Category Archives: Libertarianism

The New Libertarianism: Anarcho-Capitalism. By J. Michael Oliver, CreateSpace, 2013. 188 pp.

J. Michael Oliver tells us that this remarkable book began as an academic thesis written in 1972 and submitted the next year for a graduate degree at the University of South Carolina. The book is much more than an academic thesis, though; it is a distinguished addition to libertarian thought.

Olivers principal contribution arises from his reaction to two intellectual movements. Like many in the 1960s and 70s, he was attracted to the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand. Together with several others in the Objectivist movement, though, Oliver disagreed with the political conclusions that Rand and her inner circle drew from her philosophy. Some students of the philosophy concluded that Rand and the orthodox Objectivists had failed to develop a political theory that followed from the more basic principles of Objectivism. It was at that time that Rands advocacy of limited government began to come under attack from a growing number of deviant objectivists. The libertarian-objectivists ... declared that government, limited or otherwise, is without justification, and that the only social system consistent with mans nature is a non-state, market society, or anarcho-capitalism.

To claim that Rand misconceived the implications of her own philosophy is a daring thesis, but Oliver makes a good case for it. After a succinct account of Objectivist metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of volition, Oliver turns to ethics. Here one feature stands to the fore. Objectivist ethics, as the name suggests, holds that the requirements for human flourishing are objective matters of fact: Objectivists deny that there is any justification for the belief that ethics and values are beyond the realm of fact and reason. Man is, after all, a living being with a particular identity and particular requirements for his life. It is not the case that any actions will sustain his life; only those actions which are consonant with mans well-being will sustain him. Man cannot choose his values at random without reference to himself and still hope to live. This concept applies to an individual man as well as a human society (composed of individuals). Objective values follow from mans identity.

If there are objective requirements for your survival, that is going to be a matter of considerable interest to you; but is that the sum and substance of ethics? This is not the place to examine this question, but, at any rate, one of the arguments Rand used to support her egoist ethics does not succeed. Rand stated the argument in this way: Try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be damaged, injured, or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or lose; it could not regard anything as for it or against it, as serving or threatening its value, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.

Why is the indestructible robot unable to have values? The answer, according to Rand, is that because the robot cannot be destroyed or damaged, nothing can matter to it. But why does the robots invulnerability imply that nothing matters to it? The answer is that because the purpose of values is to promote ones own survival, indestructibility removes the point of values. If nothing can kill or injure it, it doesnt need to do anything to prevent being killed or injured.

But this isnt an argument at all for ethical egoism: Rands conclusion follows only if one already accepts that the purpose of values is to secure ones own survival. Suppose the robot is altruistic: why would its own invulnerability prevent it from valuing the welfare of others? After all, even Rand doesnt claim that altruism is impossible: she just thinks it is mistaken.

But this is by the way. Much more important for our purposes are the political conclusions Oliver draws from Objectivist ethics. He begins with something Rand herself accepted. Man is a being of choice. Those essential actions, both physical and cognitive, which he must undertake to maintain his being are subject to his volition. Since his life depends upon his capacity to choose, it follows that his life requires the freedom to choose. ... Given that life is the standard of value, it is right that man be free to exercise his choice. The principle of rights as understood by the new libertarians is merely a statement of the fact that if man is to maintain life on the level which his nature permits, then men (in human society) must refrain from violating one anothers freedom.

To protect these rights, Rand thought it necessary to have a limited government, and here is where Oliver diverges from his philosophical mentor. A regime of rights, along the lines Rand sets out, does not at all require an agency, however limited, holding a monopoly on the permissible use of force. Such an agency of necessity violates the very rights Rand advocated. Government, being a coercive monopoly, must prohibit its citizens through the threat of force, from engaging the services of any alternative institution ...

Government then necessarily violates rights; and furthermore, a limited government cannot for long remain limited. The new libertarian concludes that the internal checks and balances on governmental power and the alleged mechanisms for the defense of minorities are ... flimsy constructs. ... Genuine competition, whether from another coercive agency of from a non-coercive business, can serve as the only real limit on State power, and it does so precisely by depriving government of its status as a government. Logically, then, if government exists, it is unlimited and self-determining.

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Anarcho-Capitalists Against Ayn Rand

Q A W/ Cory Massimino on Left Libertarianism

By: Lucy Steigerwald

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Q&A W/ Cory Massimino on Left Libertarianism - Video

Its been a full year since I watched the radical libertarian group Defense Distributed test fire the Liberator, the first fully printable gun, for the first time. Imura is one of a growing number of digital gunsmiths who saw the potential of that controversial breakthrough and have strived to improve upon the Liberators clunky, single-shot design. Motivated by a mix of libertarianism, gun rights advocacy and open-source experimentation, their innovations include rifles, derringers, multi-round handguns and the components needed to assemble semi-automatic weapons. Dozens of other designs are waiting to be tested.

