just that of a governing body to one of greater scope ie education, health care, postal services, etc. States are emblematic and self-reinforced by their governing AND governed classes. In monarchy, a single person is put in charge of the lawmaking process. In oligarchy, a few people decide the laws. In aristocracy, the wealthy decide the laws. In a democracy, the law is decided by the majority of people. Anarchism is opposition to all of this. Fundamentally, anarchism is a strain of political anti-authoritarianism that regards the authority of the State governing class as illegitimate. Anarchists seek the abolition of the political State and its resultant law in lieu of a new order of organic law.

The confusion between anarchy and chaos is fair to a degree. With the abolition of the State, the law would be the natural outcome of community, market, and physical dominance. However, this does not distinguish it from the State at all. The society that approves the will of the State determines the legitimate scope of the State. Furthermore, the rule of the State is enforced strictly through physical dominance. In an anarchist society, one could act anti-socially to any degree he pleases and can get away with, but it is unlikely in civil society that he would last very long. The fear that these people would run rampant is unwarranted. The benefits of cooperation discourage anti-social behavior. The cooperative aspects of society have been learned and evolved into to deal with anti-social behavior. So, any man exposing the world to tyranny would not likely have long before voluntary and contractual coalitions of people were to fight back. Even if this were not the case, the pro-State assumption that anti-social, and in this sense I mean both malevolent and incompetent, people will not infiltrate the State apparatus is false. In fact, the opposite is true. The State apparatus, not existing on a competitive level to help ensure quality and customer satisfaction, involves the gradual usurpation of power by the anti-social (of course assuming the originators of the State were not themselves anti-social). The cohesive force in anarchist society is contract and cooperation for mutual benefit. In other words, anarchist society promotes the thriving of the market by leveling the playing field, increasing transparency, and reflecting the demands of society over State.

An interesting way to view the anarchist struggle is to envision a society of political ladders of power. Statist leaders attempt to climb these ladders to gain power and oversight. Anarchists shake the ladders and expose as phony the pretense under which Statists argue they had a right to become lawmakers instead of market participants in the first place. As the evolution of Statism takes hold and the justifications for it become more broad, the privilege of Statism extends to a larger base of people, starting as monarchist and culminating in democratic. Anarchists are there the entire time to shake the ladders and challenge the idea there should be ladders at all.

In summation, libertarians promote voluntary human interactions as morally imperative or advantageous. Anarchists oppose others holding dominion over them. Libertarianism is the liberation of all individuals from the authority of society. Anarchism is the liberation of self from (political) authority. A (pure) libertarian is an anarchist, but an anarchist is not necessarily a libertarian.

Next Up: Why I Am First and Foremost an Anarchist and Less of a Libertarian

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New Kind of Mind: The Difference Between Libertarianism ...

Liberty. Its a simple idea, but its also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. Theyre called libertarians.

If youre new to libertarianism and want to learn more, the items below will give you a good start.

David Boaz

In just 20 minutes, David Boaz introduces libertarianism, explores the ideas behind it, and the policies it leads to. If you want to know what libertarianism is all about, this is the place to start.

November 3, 2011 Essays

Aaron Ross Powell

Libertarianismits theory, its practiceis an awfully big topic. This reading list gives you a place to start. A combination of newcomers and established classics, these books offer accessible introductions to variety of libertarian thought, from philosophy to history to economics.

April 5, 2012 Columns

Aaron Ross Powell

In this essay, Aaron Powell and Trevor Burrus explain how big government not only makes us poorer and less free, but also undermines our moral character and turns neighbor against neighbor.

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What is Libertarianism? | A Libertarianism.org Guide

Definitions, Principles and History What is a libertarian? What do libertarians want to do? Where does libertarianism come from? How do libertarians differ from "liberals"? How do libertarians differ from "conservatives"? Do libertarians want to abolish the government? What's the difference between small-l libertarian and big-l Libertarian? How would libertarians fund vital public services? What would a libertarian "government" do and how would it work? Politics and Consequences What is the libertarian position on abortion? What is the libertarian position on minority, gay & women's rights? What is the libertarian position on gun control? What is the libertarian position on art, pornography and censorship? What is the libertarian position on the draft? What is the libertarian position on the "drug war"? What would libertarians do about concentrations of corporate power? Standard Criticisms But what about the environment? Who speaks for the trees? Don't strong property rights just favor the rich? Would libertarians just abandon the poor? What about national defense? Don't you believe in cooperating? Shouldn't people help each other? Prospects How can I get involved? Is libertarianism likely to get a practical test in my lifetime? Resources Online Books Magazines Libertarian political and service organizations

There are a number of standard questions about libertarianism that have been periodically resurfacing in the politics groups for years. This posting attempts to answer some of them. I make no claim that the answers are complete, nor that they reflect a (nonexistent) unanimity among libertarians; the issues touched on here are tremendously complex. This posting will be useful, however, if it successfully conveys the flavor of libertarian thought and gives some indication of what most libertarians believe.

