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For your convenience, we’ve linked major topics here:
Relegalization of drugs: here, here, and here;
Prostitution: here and here;
2nd Amendment;
Medicine and prescription policy: Witches Brew, The “Right” to Care;
Government and Social Philosophy: Anti-government? Human Nature, The Poor, “democracy”;
Schools and Education: Education for the poor, society benefits
Taxes;
Socialism;
Economic Policy: Capitalism, Vacation/Employee Benefits, Wasting resources, outsourcing, foreign aid;
“What’s this about legalizing drugs and prostitution? Yer jokin’, right?”
Nope. Drugs were a minor social problem before prohibition. Drug laws have created an insanely lucrative black market complete with murder, turf wars, and prisons filled with nonviolent criminals while many of these same murderers go free. A good article on this issue can be found in the November 21, 2003 edition of the Florida Tech Crimson (see page 10) titled “End This Disastrous Drug War.”
Prostitution constitutes a voluntary agreement between two adults. No one is harmed by these two adults entering into this agreement except the violence and disease which are enabled by the prohibition. “Victimless” crimes are simply not crimes. They may be bad for the person choosing to do so, but no one has the right to interfere in the decisions and actions of others if they bring no harm to or commit no fraud against anyone else.
“Kids everywhere will be doped up, and druggies will be lying in the streets!”
Well, kids by and large do not attend school drunk. Drug warrior advertisements claim “parents: the anti-drug”. They took the words right out of our mouth. What drug warriors fail to understand however, is that the drug war has made it more difficult for the parent to control what their child has access to. The drug war has been a disastrous failure, doing nothing but making murderous drug traders filthy rich, and exposing children to unscrupulous black market pushers. Simple law of supply and demand dictates that restricted supply with no restriction of demand will send prices skyrocketing, attracting the most brazen and wicked to this market. See www.drugwarfacts.com for more straight undiluted information about the drug war. Also, see “You libertarians are in favor of prostitution, drugs, and pornography...” below.
“I hear Libertarians are more pro-gun than the NRA! What gives?”
Libertarians understand that the right to defend oneself, family, and property, is a natural right of human beings. Furthermore, the right to bear arms is the final “doomsday” check against a tyrannical central authority. The founders of our nation knew that government tyranny poses the greatest threat to individual liberty. In the words of Patrick Henry:
“I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers? I imagine, Sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny: Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism. Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition...”
~Patrick Henry, June 5, 1788
“Libertarians want a free-market in medicine? Without the FDA, garage drug shops will be selling witches brew to unsuspecting sick persons.”
In general, most businesses don't prosper that kill their customers. But more to the point, competent private certifying organizations (such as the Underwriters Laboratories for product safety, Moody's for quality of Bonds, or Dunn & Bradstreet for financial health of a company) would spring up to provide quality control for pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceutical companies, seeking to bring confidence to the consumer, will insure that their product has the "seal of approval" from certifying organizations. There could be levels of certification; one to show a product is safe, which could be done quickly so that new products can get to people that need them, and a second level to show the product is effective. Consumers could decide for themselves what level of assurance they want. Congressman Ron Paul recently illuminated the subject with keen insight, pointing out that the unholy alliance between government and pharmaceutical companies allows a near monopoly on drug products, protecting profits unsustainable in a true free market. Clearly, government is the problem, giving drug companies access to “the hand of force” to tilt the market in their favor (not the only industry to do so!).
“Are Libertarians antigovernment?”
In general, no. Mostly, Libertarians believe that the government does have a purpose: to protect people from each other, not from themselves. Government should provide the halls of justice, so that no one who infringes on the life, liberty, or property of another goes without paying due restitution.
“Libertarians have a ‘sweet’ view of human nature. A libertarian society is a fantasy that’ll never work.”
To paraphrase Harry Browne, this idea is completely backwards. It is precisely BECAUSE humans have the propensity to fall victim to the trappings of power that the ability to use legal force (i.e., the government) must be severely restricted.
