Preble have cogently argued that a libertarian foreign policy must be restrained, shunning wars of choice, and that the military should be of an appropriately small size for that purpose. Some libertarians, like Bryan Caplan , think there are good reasons to oppose any and all wars , and many libertarians are inspired by the ideas and deeds of pacifists like Leo Tolstoy or William Lloyd Garrison.
In its dealings with the broader world, has the United States been a force for liberty? Should it be? And if so, why? To learn more about the history of foreign policy in America and the libertarian view of war, download a free digital copy of Christopher A. Libertarians believe in the free movement of both people and things across jurisdictional boundaries.
If you can ethically trade some good or service with a person of your own country, you can ethically trade that good or service with a person from a different country, and you should be allowed to do so free from bureaucratic interference or the imposition of tariffs or duties of any kind.
Free trade and freedom of association are enormous social boons. All honest, voluntary exchanges are positive sum from the perspective of the parties as they head into a given exchange, leaving both the buyer and the seller better off while harming no third party. The larger the pool of potential trading partners, the richer human society can become. Removing the barriers that shrink the pool of potential trading partners could make us a lot richer—economists studying the impact of removing restrictions on labor mobility alone concluded that world GDP would double , as a median estimate.
The less international trade is encumbered by tariffs, quotas, or regulations, the greater the opportunity for buyers and sellers to create wealth. Everyone is entitled to bodily autonomy. That entails that each of us is the final arbiter of what does and does not go into our bodies—whether food, drink, medicine, or recreational drugs.
Should you decide to take drugs, no one has any rightful authority to stop you. If drug use causes you to injure others or to fail in carrying out your obligations, you are morally and legally responsible—just like you would be if you spent your whole life sober. Some people object to the libertarian position on drugs on the grounds that drug use is associated with a variety of social ills. The criminalization of buying, selling, and using drugs makes it more difficult for addicts to receive treatment, renders the drugs they consume more potent for ease of smuggling , and increases the chance that they will encounter a product that is dangerously tainted because consumers in a black market have no recourse when sold goods of poor quality.
Prohibition also contributes to an ongoing mass incarceration crisis that has destroyed communities and torn families asunder just like addiction can. A libertarian believes strongly in the need for thorough procedural protections of the rights of both the innocent and the guilty as they make their way through the criminal justice system, from arrest, to trial, to sentencing, and to the carrying out of their sentence. Jay Schweikert and Clark Neily join us for a conversation on law enforcement and accountability.
For that reason, police officers, prosecutors, and judges should be subject to the strictest scrutiny and held to the highest standards of conduct. This is even more true when we consider the vast overcriminalization embedded in the laws of most countries. That means that who is charged with a crime is almost completely decided at the discretion of police and prosecutors. They do not always exercise that discretion wisely. Progress is possible if substantial reforms are undertaken.
We could also break up the police unions , which make it extremely difficult to fire even those officers who have proved themselves incompetent or otherwise dangerous.
To address the fact that the American prison population is extraordinarily large compared to those in other countries, we need to take a hard look at what conduct is legally forbidden and how long we imprison transgressors. At a minimum, that means that we stop sending people to prison for using drugs, which ought never to have been banned in the first place; it also means reevaluating the penalties imposed for more serious crimes, like theft, assault, or murder.
Governments typically afford their citizens, and others subject to their authority, certain rights and privileges. Other times, civil rights are things that only make sense in the context of a given set of institutions—for example, the right to vote, the right to trial by jury, or the right to a public defender.
The section on criminal justice has already started to explain what libertarians believe about civil rights, but not all civil rights involve criminal trials. Looking beyond issues of criminal justice, a libertarian typically favors a broad and robust set of civil rights protecting people as equally as possible, regardless of group membership or social status. That includes things like robust privacy protections against state surveillance, the rights to petition and protest, and the right to access government documents.
Your body belongs to you. Just as you have a fundamental right to refuse medical care that might benefit you, you also have a fundamental right to try medical treatments that pose risks. The law should protect patients from fraud and from costs they did not consent to incur.