The word means approximately "believer in liberty". Libertarians believe in individual conscience and individual choice, and reject the use of force or fraud to compel others except in response to force or fraud. (This latter is called the "Non-Coercion Principle" and is the one thing all libertarians agree on.)

Help individuals take more control over their own lives. Take the state (and other self-appointed representatives of "society") out of private decisions. Abolish both halves of the welfare/warfare bureaucracy (privatizing real services) and liberate the 7/8ths of our wealth that's now soaked up by the costs of a bloated and ineffective government, to make us all richer and freer. Oppose tyranny everywhere, whether it's the obvious variety driven by greed and power-lust or the subtler, well-intentioned kinds that coerce people "for their own good" but against their wills.

Modern libertarianism has multiple roots. Perhaps the oldest is the minimal-government republicanism of the U.S.'s founding revolutionaries, especially Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists. Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the "classical liberals" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were another key influence. More recently, Ayn Rand's philosophy of "ethical egoism" and the Austrian School of free-market capitalist economics have both contributed important ideas. Libertarianism is alone among 20th-century secular radicalisms in owing virtually nothing to Marxism.

Once upon a time (in the 1800s), "liberal" and "libertarian" meant the same thing; "liberals" were individualist, distrustful of state power, pro-free- market, and opposed to the entrenched privilege of the feudal and mercantilist system. After 1870, the "liberals" were gradually seduced (primarily by the Fabian socialists) into believing that the state could and should be used to guarantee "social justice". They largely forgot about individual freedom, especially economic freedom, and nowadays spend most of their time justifying higher taxes, bigger government, and more regulation. Libertarians call this socialism without the brand label and want no part of it.

For starters, by not being conservative. Most libertarians have no interest in returning to an idealized past. More generally, libertarians hold no brief for the right wing's rather overt militarist, racist, sexist, and authoritarian tendencies and reject conservative attempts to "legislate morality" with censorship, drug laws, and obnoxious Bible-thumping. Though libertarians believe in free-enterprise capitalism, we also refuse to stooge for the military-industrial complex as conservatives are wont to do.

Libertarians want to abolish as much government as they practically can. About 3/4 are "minarchists" who favor stripping government of most of its accumulated power to meddle, leaving only the police and courts for law enforcement and a sharply reduced military for national defense (nowadays some might also leave special powers for environmental enforcement). The other 1/4 (including the author of this FAQ) are out-and-out anarchists who believe that "limited government" is a delusion and the free market can provide better law, order, and security than any goverment monopoly.

Also, current libertarian political candidates recognize that you can't demolish a government as large as ours overnight, and that great care must be taken in dismantling it carefully. For example, libertarians believe in open borders, but unrestricted immigration now would attract in a huge mass of welfare clients, so most libertarians would start by abolishing welfare programs before opening the borders. Libertarians don't believe in tax-funded education, but most favor the current "parental choice" laws and voucher systems as a step in the right direction.

Progress in freedom and prosperity is made in steps. The Magna Carta, which for the first time put limits on a monarchy, was a great step forward in human rights. The parliamentary system was another great step. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, which affirmed that even a democratically-elected government couldn't take away certain inalienable rights of individuals, was probably the single most important advance so far. But the journey isn't over.

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The Libertarianism FAQ - CatB

In a recent post , famed economist Paul Krugman claims that there basically arent any libertarians out there because public opinion breaks down neatly along a liberal-conservative spectrum where almost everyone who favors government intervention in the economy is a social liberal and almost everyone who is skeptical of it is a social conservative. But Krugman cites no data to support his conclusion. And, in fact, extensive survey data contradicts it.

The relevant evidence has been catalogued by David Boaz, polling guru Nate Silver (who is far from being a libertarian himself), and economist Bryan Caplan. Depending on what measures you use, anywhere from about 10% to as many as 44 percent of Americans hold generally libertarian views in the sense that they favor strict limits on government power in both the economic and social spheres. I believe the lower estimates are more credible than the higher ones. But even the former are still a substantial fraction of the population.

Most of these people arent as consistent and thoroughgoing in their views as libertarian intellectuals are. But the same can be said of most conservatives and liberals in the general public relative to intellectual advocates of those viewpoints. At least within the Republican Party (which is a major focus of Krugmans post), the percentage of libertarians is rapidly increasing; younger Republicans are much more libertarian on social issues than their elders, while still being skeptical of government intervention in the economy.