“Won’t the economy spin out of control without government regulation?”
No. The market is merely the interaction of millions of individuals acting in their own interest. These interactions provide the pulse for capitalism to meet the needs of customers, sending profit, loss, and price signals throughout the marketplace. Government regulations distort this process, leading to waste, stifled competition, protected inefficiency, and corruption.
“Libertarians are only out for themselves. ‘Me, me, me!’”
Actually, quite the opposite... Libertarians are out for "You, You, You!" All Libertarian principles are based on the idea of individual liberty and individual responsibility. They are the 2 sides of the same coin...can't have one without the other. We have a basic positive belief that people, left to make their own decisions (and deal with the accompanying ramifications) more often than not, will do the right thing. The job of government is to step in when those decisions violate the rights of others. As a child grows by being given more freedom and the accompanying responsibilities, so too does society. Unfortunately, we are all being treated as children by government, both in the social realm as well as the economic realm. Libertarian policies will do the most to lift the poor by providing economic opportunities they are shut out from right now.
“Socialism works when you don’t have a lot of people.”
Perfect examples of the fallacy of this argument were the early American settlements, which were socialist in design. Even in these small, self-contained colonies, the socialist model was a complete failure. Early on the settlers learned to take advantage of the "producers" who created the wealth that was to be re-distributed. As a result, many died and the rest were starving. As soon as property rights & capitalism were introduced, the colonies began to thrive. "Thanksgiving" occurred as a result of economic freedom.
“Libertarians keep opposing taxes. Without taxes, how are we going to build the roads?”
Very simply. With user fees and/or private solutions. Of course we need roads to conduct our lives and businesses, but the government too often uses road construction and other similar projects for “the common good” to payoff contributors and supporters. They also use these projects to show that they’re “creating jobs.” The government creates jobs only by taking them away from the private sector.
We pay taxes on gasoline that are supposed to build and maintain roads. On the federal level, the politicians have used those taxes to pay for things other than roads (See: The Big Dig in Boston). In addition, they have created a maximum amount to be left in the trust fund, with the balance switched to general uses, and the interest generated by the trust fund does NOT go to roads...it too goes to general funds. The same situation exists in the State of Florida. The transportation "trust fund" has been raided year after year for political expediency. This year, legislation to centralize (at the State level) more control over the transportation funds was defeated by the legislature. In spite of this, Gov. Bush and the Department of Transportation have, through agency policies, taken control of our local road money away from the established MPO's (Metropolitan Planning Organizations). The same holds true at the County level. The local option gas tax (currently 5 cents per gallon), transportation impact fees, state money and other sources are all supposed to be used to build roads. Yet no new road has been constructed by the County in years. It's NOT a revenue problem. It's a spending problem!
“Libertarians have no concern for the poor. Without government welfare, poor people would starve.”
This is completely false; the opposite is true. Government welfare creates poverty and, as a matter of fact, thrives on it. As just one small example, with the reform of most states' welfare programs in the mid 1990's, by 2000 the percentage of children living at or below the poverty level dropped to the lowest level in years. Dr. Mary Ruwart, in her book "Healing Our World, In an Age of Aggression" (see our Recommended Reading page) gives hundreds of documented examples of how government "welfare" programs actually have the exact opposite effect of what they were intended for. Similarly, minimum wage laws destroy jobs for those at the lowest rung of the ladder; nobody will pay someone more than they’re worth to the company. Not only does this force them into welfare or crime, it keeps them from developing the basic job skills needed to move up from lower paid labor. If minimum wage laws worked, why don’t we just raise the minimum wage to $30/hr -- everybody will be upper middle class, won’t they?
If Libertarian policies were enacted, the opportunities for the poor would be hugely expanded. That's why Libertarians support libertarian organizations like the Institute for Justice and their efforts to break down regulatory barriers that prevent the poor from having economic opportunities. As government becomes more limited, as it was intended to be, we will all have more time and money to contribute to those who are truly less fortunate, and, through no fault of their own, can not make it. Private charitable organizations do more to uplift the downtrodden than any government bureaucracy ever can.
