Why I am not a libertarian

Geoff's homepage -> Anti-liberty rant

Last update: 29 September 2005

"How many Libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?" Answer: "None. The free market will take care of it."

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do." - Bertrand Russell

"There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" -- recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?" - Noam Chomsky

Warning: touchy libertarians with no sense of humour will almost certainly be offended.

Introduction

I am not a libertarian because libertarianism panders to the worst aspects of human nature - greed, selfishness, the desire to dominate - and ignores all others.

This remark may surprise many libertarians, not to mention those who don't know what "libertarianism" actually means. The fact is, however, that the real agenda of libertarianism is the removal of all restrictions on the acquisition and use of power, the complete deregulation of business, and the entrenching of the domination of the weak by the strong. The connection with "liberty", in practice, is spurious - libertarianism equates liberty with property and restricts it to those who can either afford to buy it or acquire it by force.

What is libertarianism?

If you ask ten libertarians to define libertarianism, you'll get twenty answers. This obviously makes providing a useful working definition here tricky, but I'll try; for a fuller list of typically libertarian values, with much provocative criticism, see Why is libertarianism wrong? by Paul Treanor, or esr's typically well-written libertarian FAQ.

Libertarianism is, or purports to be, effectively a strange blend of a left-wing emphasis on personal liberty and a right-wing emphasis on economic (in practice, corporate) liberty - thus the two-dimensional diagram which makes up the biased and deeply flawed Nolan test, aka "the world's smallest political quiz". (Personally, I prefer the political compass; it's a lot larger and has no inbuilt agenda.) It favours small government (none at all in the case of its anarcho-capitalist subsect), strong or sovereign property rights, unregulated free markets, a strong emphasis on individualism, and a complete disdain for collectivist actions which benefit society as a whole. In other words, it's the kind of political philosophy you'd expect from a spoilt child and a ruthless businessman bent on profit above everything else.

Some pieces of libertarianism are appealing on their own, although such pieces are also found in other philosophies, and others are mostly harmless in isolation. The combination of them all, however, is heavily flawed and deeply suspect, which - in a twist worth of 1984 - predicts exactly the opposite of what it superficially promises. Here are some reasons why.

The political perpetual-motion machine

Libertarians sometimes talk about breaking up concentrations of power. In practice, what they mean is breaking up the power of government, presumably with the intention of leaving behind small concentrations of power which cancel each other out. This is the political equivalent of a perpetual-motion machine, with no state of lowest potential energy; of course, it won't last, and the resulting power vacuum will sooner or later be filled, as any student of history will tell you. The result will be the replacement of a government which (however imperfectly) represents the people by, effectively, a mafia responsible to itself only. Libertarians might find this desireable, but I don't.

Republicans who want to smoke pot

Of the two types of liberty - personal and corporate - which libertarians claim to support, it is corporate liberty which is more important to most libertarians. This is plain from the contempt with which they regard liberals, the main political grouping which supports personal liberty - a contempt often indistinguishable from the hate-filled rantings of the likes of Ann Coulter. It also follows logically from the fact that, whenever personal and corporate liberty are in conflict, corporate liberty will always supersede personal liberty - for the simple reason that, in the absence of government, corporations have more power than individuals. In this context, libertarianism is essentially an extreme form of free-market capitalism which pays lip-service to individual liberty.

On this topic, a correspondent who described himself as "an anarchist (the real kind, not the Murray Rothbard kind)" sent me a link to Archimedes by Mark Twain, which (he says) was "written during that Libertarian Golden (more correctly, Gilded) Age, post-Civil War robber baron-era America" and "pretty aptly describes, in my opinion, what the world would be like under their property despotism".

Unrestricted force

The "Zero-Aggression Principle", one of the foundations of libertarianism, forbids the use of force or fraud except in response to a use of force or fraud. Significantly, this fine-sounding principle fails to actually define either "force" or "fraud", nor does it give any indication about how much of either is permissible in response. In a civilised society, these would be laid down in law and enforced by government; in a libertarian one, however, the details would be left to specific circumstances - opening the way for psychotic individuals, or ruthless corporations, to use unlimited force on anyone they don't like under the slightest pretext. Libertarians might point to private law courts, but these are merely guarantors of justice for only those who can afford it.

Another example of the woolly libertarian concept of "force" is the common assertion that government taxes are the "theft" of "your money" acquired by force. By the same argument, so is any action taken by the utility company against non-payment of your bill. Do libertarians want to have services without paying for them, or just those provided by government?