Krugman also claims that almost no one holds views that are the opposite of libertarianism: combining social conservatism with support for extensive government intervention in the economy (he calls such people hardhats, though public opinion researchers more commonly call them populists). This too is clearly false. As Boaz and Caplan note, surveys show a substantial number of people who fall into that category. In recent years, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum both ran campaigns for the GOP presidential nomination on such a platform, and both attracted substantial support. Perhaps even more telling, George W. Bushs policies as president included a combination of social conservatism and the biggest new welfare state program in some forty years, as well as a major expansion of federal government involvement in education. Bush and his advisers clearly believed there were enough hardhats out there to make this program politically viable. In Europe, the combination of social conservatism and economic interventionism is even more common than in the US, as witness the recent resurgence of parties such as Frances National Front, which combine right-wing nationalism with support for a large welfare state. As a libertarian myself, Im no fan of hardhat/populist ideologies. But I cant deny that there are large numbers of people who support them.

Admittedly, Krugmans claim might be right if we interpret his framework literally. He defines libertarians as people who combine social liberalism with the view that there should be no social insurance. As David Boaz notes in his critique, the latter is an extreme definition that would exclude such prominent libertarian thinkers as Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek (both of whom were willing to accept a strictly limited welfare state); it would also rule out the vast majority of those people who hold roughly libertarian views in the general population. But if Krugman means that definition literally, it would also prove there are no conservatives either. After all, very few people who consider themselves to be conservatives favor the complete abolition of the welfare state, as opposed to its restriction to levels smaller than that favored by the left. In the 2012 election, the GOP even ran on a platform attacking Obama for supposedly cutting Medicare too much.

Its also possible to try to justify Krugmans claim by arguing that most of those people who hold seemingly libertarian views havent thought carefully about their implications and are not completely consistent in their beliefs. This is likely true. But it is also true of most conservatives and liberals. Political ignorance and irrationality are very common across the political spectrum and only a small minority of voters think carefully about their views and make a systematic attempt at consistency. Libertarian-leaning voters are not an exception to this trend. But it is worth noting that, controlling for other variables, increasing political knowledge tends to make people more libertarian in their views than they would be otherwise.

Finally, Krugman is wrong to suggest that the difference between supporters and opponents of more extensive government intervention in the economy is solely or even primarily about social insurance that breaks down traditional structures of authority. In many places, early expansions of government intervention in the economy were in part intended to reinforce rather than break down traditional structures of authority, which is one reason why it was often pioneered by right-wingers like Otto von Bismarck. More recently, there are have been many forms of government intervention that tend to benefit the relatively affluent and and well-connected interest groups at the expense of the poor. If you dont want to take my word for it, read Krugmans own recent columns on zoning and farm subsidies.

In his critique of Krugmans post, Bryan Caplan suggests that Krugmans neglect of readily available evidence in this case gives us reason to doubt his reliability more generally. I dont go quite that far. As I see it, this is yet another case where a pundit gets into trouble by pontificating on issues outside their expertise.

Even if you are a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning economist like Krugman, its easy to go wrong in commenting on a subject you may not have much knowledge about. Moreover, in dealing with such issues, we are more likely to act like political fans and default to simplistic frameworks that make it easy to feel good about our own views, while dismissing those of the opposition.

In this case, postulating a simplistic one-dimensional distribution of political opinion enables Krugman to claim that virtually all of the people who oppose his views on government intervention in the economy do not, in reality, love liberty, and also to ignore the fact that many people who endorse a large welfare state also have illiberal social views. These assumptions make it easy to divide the world into good guys who want to break down traditional forms of authority and bad guys who want to maintain them. But, however comforting it might be, this approach fails to capture the true distribution of political opinion.

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Volokh Conspiracy: Paul Krugman claims there basically arent any libertarians

Indiana #39;s "Religious Freedom" Bill: Libertarianism Won Back in 1972
Most moral reforms suggested by the DNC and fiscal reforms proposed by the GOP were suggested in the 70s and 80s by libertarians. People forget that the first openly gay presidential candidate...

By: Styxhexenhammer666

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Indiana's "Religious Freedom" Bill: Libertarianism Won Back in 1972 - Video

The True History of Libertarianism in America
Mark Ames, Senior Editor at Pando Daily and Author of #39;Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan #39;s Workplaces to Clinton #39;s Columbine and Beyond #39; joins Thom to talk about the real...

By: thomhartmann

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The True History of Libertarianism in America - Video

Rand Paul used to be libertarian. Now he describes himself as libertarian-ish.

Its a slight distinction, but an important one.

Story Continued Below

The senator is using his presidential campaign kickoff tour this week, including a Thursday afternoon speech at the U.S.S. Yorktown aircraft carrier in Charleston, to present himself as a kinder and gentler version of his father, long the movements standard-bearer, while also showcasing a scaled-back, sanded-down form of libertarianism thats more palatable to the Republican rank-and-file.

Theres no talk from the Kentuckian about ending the Federal Reserve, no quoting Friedrich Hayek and no laments about how the U.S. deserves a share of blame for terrorism all hallmarks of Ron Paul presidential campaign rallies. Doom-and-gloom has been replaced by sunny optimism; the language of revolution has been supplanted by something that sounds a lot more incremental and a lot less edgy.