Finally, as in everything it does, the government is extremely inefficient. For every dollar you pay in taxes to help the poor, less than 25% actually goes to work for the poor. The rest is absorbed by bureaucracy and overpayments to favored suppliers of the services to the poor.
“You can’t have a free market in schools. Only the children of rich people will be educated.”
You can have a free market in schools. We had it in the past, and it worked fine. We certainly have even had a much better government education system than we have now. All the major studies on this subject have proven over and over again that the increased centralization of education in the United States has been a disaster as proven by the government's own biased testing program. As in the general market, competition provides quality and economy while monopoly produces the exact opposite. Even now, with the constraints placed on them by the government education monopoly, charter, private, parochial and home schooling provide better results at lower cost (on average-half of what government schools cost). In private and parochial schools, many of the students do come from poor families and are subsidized with scholarships from alumni, community and church groups. Just think how much lower the tuition would be without the government interference and how much more money would be in the hands of the "poor" and the rest of society to help if Libertarian policies were in place! For some more facts on the failings of the government education system and some solutions see: The Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation, The Alliance for the Separation of School and State, and right here in Brevard County, check out http://www.4Brevard.com/choice/.
“Everyone should pay for schools. The education of our children benefits the community by creating productive citizens who contribute to the tax base, therefore everyone benefits.”
A well educated society IS good for all of us. But the supposition that we must forcibly take money from everyone to redistribute it to pay for education is false on its face and in the details. This policy has been a failure. Prior to mandatory, taxpayer funded schooling, the rate of literacy was higher than it is now. Even after that, while schools were under local control and responsive to the parents and community, education was reasonably good. As a result of the current centralized collectivist attitude, we have a government education system that ignores fundamental education while it stresses social consciousness and lack of responsibility. Even in Brevard County, the children learn, at the beginning of the school year, that they must provide for the "common good" by bringing supplies that must be put into a common pool. No longer are individuals responsible for taking care of their own property. The mandated curriculum, with its revisionist history and social programming pursues a decidedly anti-American, anti-individualist agenda. In short, our education system is creating a citizenry of dependency. As stated in the answer to "You can't have a free market in Schools", there is no need for mandated free government education. Society would benefit much more by giving parents-the real consumer of education- a free market choice.
“In capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
This socialist lie has been disproved over and over again. The most capitalist societies (NOT the United States) have the highest standard of living and the lowest poverty rates in the world-even in countries with barely any natural resources (Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.). The concept that wealth is a zero-sum game, where the rich get rich at the poor's expense just doesn't pass the test of economic reality. The problem we face is that the United States is moving further and further away from being capitalist. We do not have a true free-market in many areas of the U.S. economy. Government regulation in general, protectionism through regulation for the benefit of politically favored businesses, tax policies based on social outcomes, biased tariffs, subsidies, centralized control of the fiat-money supply, deficit spending, etc. all have skewed the market in the United States. In spite of all of this, our history of economic freedom and the American spirit of individualism and innovation still provide us with one of the most vibrant economies on the earth...for now.
“Other countries guarantee their citizens have at least 4 weeks vacation. In capitalism, this would never happen - business owners in general are too greedy to give their employees this much time off.”
Who knows if businesses would provide 4 weeks right off the bat for employees? Many people do get more time off as their service time increases. In a true free market, companies would have to compete for their employees. If more free time was a desire of employees and the employers thought they were worth it, they would agree. The logic of this argument is the same that said unions must be mandated (as they were in the Soviet Union). In reality, many companies have never had unions, not because they fought them, but because management was enlightened enough to offer the benefits that satisfied their employees without needing a third party middleman. In a truly free market, enlightened management thrives and repressive, "greedy" companies fail.
“Democracy is good. Libertarians would have us believe that we aren’t a demcracy and that we shouldn’t have democracy. Why shouldn’t we have majority rule?”