It should also provide for proportionate, carefully circumscribed steps to stop the spread of serious or deadly contagious diseases, the transmission of which amounts to a violent assault. Not only does the state often fail to deliver such protections, it routinely violates your rights to choose your medical providers and treatments.
On top of that, it violates the right of innovators to offer new, better products. This blocks innovations that would make health care better, less expensive, and more secure—particularly for the most vulnerable. Voluntary institutions can do a better job than government of ensuring everyone gets the care they need. They can do the same for health care—if government lets them.
While private charity can play a role, a libertarian world would leave fewer people dependent on the benevolence of the rich for access to care.
Because teachers and administrators at public schools depend on tax revenue, not tuition payments, they are incentivized to cater to the whims of politicians rather than the needs of students.
That penalizes the best public school teachers for doing their job well. It is also socially dangerous. Public schools reward obedience and conformity first and foremost, because those are the qualities the state wants in its subjects. In order to maintain their opposition to government intervention, then, libertarians must produce arguments to show that such policies will not produce greater utility than a policy of laissez-faire.
Producing such arguments is something of a cottage industry among libertarian economists, and so we cannot hope to provide a complete summary here. Two main categories of argument, however, have been especially influential. We can call them incentive-based arguments and public choice arguments.
Incentive arguments proceed by claiming that government policies designed to promote utility actually produce incentives for individuals to act in ways that run contrary to promotion of utility. Public choice arguments, on the other hand, are often employed by libertarians to undermine the assumption that government will use its powers to promote the public interest in the way its proponents claim it will.
Public choice as a field is based on the assumption that the model of rational self-interest typically employed by economists to predict the behavior of market agents can also be used to predict the behavior of government agents. Rather than trying to maximize profit, however, government agents are thought to be aiming at re-election in the case of elected officials or maintenance or expansion of budget and influence in the case of bureaucrats.
These problems are held to be endemic to political processes, and not easily subject to legislative or constitutional correction. Hence, many conclude that the only way to minimize the problems of political power is to minimize the scope of political power itself by subjecting as few areas of life as possible to political regulation.
The quantitative utilitarians are often both rationalist and radical in their approach to social reform. For them, the maximization of utility serves as an axiomatic first principle, from which policy conclusions can be straightforwardly deduced once empirical or quasi-empirical assessments of causal relationships in the world have been made. From Jeremy Bentham to Peter Singer, quantitative utilitarians have advocated dramatic changes in social institutions, all justified in the name of reason and the morality it gives rise to.
There is, however, another strain of consequentialism that is less confident in the ability of human reason to radically reform social institutions for the better.
For these consequentialists, social institutions are the product of an evolutionary process that itself is the product of the decisions of millions of discrete individuals.
Each of these individuals in turn possess knowledge that, though by itself is insignificant, in the aggregate represents more than any single social reformer could ever hope to match. Humility, not radicalism, is counseled by this variety of consequentialism. Though it has its affinities with conservative doctrines such as those of Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, and Russell Kirk, this strain of consequentialism had its greatest influence on libertarianism through the work of Friedrich Hayek.
Hayek, however, takes pains to distance himself from conservative ideology, noting that his respect for tradition is not grounded in a fetish for the status quo or an opposition to change as such, but in deeper, distinctively liberal principles Hayek For Hayek, tradition is valuable because, and only to the extent that, it evolves in a peaceful, decentralized way.
Social norms that are chosen by free individuals and survive competition from competing norms without being maintained by coercion are, for that reason, worthy of respect even if we are not consciously aware of all the reasons that the institution has survived. Somewhat paradoxically then, Hayek believes that we can rationally support institutions even when we lack substantive justifying reasons for supporting them.
The reason this can be rational is that even when we lack substantive justifying reasons, we nevertheless have justifying reasons in a procedural sense—the fact that the institution is the result of an evolutionary procedure of a certain sort gives us reason to believe that there are substantive justifying reasons for it, even if we do not know what they are Gaus For Hayek, the procedures that lend justifying force to institutions are, essentially, ones that leave individuals free to act as they wish so long as they do not act aggressively toward others.
For Hayek, however, this principle is not a moral axiom but rather follows from his beliefs regarding the limits and uses of knowledge in society.