The focus now is on humanizing Rand Paul. Glossy videos at his campaign events show him coaching little league soccer, traveling to Guatemala to give free medical care and visiting with African-American college students. His stump speech includes a poignant story about how his ailing grandmother inspired him to become an eye doctor. As her vision began to fail, I became her eyes, he tells crowds. Those introducing Paul at events repeatedly describe him as compassionate.

Libertarians of all varieties understand why the 52-year-old is bowing to pragmatism and playing the inside game. Most are okay with what they see as a delicate balancing act; they recognize that not enough libertarians are out there to win the Republican nomination. But others, especially those who identify with the Libertarian Party, have a word for Paul: sellout.

There are a lot of libertarians who will sit down and talk with you for hours on end about the Fed and macroeconomic theory and Hayek and so forth, said Bob Barr, who represented Georgia in Congress for five terms before running for president as the Libertarian Partys nominee in 2008. Thats great, but the average voter doesnt know who Hayek was, doesnt know who Milton Friedman was and doesnt know what the Federal Reserve does.

Rand is much more founded in the real world than his dad was when he was a candidate, Barr continued. Rand understands that if you want to win a national election as a libertarian that is with a small l you have to appeal to a lot of Republicans. We have, after all, a two-party system period, end of argument.

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee in 2012, chastises the younger Paul for supporting a budget that includes sizable increases in military spending and for cozying up to evangelicals. Paul continues to personally oppose gay marriage and does not call for the legalization of marijuana.

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Rand Paul's kinder, gentler libertarianism

Five reasons why the Kentucky senator trails Ted Cruz in fundraising, but is still stealing the spotlight.

If youre a member of the Washington media, odds are youve spent at least some time over the past 48 hours discussing Rand Pauls entry into the presidential race and his testy exchanges about abortion with an Associated Press reporter. Reporters and pundits have covered Pauls debut for The Washington Post, NPR, The Huffington Post, and the Today Show. The Daily Beast offered space to the libertarian Cato Institutes David Boaz to argue that yes, Paul can do it. In The Hill, Dick Morris argued that he cant.

Meanwhile, the disclosure that Ted Cruzalso a declared candidate for presidentraised $31 million in a week, although certainly reported, seems to have aroused nothing like this kind of media excitement. Google News tallied half as many citations for Can Ted Cruz win? as for Can Rand Paul win? Chris Cillizza explained why Cruz chose to announce at Liberty University but had this to say about the candidates prospects: "Cruz badly needs social conservatives on his side if he wants to have any serious chance at being the Republican nominee in 2016and then went on to explain why that was unlikely to happen. Mark Halperin dismissed Cruz as a second-tier candidate.

Yet to the extent there are metrics, Cruz is outperforming Paul in the first phases of the presidential race. Not only has Cruz raised more money than Paul, but a National Journal survey of social media found that Cruzs presidential launch attracted dramatically more social media interaction than Pauls.

Neither man has an easy or obvious path to the nomination. Both men face powerful, perhaps insuperable, opposition within the party. Pauls path is probably even more emphatically foredoomed, but at a minimum it is surely no less foredoomed.

So why is Paul a favorite topic of media speculation, while Cruz cant make news?

Id offer five reasons. Theyre interesting in themselves, I think, but also interesting as examples of how news organizations can systematically mis-evaluate political realities.

1. Home-Court Advantage

If you live and work in Washington, D.C., its easy to imagine libertarianism as a powerful national movement. Washington is home to Reason magazine and the Cato Institute, and to dozens of hard-working and talented libertarian writers, commentators, and policy analysts. Its easy here to lose sight of the extreme marginality of the doctrine in the nation as a wholeespecially because libertarianism as we see it in the capital looks a lot more like the preferred politics of the institutional media (socially permissive, fiscally cautious) than like the Lincoln-hating, bullion-believing, conspiracy-mongering politics of libertarianism beyond the Beltway at the Ron Paul Institute, Antiwar.com, or the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Journalists are consequently vulnerable to claims that libertarianism appeals to independents, Millennials, or some other demographically desirable groupno matter how overwhelmingly such claims are contradicted by the evidence. Meanwhile, the conservative Christian evangelicalism to which Ted Cruz looks for his base remains perhaps more underrepresented in D.C. media and culture than any other major American social group. D.C. journalists intellectually apprehend that evangelicals are important, but they have a hard time remembering that fact when they offer their commentary.

2. Media Management

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Rand Paul, Media Darling

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky announced his candidacy for the presidency yesterday in a hotel ballroom in Louisville. The hotel was aptly named: The Galt Hotel. Presumably, the name is merely fortuitous as the hotel predates Ayn Rands writing Atlas Shrugged in which her libertarian hero is named John Galt. Pauls candidacy will be a test of the power of libertarian ideas to persuade in America in the early twenty-first century and, just so, is a test for the truths of Catholic Social Teaching which could scarcely be in greater opposition to those libertarian ideas as was manifest at a conference at Boston College in which I participated on Monday.

