Category Archives: Libertarianism

Radio 3Fourteen - M.K. Lords - Agorism, Bitcoin, Libertarianism vs. Anarchism
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Radio 3Fourteen - M.K. Lords - Agorism, Bitcoin, Libertarianism vs. Anarchism - Video

It has long been customary to divide the Republican Party into three camps: big business or Wall Street Republicans, the religious right and neoconservatives or national security Republicans. The third group, it must be admitted, somewhat unsteadily combines neoconservatives proper (such as William Kristol) with old-fashioned defense hawks (such as Donald Rumsfeld), but perhaps this is the Republican big tent we keep hearing about.

In any case, this neat three-part logic was roiled by two events in 2008: the Great Recession and the election of Barack Obama as president. The latters decision to respond to the crisis with a fairly traditional mix of demand-side remedies some tax cuts, some increased spending ignited a fire storm on the right. CNBCs Rick Santelli is often fingered as the principal arsonist. On Feb. 19, 2009, outraged by Obamas plan to assist homeowners caught up in the collapse of the housing market,Santelliwent on air to unburden himself of the following ideas:

The spark had been struck; the Tea Party roared to life. Five years later it has remade American politics, largely through its impact on the GOP. Profoundly alienated from the modern American state, which it regards as a bureaucratic embodiment of foreign social-democratic ideals, intensely ideological, intransigent and scornful of compromise, the Tea Party has used its electoral success in the South and Midwest and its power in primaries and caucuses to impose sharp limits on the policy options available to GOP politicians. Rick Santellis wildfire consumed immigration reform and an extension of unemployment benefits; it flared into a government shutdown and crept perilously close to two debt defaults.

One consequence of the Tea Party ascendancy has been a new prominence for the term libertarian. In many ways this is unfortunate. There is reason to believe that any connections between libertarianism and the Tea Party are tenuous at best. A recentstudyfound that 60 percent of libertarians do not identify with the Tea Party, while only 26 percent of Tea Party supporters think of themselves as libertarians. (Fully twice as many affiliate with the religious right.) Still, animpressionpersists that the Republican Party is increasingly animated by the spirit of John Galt. I think there are mainly four reasons for this.

The first is that some conservative activists, quick to sense the electoral (and financial) potential of the Tea Party, moved quickly to associate its concerns with their own, often quite different, agendas. (The absurdist theater that swirled around DickArmeysdeparture from FreedomWorks is apposite here.)

A second more important source of confusion is that libertarian, as a rubric, offers Republicans certain rhetorical advantages. It suggests theyreforsomething and not just against the Democrats, and that this something is related to liberty. (And it performs this latter function while avoiding the hated epithet liberal.) It also serves an irenic purpose insofar as it gestures at common ground for Tea Partyers, the religious right generally, and Wall Streeters. If these factions can agree on anything, its that they want less government meaning lessliberalgovernment and this is easily elided into the claim that they want more liberty. As long as no one inspects the logic too closely, this Were all libertarians now line can seem helpfully plausible. Which brings us to the fourth reason, a national media always ready to exploit the helpfully plausible in its constant search for the appealingly (or is it appallingly?) simple.

So one increasingly hears certain prominent Republicans referred to as libertarians or as members of the partys libertarian wing.Ted CruzandPaul Ryanhave been identified as such at one time or another, as have (with slightly more reason) bothPauls, Ron and Rand. This, again, is a mistake. As Ive arguedelsewhere,no important Republican politician is a libertarian. Still, perceptions are important in politics, and there is certainly no doubt that real libertarians belong noisily, busily belong to the Republican coalition.

Given this, all of us have an interest in understanding the nature of libertarian thought, and in knowing whether it forms the basis of a workable politics. Michael Lind has written brilliantly about these issues (here,for example) in the context of practical politics. I want to take them up in a more theoretical light. I will focus on the central concept of libertarian thought the idea of personal freedom and argue that it cannot be coherently explained on libertarian grounds. I will also argue that a libertarian society, if fully realized, would be actively hostile to the development of free selves. Libertarianism, in other words, cannot give a persuasive account of its own core concept. Its as close to self-refuting as a political theory can be.

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Some criticisms of libertarian thought are unwarranted. For example, it issometimesalleged that libertarians lack concern for others, or are motivated only by greed, or embrace a crass, materialistic ethic. Libertarians think such charges are based on a simple confusion. Their intent is to advocate for liberty, they say; what free people choose to do with their liberty is an entirely separate matter. I think this reply is conclusive if it is meant to rebut the claim that libertarians, because they value freedom, must also value the content of every free choice. (In other contexts, as I will argue below, it is much less conclusive.) That claim really is a confusion. I do not have to approve of pornography simply because I endorse the First Amendment. Similarly, I do not have to approve of choices to be selfish or shallow because I favor economic and political liberty. Liberals, who are often on the receiving end of this kind of attack from conservative critics, should think twice before directing it at libertarians.

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Libertarians reality problem: How an estrangement from history yields abject failure

Harvard Lecture On Libertarianism (2 of 2)

By: The Sceptic Isle

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Harvard Lecture On Libertarianism (2 of 2) - Video

Cantwell and Woods on Leftism and Libertarianism
Christopher Cantwell joins Tom to discuss what libertarianism is, as well as recent unwelcome innovations. Subscribe to the Tom Woods Show: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tom-woods-show/id...

By: TomWoodsTV

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Cantwell and Woods on Leftism and Libertarianism - Video

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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