Then there's the matter of protecting oneself. Libertarians favour the use of private protection forces instead of government-provided police; what this would lead to in practice is corporate thugs responsible only to their employers, with a corresponding lack of protection for those unable to afford it. By the libertarian conceptions of "force" and "defence", you are perfectly able to shoot someone who accidentally trespasses on your property, bury the body - or hang it prominenly from the nearest tree - and refuse access to anyone who wishes to investigate the trespasser's disappearance.

The fallacies of "the free market"

Essential to libertarianism is the idea of all services (except, for some libertarians, national defence) being provided by an unregulated free market. There are two big problems with this.

First, there is no such thing as a completely free market. Removing all regulations merely creates a free-for-all in which the powerful will eventually shut out the weak: it's not too far-fetched to imagine a company lowering prices to drive the competition out of business, thus establishing a monopoly, and threatening retaliation against anyone who subsequently tries to compete (construing such competition as "force" threatening profits, see above). Either libertarians actually want this to happen, or they have to accept the existence of regulations - implemented and enforced by a government - to prevent it happening.

Second, "all services" includes transport infrastructure, heating, power, education, healthcare, welfare, and care for the worse-off generally. If these are provided by private businesses, there's nothing to stop them being restricted to those who can afford them; and what, exactly, is the point of leaving the poor to starve, freeze, unable to leave their homes, and unable to afford an education with which they could get a decent-paying job? Libertarians might argue that charity would provide for such unfortunates; but how would they gurantee that there would be enough charitable funds for the purpose without resorting to wishful thinking, especially since libertarianism is essentially a selfish philosophy which disdains altruism?

The fallacy of "natural rights"

Libertarians argue that human beings have "natural rights" which are acquired at birth and cannot be taken away. That this is bogus is easily demonstrated by considering one such right, the right to own property: if you own something, and I can exert more force upon you than you can defend against, I can take it away from you, and you can't get it back. Another example is the right to free speech, which does not exist in many countries. What libertarians won't acknowledge is that human beings have no natural rights whatsoever - such rights as we have are artificial constructs of society which are granted and, ideally, guaranteed by the government of that society.

In any case, the rights which libertarians principally cherish are those which restrict other people's freedom to do things: the right to defend one's property, which will surely be used to restrict the freedom to travel; the right to do as one wishes with one's property, which predicts parents putting their children up for sale in prostitution, in pornography, or simply for money; the right of free association, which inevitably leads to the worst types of prejudiced discrimination. Nowhere do you hear libertarians mentioning the right to safe shelter, clean food and water, a safe working enviromnent, or a decent education.

"Freedom", "liberty", and "rights" are three concepts which overlap considerably but are meaningless on their own. The point is that an instance of any of them is always accompanied by "to" or "from", such as "freedom from exploitation" or "the right to eat". Thus, whenever a libertarian talks about them without further qualification, beware: the chances are that he or she doesn't mean what you think.

Abdication of responsibility

With any right goes the responsibility to use that right properly, although some libertarians have tried to convince me otherwise. One of the fundamentals of libertarianism is the right to do what you want provided that nobody gets hurt; but, in the absence of any means to enforce this proviso (i.e. a government), it becomes "provided that you can prevent anyone taking action against you". You can imagine utility companies adding clauses to their contracts declaring that the customer accepts breaks in service for unspecified lengths of time, or employers threatening employees with dismissal if they dare to make any claims related to health and safety.

Hatred of government

A characteristic feature of much libertarian ranting is the assumption that governments are inefficient, bloated, corrupt, mendacious, power-hungry and so on; and that anything a government does, a private individual or business can and will do better. In actuality, while the caricature has some basis in reality, it completely ignores the fact that private individuals and businesses are just as capable of any of these undesirable characteristics.

Together with this hatred of government goes a contempt for any action which is intended to benefit society at large, such as the provision of education for all; this in turn derives from nothing more than a dislike of paying taxes and a refusal to consider that one has any responsibility to the society of which one is a part. Some libertarians might argue, as Th@tch*r did, that "there is no such thing as society, only individuals"; such people are directed to contemporary Somalia or the events immediately following the devastation of New Orleans for real-world illustrations of societies without government.

Yes, governments can be all of the above, but doesn't mean that they inevitably will be; reform is the answer, not abolition. Mark Rosenfelder has more to say on the question of whether government is evil or not; in particular, his analogy of "Government as OS" is incapable of further improvement.