Dan Balz, of the Washington Post, is an acute observer of politics, but his analysis of Sen. Pauls candidacy in this mornings Post suffered from his repeating a lazy meme. He wrote: Pauls announcement was a reminder of why he often has been called the most interesting politician in the country, with a libertarian message that seemed to sweep across the ideological spectrum and that challenged the establishment of both parties. Libertarianism is many things, but interesting is not one of them.

At the conference at Boston College, entitled, Why Libertarianism Isnt Liberal, the first keynote speaker, Princeton Professor and political philosopher Alan Ryan, took issue with the title of the conference. For him, libertarianism is to liberalism as heresy is to orthodoxy, a truth run amok. They focus so exclusively on property rights, they end up neglecting other important liberal values and insights. He identified quite rightly one of the challenges Sen. Paul will face in his candidacy, the libertarian schizophrenia about whether the movement is a saving remnant, a view held by Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, or are they a natural third party, a view held by David Boaz at the CATO Institute, the leading libertarian think tank, and the Koch Brothers who have pledged some $800 million to test the proposition in the next two years. Professor Ryan also pointed out that Paul, like all libertarians, will have a hard time answering questions about market failure, which the nation and world experienced in 2008, leading a bewildered Alan Greenspan, longtime Secretary-Treasurer of the Ayn Rand Society in Washington, to admit he could not explain how the economic meltdown happened. The libertarian insistence on property rights as the only useful lens for evaluating public policy is similarly ill-suited to pressing concerns, such as environmental degradation. Much of the pollution in San Francisco, Ryan pointed out, originates in China and it is difficult to see how an assertion of property rights could resolve that problem for those coughing on polluted air in the City by the Bay.

The other keynoter, Alan Wolfe, delivered a trenchant indictment of libertarianism, root and branch. To him, the movement has more in common with the totalitarianism it ostensibly opposed than with liberalism. Libertarians like to place both Adam Smith and Friedrich von Hayek in their pantheon of heroes, but while both embraced laissez-faire economics, they did so in different circumstances and for different reasons. Smiths free market would liberate individuals from the caprice of an inflexible mercantilism, Wolfe explained. Hayeks free market would chain individuals to a system of rules over which they have no control and cannot, by themselves, fully understand. But, the problems with libertarianism are deeper than a misreading of their heroes. Liberalism raises questions. Libertarians seek answers, and always find the right ones, Wolfe said. Their philosophy is an antidote to the doubt, inconsistency, and vagueness that has always been built-into liberalism. There is nothing tentative, nothing haphazard, nothing weak-kneed about libertarianism.. If you believe in God, respect hierarchy, and venerate tradition you can oppose liberalism by becoming a conservative. If you prefer a social order that hides its authoritarianism behind opaqueness, you become a libertarian.

The other speakers at the conference, approaching the topic from different perspectives, all took libertarianism to the intellectual woodshed. Boston College theologian Mary Jo Iozzio looked at how Americas happy, and largely successful, efforts to make life better for people with disabilities rests on a view of human society that is anathema to libertarians. Providence College theologian Dana Dillon noted the limits of rights as a political lens, asking how much more effective the Churchs opposition to the HHS contraception mandate would have been if Catholic institutions were at the forefront of efforts to provide liberal maternal leave policies, providing day care to employees, and other pro-family provisions. And, Mark Silk of Trinity College, who has happily published his talk, introduced a new phrase into the political lexicon: spiritual libertarianism. More on that tomorrow when I discuss the fallout from the Indiana RFRA fight.

The other panel featured Catholic Universitys Stephen Schneck, who explained in detail why John Locke and James Madison also do not fit into the libertarian pantheon despite their efforts to claim them as their own. Schneck is working on a book on this topic and his talk reflected the careful research and analysis we have come to expect from him. St. Johns University theologian Meghan Clark explained that libertarianism and Catholic Social Teaching are at odds at the root, with radically different conceptions of humankinds creation in the image and likeness of God, the universal destination of goods, and the purpose of government. And Harvards Mary Jo Bane, who described herself as a hopeless pragmatist, noted that liberals and Catholics could draw policy threads from libertarianism on issues like school choice, criminal justice policy and social welfare policy. An expert in these policy areas, Bane is familiar with the way establishment thinking can resist improvements to systems that are not working, and she can be forgiven for seeking allies where she can find them. Nor did she evidence any sympathy for libertarian values or ideas, saying, Both markets and governments can be exploitative and corrupt.