The result of all this tinkering may be the first advancements that significantly move 3-D printed firearms from the realm of science fiction to practical weapons.

With the Liberator we were trying to communicate a kind of singularity, to create a moment, says Cody Wilson, who founded Defense Distributed and hand-fired the first 3-D printed gun in May, 2013. The broad recognition of this idea seemed to flip a switch in peoples mindsWe knew that people would make this their own.

Even as the DIY community has refined and remixed 3-D printed guns, its left legislators and regulators in the dust. Congressional efforts last year to place restrictions on printed, plastic weapons within the renewed Undetectable Firearms Act fell flat. That said, the legality of 3-D printing a gun in the United States remains unclear, which explains why most of the gun designers contacted by WIRED declined to comment or wished to do so anonymously.

Despite that legal ambiguity, it took only weeks for digital gunsmiths to improve upon the first fully 3-D printed gun. Defense Distributed printed the first Liberator in May, 2013, using a second-hand refrigerator-sized Stratasys 3-D printer it bought for $8,000. Later that month, a gun enthusiast in Wisconsin riffed on the Liberator to produce a working firearm for far less, using a $1,725 Lulzbot printer with less than $25 in plastic. It fired eight .38-caliber bullets without damage.

Two months later came the first fully 3-D printed rifle, built by a Canadian gunsmith identified only as Matthew. The gun, which he calls the Grizzly, fires .22-caliber bullets. In the video below, it fires three shots. Another clip, since pulled from YouTube, shows him hand-firing it 14 times. Wilson calls the Grizzly the best, first improvement on the Liberator.

The Grizzly, like the Liberator, requires removing the barrel to load a new round after each shot. But less than a month after Matthew unveiled the Grizzly, another gunsmith who calls himself Free-D or Franco test-fired a five-shot derringer revolver he calls the Reprringer. It shoots low-power .22-caliber rounds. Though the tiny revolver isnt entirely 3-D printedit uses 8mm metal tube inserts in each barrel and several screwsits metal components seem to allow for a far more compact design, making the the Reprringer the smallest working 3-D printed gun publicly tested.

The blueprint for that miniature six-shooter, along with dozens of other firearms, gun parts and even explosives like grenades and mortar rounds, are hosted online by FOSSCAD, the Free Open Source Software & Computer Aided Design. The group spun out of Cody Wilsons online gun printing community known as Defcad.

Most of FOSSCADs designs havent been publicly tested, and its loose-knit members are reluctant to reveal their identities. But one anonymous member summed up the groups motivations: First, I like guns, he wrote via instant message. And second, I think you should be able to 3-D print virtually anything you want.

Aside from the Reprringer, the anonymous FOSSCAD member noted another new, proven design that may be far more practicaland have far more serious implicationsthan fully-printed guns: a key part of a semi-automatic weapon called the lower receiver. That part, which comprises most of the body of a gun, is the most regulated element of a firearm. Print a lower receiver, and you can buy the rest of a guns components off the shelf without an ID or waiting period.

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How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year

Matt Kibbe on the Tea Party and libertarianism
Matt Kibbe, the president and CEO of the political advocacy group Freedom Works, discusses the past, present and future of the Tea Party movement -- a movement that Freedom Works was instrumental...

By: Rob Nikolewski

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Matt Kibbe on the Tea Party and libertarianism - Video

Bryan Caplan is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. His major fields of interest are Public Choice, Public Finance, and Monetary Economics. Currently, his primary research interest is Public Economics.

A great deal of his professional work has been devoted to the philosophies of libertarianism and free-market capitalism. He has published in notable journals such as American Economic Review, Public Choice, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economic, among others. He is a blogger at EconLog along with Arnold Kling, and occasionally has been a guest blogger at Marginal Revolution with two of his colleagues at George Mason, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.

Caplan is the author of the upcoming book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, which contends that the greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. The November 2006 issue of Cato Unbound tackled these controversial arguments, with Caplan providing the lead essay.

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Bryan Caplan

Libertarianism: The Remix
Here #39;s a little fun end of the week remix for you all...a LIBERTARIAN remix... Watch the debate between Sam Seder and libertarian Professor Walter Block: Part 1: http://youtu.be/bVAzC3r8WUs...