Democracy is ultimately nothing more than mob rule. Everything that can be subject to a vote is up for grabs by the majority, your property included. Don’t believe it? See what the Castle Coalition has to say about government’s idea of the sanctity of private property. More to the point, much insight has been brought to bear on the idea of “democracy”.
“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief's of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
James Madison
“Once a nation becomes a democracy, the whole purpose of government changes. Instead of the government's goal being that of guaranteeing liberty, equal justice, private property, and voluntary exchange, the government embarks on the impossible task of achieving economic equality, micromanaging the economy, and protecting citizens from themselves and all their activities. The destruction of the wealth-building process, which is inherent in a free society, is never anticipated. Once it's realized that it has been undermined, it is too late to easily reverse the attacks against limited government and personal liberty.”
Ron Paul
“Doctors take an oath to help people. Therefore, they cannot be subject to the law of supply and demand or otherwise to economic considerations. It’s unethical.”
(coming soon)
“It’s a waste of resources to have a bunch of suppliers competing to supply the same thing!”
Without free market competition, and profit and loss calculation achievable by prices determined by the real actions taken by individuals driven by their own value scales, we have no way to determine how much something is worth (a founding tenet of the Austrian Theory of Economics). In addition to this, a single supplier, like any human, balances how much work they are willing to do versus how much leisure they must give up. A single supplier will inevitably fail to reach all the customers who might need or want their product or service as it would be humanly impossible, as no human can “work” ad infinitum. They must consume some leisure, if nothing else in the form of sleep. A single supplier alone ultimately cannot find every potential customer. In other words, not only does competition force the supplier to be more efficient, competition means more producers looking for new markets to please new customers. Therefore, it is NOT a waste to compete against another vendor supplying the same product - it is the very avenue by which we ensure that the resources we need to produce the product are being used in their most efficient way. Otherwise, those resources would be bid away by others who could use them more efficiently.
“We elect our representatives. ’We’ are therefore the government. There is no real difference between government and the people.”
(Coming Soon)
“Medical care is a right.”
It sure is - if you administered it to yourself, for no one can tell you how you can act on your own body. You do NOT, however, have a right to medical care provided by someone else. A right is something you are inherently entitled to by nature of the fact that
you are a thinking, acting human being who owns one’s self. To have a right to medical care, a service provided by another human’s labor, you are claiming you have a right to that person’s labor! You have a right to the things you own, such as your property. To claim a right to someone’s labor is to claim ownership of that person’s labor. This relationship is that of the master to the slave - you must ultimately relegate the medical provider as a slave to claim a right to their labor.
Modern liberals generally claim to corner the market in compassion and equality, and generally claim to wish to rectify the horrors of slavery. They are also the same people who claim you have a “right” to medical care. This position is untenable - one cannot claim a right to medical care and philosophically oppose slavery. They are mutually exclusive.
“How is anything in society supposed to happen if government doesn’t do it? Who will plan things out?”
Spontaneous social order! This is the order the comes about when humans voluntarily interact to provide each other with specialized goods or services. I stink at making clothes, but I might be a whiz at growing vegetables. I need no government to exist for me to engage in cooperative activities to trade my vegetables for clothes. Government regulations inhibit people from interacting
voluntarily - government destroys spontaneous social order. Humans don’t need a plan. They need liberty - ownership of their own property and labor. Individual liberty provides them the incentive to voluntarily interact with each other, providing each other wonderful gifts. No amount of coercion by the government can improve upon this activity.
“It’s necessary for the government to regulate the economy. For example, FDR got us out of the Depression with all the military spending when we got into WWII. The economy roared!”
Again, voluntary human interaction provides the avenue for peace and prosperity. Government regulation is at best a distortion of voluntary interaction. The economy is nothing more than millions of people making voluntary exchanges. This process always moves toward (but NEVER reaches) something called “the evenly rotating economy” - a fully satisfied state with no uncertainty. In other words, the free market is like a weeble wobble, it’s natural tendency is to right itself. Government action is paramount to constantly angling the floor on which the weeble sits - the economy constantly trying to right itself on a foundation that itself keeps wobbling!