In the end, however, what became obvious in the course of the day is that libertarianism is not very interesting at all. It is little more than an effort to turn selfishness and self-assertion into a political platform. That is not to say it does not strike some deep roots with plausible misreadings of liberalism and specifically Americanism. But, the problems the nation faces, from income inequality to environmental degradation to the rise of Islamicist terrorism, none of these problems can be solved, or the issues even clarified, by someone schooled in libertarian thinking, even a senator speaking at the Galt Hotel. The reporters covering his announcement should have come to our conference at Boston College the previous day. They would not use the word interesting to describe him, more like scary and juvenile. I wish, too, that some of those Catholics who serve as fellow travelers for libertarianism, our friends at the Acton Institute for example, had been there too. They must confront these issues or admit they are undermining Catholic Social Teaching. And, they must confront something else, a point the shone through the varied presentations. There is a totalitarian itch at the heart of libertarianism, an itch that could not be more different from the complex, rich, nuanced understandings that emerge from both liberalism and from Catholic Social Teaching. I will give the last word to Alan Wolfe:

Libertarianism goes out of its way to reduce the complexities of the world to one thing and one thing only, whether it be how we make decisions, what decisions we make, and what our decisions imply for others. The often-noted attraction of libertarianism for young minds is, I believe, a reflection of this. There is something so satisfying when one is young about the Faustian idea that all of reality can be unlocked with one simple key. It is when we grow out of that fantasy and begin to understand just how complex the world actually is that adherents to libertarianism begin to understand the limits of what had once been so appealing to them.

Link:

Sen. Paul Enters the Race & the Totalitarian Itch of Libertarianism

The debate over Sunday liquorsales burned on Wednesday, where backers and detractors of a repeal of the states 80-year-old ban stated their cases to lawmakers, with rationale ranging from profit margins to libertarianism.

The House Commerce Committee held an informational hearing on the bill by Rep. Jenifer Loon, R-Eden Prairie, though no vote was taken. Regardless, dozens of witnesses testified on the bill in a packed hearing room.

Dave Erickson, owner of DEricks Tower Liquors near Lake Vermilion said its frustrating to turn down customers year-round who stop in his adjoining bar and cant take a bottle of wine or six-pack home with them on a Sunday.

As a bar owner, I hate seeing all the visitors, the tourists if you will, come to Minnesota and not be able to enjoy what they probably enjoy at home, Erickson said.

In the midst of a struggling Iron Range economy, where hundreds of miners were just laid off, This would be just one little thing for a little economic growth, he said.

Other liquor store owners, like Terry Furlong, owner of Furlongs liquor in Oakdale, say staying open seven days a week will only create more costs without the profits.

Our current regulations are a fine balance between the desires of consumers, public health and public safety, he said.

Loons Sunday sales bill, like many of its House and Senate companions, failed to receive a hearing before committee deadlines passed, and there is no full Sunday sales repeal in the House liquor reform billthough its possible that it may come up as a floor amendment when the bill is debated on the House floor.

Loon thanked Committee Chair Rep. Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska, for giving the bill a hearing, although absent a vote. She said she respects the opinions of liquor store owners that do not want a repeal in the interests of having a day off, but added that her measure would not force stores to be open. (Liquor store owners insist they would have to remain open to keep up with competition.)

This is not such an easy cut-and-dried issue, she said. Its not my goal to say that every small business who sells liquor has to be open on Sunday. I would never say that. This is just to give other businesses that opportunity.

Link:

Sunday liquor sales debate burns on in House, absent a committee vote

Since riding the tea party wave into the Senate in 2010, Paul has carefully built a brand of mainstream libertarianism -- dogged advocacy of civil liberties combined with an anti-interventionist foreign policy and general support for family values -- that he bets will create a coalition of younger voters and traditional Republicans to usher him into the White House.

The test of that theory began Tuesday when the Kentucky senator made official what has been clear for years: He's running for president.

"Today I announce with God's help, with the help of liberty lovers everywhere, that I'm putting myself forward as a candidate for president of the United States of America," Paul said at a rally in Louisville.

Paul immediately hit the campaign trail for a four-day swing through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada -- the states that traditionally vote first in the primaries and caucuses.

A poster from the Rand Paul for President campaign.

READ: Can Rand Paul escape his father's shadow?

In his speech, he called for reforming Washington by pushing for term limits and a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. He argued that both parties are to blame for the rising debt, saying it doubled under a Republican administration and tripled under Obama.

"Government should be restrained and freedom should be maximized," he said.

The line-up of speakers who introduced Paul sought to paint the senator as a nontraditional candidate with diverse appeal, and by the time he got on stage, he was the first white man to address the crowd.

The speakers included J.C. Watts, a former congressman who's African-American; state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, who's Hispanic; local pastor Jerry Stephenson, who's African American and a former Democrat; and University of Kentucky student Lauren Bosler.

Read the original:

Rand Paul: 'I'm putting myself forward as a candidate for president'

For Rand Paul, it's all led to this moment.

Since riding the tea party wave into the Senate in 2010, Paul has carefully built a brand of mainstream libertarianism -- dogged advocacy of civil liberties combined with an anti-interventionist foreign policy and general support for family values -- that he bets will create a coalition of younger voters and traditional Republicans to usher him into the White House.

The test of that theory began Tuesday when the Kentucky senator made official what has been clear for years: He's running for president.