By: Sam Seder

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Libertarianism: The Remix - Video

The bottle is now labeled libertarianism. But its content is nothing new; it is what in the nineteenth century, and up to the time of Franklin Roosevelt, was called liberalism the advocacy of limited government and a free economy. (If you think of it, you will see that there is a redundancy in this formula, for a government of limited powers would have little chance of interfering with the economy.) The liberals were robbed of their time-honored name by the unprincipled socialists and near socialists, whose avidity for prestige words knows no bounds. So, forced to look for another and distinctive label for their philosophy, they came up with libertarianism good enough but somewhat difficult for the tongue.

They might have done better by adopting the older and more meaningful name of individualism, but they bypassed it because it too had been more than sullied by its opponents ...

The mudslinging started long ago, but the more recent and best-known orgy occurred in the early part of the century when the heaven-by-way-of-government muckrakers attached to individualism a value-impregnated adjective rugged. The word itself has no moral content; when applied to a mountain it is purely descriptive, when applied to an athlete it carries a favorable connotation. But, in the literary usage of the muckrakers, it designated what in plain language would be called skulduggery. It has no more to do with a philosophy than has any form of indecent behavior. Thus, the rugged individualist was the fellow who threatened to foreclose the mortgage on the old homestead if the fair damsel refused his hand in marriage; or he was the speculator who made use of the stock market to rob widows and orphans; or he was the fat and florid buccaneer who lavished diamonds on his ladylove. He was, in short, a fellow whose conscience presented no obstacle to his inclination to grab a dollar, and who recognized no code of ethics that might curb his appetites. If there is any difference between an ordinary thief and a rugged individualist, it is in the fact that the latter almost always keeps within the letter of the law, even if he has to rewrite the law to do so ...

Rugged individualism was a propaganda phrase of the first order. It was most useful in bringing the soak-the-rich urgency to a boiling point.

The phrase gained currency at the time when the leveling mania was fighting its way into the American tradition, before the government, making full use of the new power it had acquired under the income tax law, took hold of the individual by the scruff of the neck and made a mass-man out of him. It is an odd fact that the socialist is quite in agreement with the rugged individualist in advocating the use of political force to achieve ones good; the difference between them is only in determining the incidence, or the recipient, of government-given good. It is doubtful whether the robber barons (a synonym for rugged individualists) ever used the government, before the income tax, with anything like the vigor and success of the socialists. At any rate, the stigma of ruggedness has stuck, so that the collectivist intellectuals, who ought to know better, are unaware of the difference between thievery and individualism.

Original Smear Words

The besmirching of individualism, however, had a good start before the modern era. The original defamers were not socialists but solid proponents of status, the upholders of special privilege, the mercantilists of the nineteenth century. Their opposition stemmed in part from the fact that individualism leaned heavily on the burgeoning doctrine of the free market, of laissez-faire economics, and as such presented a challenge to their preferred position. So they dug into the age-old bag of semantics and came up with two smear words: selfish and materialistic. Just like the later socialists, they had no compunction about twisting the truth to suit their argument.

Laissez-faire that is to say, an economy free of political interventions and subventions holds that the instinct of self-interest is the motive power of productive effort. Nothing is produced except by human labor, and labor is something the human being is most parsimonious about; if he could satisfy his desires without effort, he would gladly dispense with it. That is why he invents labor-saving devices. But he is so constituted that every gratification gives rise to new desire, which he proceeds to satisfy by investing the labor he saved. He is insatiable. The log cabin that was palace enough in the wilderness seems quite inadequate as soon as the pioneer accumulates a surplus of necessaries, and then he begins to dream of curtains and pictures, inside plumbing, a school or a church, to say nothing of baseball or Beethoven. Self-interest overcomes his aversion to labor in his constant drive to improve his circumstances and widen his horizon ...

It is in the free market that self-interest finds its finest expression; that is a cardinal point in individualism. If the market is regularly raided, by robbers or the government, and the safety of property is impaired, the individual loses interest in production, and the abundance of things men live by shrinks. Hence, it is for the good of society that self-interest in the economic sphere be allowed to operate without hindrance.

But self-interest is not selfishness. Self-interest will impel the manufacturer to improve upon his output so as to attract trade, while selfishness will prompt him to seek the special privileges and state favor that in the end destroy the very system of economic freedom on which he depends. The worker who tries to improve his lot by rendering better service could hardly be called selfish; the description rather fits the worker who demands that he be paid for not working. The subsidy seeker is selfish, and so is every citizen who uses the law to enrich himself at the expense of other citizens.

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What Individualism Is Not

Are Transhumanism and Libertarianism A Good Fit?
Zoltan Istvan #39;s recent HuffPo article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoltan-istvan/transhumanism-and-libertarianism_b_5248966.html My blog is here: http://boydfuturist.wordpress.com... My...