“Why,” you might ask, “are there booms, busts, market crashes, and depressions?” These phenomena are the direct result of the control of our economy by the Federal Reserve who can print worthless fiat money at will. Prior to the abandonment of the gold standard and interference in the economy by government, these phenomena were virtually non-existent.
As for FDR, this fascist, meddling, economic idiot PROLONGED the agony. War cannot bring prosperity. Government can only get it’s money by taking it from the citizens. That’s money the citizens would use to buy bread. The government took people’s money and built war material. We got rid of the soup lines by sending millions of men off to fight. The depression didn’t end with WWII. It ended when FDR left office and his bone-headed economic interventions were abandoned (reluctantly by Truman in 1946). Think about it - how can a depression last 10 years without government intervention?
“All you libertarians do is try to ‘spoil’ the elections. What has the Libertarian Party actually done?”
Fought tax increases. Fought the abuse of private property ownership. Written countless letters to the editors of virtually every circulating newspaper exposing the harm brought by bureaucrats. Constantly reminding people that their our founders lit the way to peace and prosperity in so many ways, and have provided improvements on those areas where the founders fell short (believe it!).
“You Libertarians are in favor of prostitution, drugs and pornography – I don’t want my children exposed to these.”
This is a common misconception; Libertarians are not for any of these, but we are opposed to laws infringing on the rights of adults to engage in whatever activities they choose as long as they do not interfere with another’s rights. We expect adults, however, to deal with the consequences of their actions themselves. The key ideas here are “adults,” and “responsibility.” First let’s look at prostitution and, along with it, homosexuality. It is none of the government’s business what consenting adults do. We as individuals have the right to associate with whomever we please; if we choose not to associate with those that engage in these or any types of behavior of which we disapprove, we would not have to. This refusal in itself will likely influence people’s choices.
Regarding drugs, they can certainly ruin some people’s lives. But, most people can use them responsibly as they do alcohol. Most of the real problems associated with drugs have to do with their being illegal: gang warfare, profits subsidizing other criminal activity, subverting law enforcement and the judicial process through payoffs, not to mention filling jails with people that have done nothing more than try to enjoy their lives. This latter point means the jails are overcrowded and room for those that are real threats to society is reduced. We learned this lesson during prohibition; why are we still pursuing a failed policy?
“Free trade is costing America jobs. We need trade barriers to protect them. We need subsidies to help our U.S. businesses compete overseas.”
It’s easy to see how some believe this. After all, if we can buy something made overseas cheaper, the person here making it at a higher cost will lose their job and this is highly visible. What isn’t so visible is the fact that if we restrict trade, forcing us to pay more for the domestic product, the additional money that we pay to “save” this job will not be spent on other things, and in turn reduces jobs there or keeps them from being created. Worse yet, we are diverting funds from efficient production to inefficient production. We all lose with trade barriers. The fact is that while people are now concerned about exporting jobs, the U.S. imports many more jobs than it exports. Prohibiting this is the same as putting a trade restriction on labor rather than on goods, but it has the same effect.
As for helping our businesses succeed overseas, why should the American taxpayer support McDonald’s overseas expansion? If McDonald’s thinks it would be profitable to expand internationally they are free to do so, but let them take their own risks.
“We need to have a foreign aid program to help developing nations improve and promote good relationships with the U.S.”
Foreign aid programs, it has been said, are the transfer of money from poor people in rich nations to rich people in poor nations. Most of the money is stolen, spent for military programs that often oppress the population or simply wasted. And all you have to do is open any newspaper to see how well the billions of dollars we spend have promoted good relationships with the U.S. The best thing we can do for developing nations is to trade with them freely. Eliminating subsidies to our farmers would open our markets to these developing nations allowing them to help themselves, rather than relying on handouts.
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