"Today I announce with God's help, with the help of liberty lovers everywhere, that I'm putting myself forward as a candidate for president of the United States of America," Paul said at a rally in Louisville.

Paul immediately hit the campaign trail for a four-day swing through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada -- the states that traditionally vote first in the primaries and caucuses.

In his speech, he called for reforming Washington by pushing for term limits and a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. He argued that both parties are to blame for the rising debt, saying it doubled under a Republican administration and tripled under Obama.

"Government should be restrained and freedom should be maximized," he said.

The line-up of speakers who introduced Paul sought to paint the senator as a nontraditional candidate with diverse appeal, and by the time he got on stage, he was the first white man to address the crowd.

The speakers included J.C. Watts, a former congressman who's African-American; state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, who's Hispanic; local pastor Jerry Stephenson, who's African American and a former Democrat; and University of Kentucky student Lauren Bosler.

"He goes everywhere. It doesn't matter what color you are. Rand Paul will be there," Stephenson said, firing up the crowd.

Excerpt from:

Rand Paul launches presidential campaign

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (CNN) -

For Rand Paul, it's all led to this moment.

Since riding the tea party wave into the Senate in 2010, Paul has carefully built a brand of mainstream libertarianism -- dogged advocacy of civil liberties combined with an anti-interventionist foreign policy and general support for family values -- that he bets will create a coalition of younger voters and traditional Republicans to usher him into the White House.

The test of that theory began Tuesday when the Kentucky senator made official what has been clear for years: He's running for president.

"Today I announce with God's help, with the help of liberty lovers everywhere, that I'm putting myself forward as a candidate for president of the United States of America," Paul said at a rally in Louisville.

Paul immediately hit the campaign trail for a four-day swing through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada -- the states that traditionally vote first in the primaries and caucuses.

In his speech, he called for reforming Washington by pushing for term limits and a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. He argued that both parties are to blame for the rising debt, saying it doubled under a Republican administration and tripled under Obama.

"Government should be restrained and freedom should be maximized," he said.

The line-up of speakers who introduced Paul sought to paint the senator as a nontraditional candidate with diverse appeal, and by the time he got on stage, he was the first white man to address the crowd.

The speakers included J.C. Watts, a former congressman who's African-American; state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, who's Hispanic; local pastor Jerry Stephenson, who's African American and a former Democrat; and University of Kentucky student Lauren Bosler.

Read the original here:

Kentucky senator announces plans during rally

Video will begin in 5 seconds.

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RAW VIDEO: US Senator Rand Paul launches his 2016 presidential campaign with a combative address against both Washington and his fellow Republicans, declaring "we have come to take our country back."

Washington: As supporters cheered and waved banners reading "Defeat the Washington Machine", Rand Paul, a senator and son of a congressman and presidential candidate, announced his own candidacy for the Republican nomination for the White House at a rally in Kentucky on Monday.

Despite his long and powerful ties to the capital and its politics, Senator Paul insisted he would be an outsider candidate.

Senator Rand Paul, in Kentucky on Tuesday, announces he would like to be president of the US. Photo: AP

Continued here:

Rand Paul: 'I will run for president'

Video will begin in 5 seconds.

CERN restarts 'Big Bang' Hadron Collider

Kenyan survivors recount university attack

Stunning views of Earth from space

UN seeking consensus on Yemen resolution

Castro in public for first time in over a year

RAW VIDEO: US Senator Rand Paul launches his 2016 presidential campaign with a combative address against both Washington and his fellow Republicans, declaring "we have come to take our country back."

Washington: As supporters cheered and waved banners reading "Defeat the Washington Machine", Rand Paul, a senator and son of a congressman and presidential candidate, announced his own candidacy for the Republican nomination for the White House at a rally in Kentucky on Monday.

Despite his long and powerful ties to the capital and its politics, Senator Paul insisted he would be an outsider candidate.

Senator Rand Paul, in Kentucky on Tuesday, announces he would like to be president of the US. Photo: AP

More:

Rand Paul: 'Outsider' candidate running for US president

Updated: Tuesday, April 7 2015, 10:09 AM EDT

Louisville, Kentucky (CNN)- For Rand Paul, it's all led to this moment.

Since riding the tea party wave into the Senate in 2010, Paul has carefully built a brand of mainstream libertarianism -- dogged advocacy of civil liberties combined with an anti-interventionist foreign policy and general support for family values -- that he bets will create a coalition of younger voters and traditional Republicans to usher him into the White House.

The test of that theory begins Tuesday when the Kentucky senator is expected to make official what has been clear for years: He's running for president.

"I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government," Paul said on his new website.

A formal announcement will come at a rally in Louisville and he'll immediately hit the campaign trail, swinging through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada -- the states that traditionally vote first in the primaries and caucuses.

Read more:

Rand Paul: 'I am running for president'

For Rand Paul, it's all led to this moment.