By: John Niman

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Are Transhumanism and Libertarianism A Good Fit? - Video

Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism,[1][2]left-libertarianism[3][4] and socialist libertarianism[5]) is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic society without private property in the means of production. Libertarian socialists believe in converting present-day private productive property into common, while retaining respect for personal property, based on occupancy and use.[6] Libertarian socialism is opposed to coercive forms of social organization. It promotes free association in place of government and opposes the social relations of capitalism, such as wage labor.[7] The term libertarian socialism is used by some socialists to differentiate their philosophy from state socialism,[8][9] and by some as a synonym for anarchism.[1][2][10]

Adherents of libertarian socialism assert that a society based on freedom and equality can be achieved through abolishing authoritarian institutions that control certain means of production and subordinate the majority to an owning class or political and economic elite.[11] Libertarian socialism also constitutes a tendency of thought that promotes the identification, criticism, and practical dismantling of illegitimate authority in all aspects of life.[12][13][14][15][16][17][18]

Accordingly, libertarian socialists believe that "the exercise of power in any institutionalized formwhether economic, political, religious, or sexualbrutalizes both the wielder of power and the one over whom it is exercised".[19] Libertarian socialists generally place their hopes in decentralized means of direct democracy such as libertarian municipalism, citizens' assemblies, trade unions, and workers' councils.[20]

Political philosophies commonly described as libertarian socialist include most varieties of anarchism (especially anarchist communism, anarchist collectivism, anarcho-syndicalism,[21] and mutualism[22]) as well as autonomism, Communalism, participism, libertarian Marxist philosophies such as council communism and Luxemburgism,[23] and some versions of "utopian socialism"[24] and individualist anarchism.[25][26][27]

Libertarian socialism is a western philosophy with diverse interpretations, though some general commonalities can be found in its many incarnations. Its proponents generally advocate a worker-oriented system of production and organization in the workplace that in some aspects radically departs from neoclassical economics in favor of democratic cooperatives or common ownership of the means of production (socialism).[28] They propose that this economic system be executed in a manner that attempts to maximize the liberty of individuals and minimize concentration of power or authority (libertarianism).

Libertarian socialists are strongly critical of coercive institutions, which often leads them to reject the legitimacy of the state in favor of anarchism.[29] Adherents propose achieving this through decentralization of political and economic power, usually involving the socialization of most large-scale private property and enterprise (while retaining respect for personal property). Libertarian socialism tends to deny the legitimacy of most forms of economically significant private property, viewing capitalist property relations as forms of domination that are antagonistic to individual freedom.[30][31]

The first anarchist journal to use the term "libertarian" was Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social and it was published in New York City between 1858 and 1861 by French anarcho-communist Joseph Djacque.[32] "The next recorded use of the term was in Europe, when "libertarian communism" was used at a French regional anarchist Congress at Le Havre (1622 November 1880). January the following year saw a French manifesto issued on "Libertarian or Anarchist Communism." Finally, 1895 saw leading anarchists Sbastien Faure and Louise Michel publish La Libertaire in France."[32] The word stems from the French word libertaire, and was used to evade the French ban on anarchist publications.[33] In this tradition, the term "libertarianism" in "libertarian socialism" is generally used as a synonym for anarchism, which some say is the original meaning of the term; hence "libertarian socialism" is equivalent to "socialist anarchism" to these scholars.[2][34] In the context of the European socialist movement, libertarian has conventionally been used to describe those who opposed state socialism, such as Mikhail Bakunin.

The association of socialism with libertarianism predates that of capitalism, and many anti-authoritarians still decry what they see as a mistaken association of capitalism with libertarianism in the United States.[35] As Noam Chomsky put it, a consistent libertarian "must oppose private ownership of the means of production and wage slavery, which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer."[36]

In a chapter recounting the history of libertarian socialism, economist Robin Hahnel relates that thus far the period where libertarian socialism has had its greatest impact was at the end of the 19th century through the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Early in the twentieth century, libertarian socialism was as powerful a force as social democracy and communism. The Libertarian International founded at the Congress of Saint Imier a few days after the split between Marxist and libertarians at the congress of the Socialist International held in The Hague in 1872 competed successfully against social democrats and communists alike for the loyalty of anticapitalist activists, revolutionaries, workers, unions and political parties for over fifty years. Libertarian socialists played a major role in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Libertarian socialists played a dominant role in the Mexican Revolution of 1911. Twenty years after World War I was over, libertarian socialists were still strong enough to spearhead the social revolution that swept across Republican Spain in 1936 and 1937.[37]

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Libertarian socialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Libertarianism vs Anarchism
In this video I give my take on this discussion that nobody is having...

By: Bret Smith

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Libertarianism vs Anarchism - Video