Wishful thinking

Finally, there's the abstract and disconnected-from-reality nature of most libertarian thinking. The libertarian ideal of prosperity arising from fully-informed customers making rationally enlightened choices in a free market is unattainable; quite aside from the aforementioned impossibility of a "free market", human beings - unless they're devoid of emotions - aren't capable of acting rationally all the time, as the existence and continuing popularity of religion demonstrates; and, in the absence of government-enforced regulations, customers cannot be guaranteed to be fully-informed about what they're buying. Food companies, for example, resist attempts to say what's actually in what they're selling; are you supposed to evaluate statistics for death or illness for every product you consider?

Because no working libertarian society has ever existed, libertarians have to resort to thought-experiments, wishful thinking, or wilful ignorance of reality to make their points. An example is Freoland, an attempt at presenting the libertarian utopia in a form understandable by children; strictly speaking it's Objectivist rather than libertarian, but the differences are unimportant. I seriously considered debunking this laissez-faire fantasy in full, but it would have felt too much like kicking a dead horse; instead I leave this task to you, the reader.

Links

There is much I haven't touched on here, such as the refusal by many libertarians to consider that pollution will be a problem in a laissez-faire economy; however, in the interest of space, the interested reader is referred to Mike Huben's site which has links to numerous pages relevant to libertarianism, both pro and anti. There's so much good stuff in this site that there's no point repeating all the links here; but I will give honourable mention to the following.

First, some other criticisms of libertarianism:

Paulina Borsook's damning indictment of "cyberlibertarians" or "technolibertarians" - the libertarians who make their philosophy seem much more popular online than it actually is. As has been remarked by others, there's a kind of spoiled-and-misunderstood-teenager mentality to these people; it finds its ultimate expression in the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, itself dismantled by Reilly Jones. See also Jedediah Purdy's lambasting of their more quasi-religious narcissistic leanings, and Langdon Winner's dissection of cyberlibertarianism; there are some sightings of soberer views.

Possibly the only serious libertarian organisation in Britain: the Libertarian Alliance. No, I've never heard of them either.

"Anarcho-capitalism" is a subset of libertarianism which claims to be both anarchist and capitalist. Section F of An Anarchist FAQ points out that, despite whatever esr might claim, anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism, and highlights plenty of flaws with libertarianism on the way.

Have a look at this thread from a very questionable-looking organisation, which nonetheless contains a wonderfully pithy description: Libertarianism (or its more virulent form: Randianism) is based on the individual worldview, and therefore is always on the lookout for, and the eternal victim of, "outside forces," presumably implemented by other "individuals" as arbitrary, craven and egotistical as themselves who - sometimes in the name of government, sometimes for other reasons - wish to impose their "individual" will on other "individuals."

My review of Atlas Shrugged, one of libertarianism's sacred texts, and one of the most ridiculous books ever written.

Exercises and contact

I'm willing to listen to corrections in case I've got something wrong somewhere, but I won't be drawn into lengthy arguments - my time is better spent on other things of more importance to me than debating the merits of a cranky political ideology. In any case, the libertarian reader wishing to persuade me of the merits of libertarianism must first, for each of the situations in the numbered list below:

  1. Somebody wants to charge you money for doing something with his property which you could previously do for free - such as walking along what used to be a public footpath, and the cheaper alternative is a much longer walk.
  2. You refuse to pay your utility bills, or refuse to let Men With Guns From The Utility Company onto your property to read the meter which they own according to the contract of provision.
  3. Someone threatens to tell the world that you've been talking up the value of your company's shares - even though you've been doing this in "enlightened self-interest".
  4. You end up in a traffic jam, with your right to free travel restricted by the other drivers - who are, after all, exercising their own rights to free travel.
  5. You try to stop a loved one from committing suicide, or from wandering accidentally into life-threatening danger.
  6. You try to stop a psychopath from burning down a school full of children - or a conscientious individual from destroying the head office of a company which abuses its employees.
  7. You are made ill by a harmful and physically-addictive substance in your food, which the manufacturer has put there in "enlightened-self interest" to create a captive market. It's properly but cryptically labelled, so you have no grounds for complaint: you should have read the label.
  8. As a result of market forces, you have to give up your job. As a result of those same market forces, you know that finding another job will be difficult.
  9. A scenario mentioned earlier: a business rival gets a contract you were after and threatens to eat into your profits, so you invite him to your home for dinner, kill him, and display the body as a warning to anyone who might try to investigate.
  10. The preceding scenario in reverse: he invites *you* over and kills *you*.

provide convincing answers to the following questions:

Flamage will be ignored, unless it's particularly stupid, in which case I will add it to a special section of this page with the flamer's email address.

To forestall one sort of ignorant flamage: I'm not "afraid of liberty and freedom", I'm just aware that you have to be careful who you give it to, and in what quantity.