Since riding the tea party wave into the Senate in 2010, Paul has carefully built a brand of mainstream libertarianism -- dogged advocacy of civil liberties combined with an anti-interventionist foreign policy and general support for family values -- that he bets will create a coalition of younger voters and traditional Republicans to usher him into the White House.

The test of that theory begins Tuesday when the Kentucky senator makes official what has been clear for years: He's running for president.

"I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government," Paul said on his new website.

A formal announcement will come at a rally in Louisville and he'll immediately hit the campaign trail, swinging through New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and Nevada -- the states that traditionally vote first in the primaries and caucuses.

His wife, Kelley, and former Rep. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma will be among the speakers introducing Paul at the rally Tuesday.

So far, Paul joins only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination. "His entry into the race will no doubt raise the bar of competition," Cruz said in a statement welcoming Paul into the race.

But the field is certain to grow in the months ahead with Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham and others eyeing a campaign. Marco Rubio, a Florida GOP senator, is expected to launch his campaign next week.

For now, the nomination is up for grabs with no clear front-runner. Paul came in third place at 12% in a CNN/ORC International Poll of Republicans. Bush led the pack at 16% while Walker came in second at 13%.

Ron vs. Rand Paul

Original post:

Rand Paul poised to launch presidential bid

That the masters of the tech universe jumped so forcefully into the middle of the Indiana gay rights imbroglio was, as many have noted, a marked change from business as usual in Silicon Valley, where the digerati had previously been reluctant to involve themselves in political issues not directly related to their bottom lines.

As Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of the cloud computing behemoth Salesforce, told the New York Times, Were wading into territory none of us is comfortable in, which is social issues, he said. But it was crystal clear that, by all of us going in together, it was going to be O.K.

Only time will tell, of course, whether this was a harbinger of political activism to come, and, if it is, whether or not thats a good thing. The engineers of Silicon Valley are far from the first of their kind to have been relatively uninterested in the nitty gritty of political engagement.

In the early decades of the 20th century the growing powers of industrialism bestowed upon engineers previously thought of as the guys with greasy overalls whose expertise extended only as far the workshop door a new measure of power and prestige. Academia responded with a massive increase in engineering programs. The number of American engineering graduates increased from 100 a year in 1870 to 4,300 a year in 1914. What had been a trade became a profession.

Meanwhile technological advances were producing growing political, economic and social complexities that politicians seemed increasingly unable to handle. What was needed was better planning and efficiency, which is what technicians did best. A rising chorus of opinion suggested it was time to let the engineers take the helm of the ship of state, and some agreed. One of them was the engineer, editor and manufacturer Henry Goslee Prout, who in 1905 lectured Cornells first class of civil engineering graduates on the enormous responsibility they carried on their shoulders.

My proposition is that the engineer more than all other men will guide humanity forward until we come to some other period of a different kind, Prout said. On the engineer and on those who are making engineers rests a responsibility such as men have never before been called upon to face, for it is a peculiarity of the new epoch that we are conscious of it, that we know what we are doing, which was not true in either of the six preceding epochs, and we have upon us the responsibility of conscious knowledge.

Among the more forceful technocratic voices to emerge during this period was that of the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen. Best known today as the man who coined the phrase conspicuous consumption, Veblen relentlessly attacked the wastefulness of American business. Overproduction and overselling of useless goods were ruining the country, he argued. The solution was to turn policy and administration over to skilled technologists who would exercise systematic control over the economy.

Somehow the ascent of the engineers that Veblen and others envisioned never materialized. Despite their growing professional confidence, they seemed personally reluctant to pursue broader political power. Veblen couldnt conceal his disdain. [B]y settled habit, he fumed, the technicians, the engineers and the industrial experts, are a harmless and docile sort, well fed on the whole, and somewhat placidly content with the full dinner-pail, which the lieutenants of the Vested Interests habitually allow them.

The idea that engineers could successfully run government, even if they wanted to, took a beating with the presidency of Herbert Hoover, the nations first and so far only Engineer in Chief. A further blow to engineering credibility came several decades later when uber-technocrat Robert McNamara unleashed mountains of precision analysis against the pesky guerrilla fighters hiding in the jungles of Vietnam. In 1962 McNamara returned from his first tour of the Asian theater brimming with confidence. Every quantitative measurement we have shows we are winning this war, he said.

Its likely that the hacker mind-set rebellious, but narrowly focused explains why the programming elite of Silicon Valley havent been, heretofore, especially active politically, which isnt to say the technocratic mind-set isnt alive and well there. Googles Eric Schmidt and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen are among those who believe that technology is well on its way to solving all our problems, if only government will get out the way, and government increasingly shows signs of agreeing with them.

More:

Beware the Silicon Valley elite: Ayn Rand, Google libertarianism and Indianas religious freedom

Libertarianism and Transaction costs
"If I own a private business, why shouldn #39;t I have the freedom to serve or not to serve who I want?" In short, because of transaction costs.

By: True Facts

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Libertarianism and Transaction costs - Video