The price system, if allowed to function freely without artificial floors or ceilings, will reflect this knowledge and transmit it to other interested individuals, thus allowing society to make effective use of dispersed knowledge. The fact that knowledge of all sorts exists in dispersed form among many individuals is a fundamental fact about human existence.
And since this knowledge is constantly changing in response to changing circumstances and cannot therefore be collected and acted upon by any central authority, the only way to make use of this knowledge effectively is to allow individuals the freedom to act on it themselves. This means that government must disallow individuals from coercing one another, and also must refrain from coercing them themselves. The social order that such voluntary actions produce is one that, given the complexity of social and economic systems and radical limitations on our ability to acquire knowledge about its particular details Gaus , cannot be imposed by fiat, but must evolve spontaneously in a bottom-up manner.
More recently, Hayekian insights have been put to use by contemporary philosophers Chandran Kukathas ; and Gerald Gaus ; Consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are, of course, varieties of consequentialist moral argument, and are susceptible therefore to the same kinds of criticisms leveled against consequentialist moral arguments in general. Beyond these standard criticisms, moreover, consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to four special difficulties.
First, consequentialist arguments seem unlikely to lead one to full-fledged libertarianism, as opposed to more moderate forms of classical liberalism. Intuitively, it seems implausible that simple protection of individual negative liberties would do a better job than any alternative institutional arrangement at maximizing utility or peace and prosperity or whatever. And this intuitive doubt is buttressed by economic analyses showing that unregulated capitalist markets suffer from production of negative externalities, from monopoly power, and from undersupply of certain public goods, all of which cry out for some form of government protection Buchanan Second, consequentialist defenses of libertarianism are subject to objections when a great deal of benefit can be had at a very low cost.
Third, the consequentialist theories at the root of these libertarian arguments are often seriously under-theorized. But this leaves a host of difficult questions unaddressed. The meaning of each of these terms, for instance, has been subject to intense philosophical debate.
Which sense of happiness, then, does libertarianism promote? What happens when these ends conflict—when we have to choose, say, between peace and prosperity? Are they supposed to maximize happiness in the aggregate? Or to maximize the weighted sum of happiness, peace, and prosperity?
Richard Epstein is on more familiar and hence, perhaps, firmer ground when he says that his version of classical liberalism is meant to maximize utility, but even here the claim that utility maximization is the proper end of political action is asserted without argument.
The lesson is that while consequentialist political arguments might seem less abstract and philosophical in the pejorative sense than deontological arguments, consequentialism is still, nevertheless, a moral theory, and needs to be clearly articulated and defended as any other moral theory.
Possibly because consequentialist defenses of libertarianism have been put forward mainly by non-philosophers, this challenge has yet to be met. A fourth and related point has to do with issues surrounding the distribution of wealth, happiness, opportunities, and other goods allegedly promoted by libertarian rights. In part, this is a worry common to all maximizing versions of consequentialism, but it is of special relevance in this context given the close relation between economic systems and distributional issues.
The worry is that morality, or justice, requires more than simply producing an abundance of wealth, happiness, or whatever. It requires that each person gets a fair share—whether that is defined as an equal share, a share sufficient for living a good life, or something else.
Intuitively fair distributions are simply not something that libertarian institutions can guarantee, devoid as they are of any means for redistributing these goods from the well-off to the less well-off.
Furthermore, once it is granted that libertarianism is likely to produce unequal distributions of wealth, the Hayekian argument for relying on the free price system to allocate goods no longer holds as strongly as it appeared to. For we cannot simply assume that a free price system will lead to goods being allocated to their most valued use if some people have an abundance of wealth and others very little at all.
A free market of self-interested persons will not distribute bread to the starving man, no matter how much utility he would derive from it, if he cannot pay for it. Both by an external standard of fairness and by an internal standard of utility-maximization, then, unregulated free markets seem to fall short. Anarcho-capitalists claim that no state is morally justified hence their anarchism , and that the traditional functions of the state ought to be provided by voluntary production and trade instead hence their capitalism.
This position poses a serious challenge to both moderate classical liberals and more radical minimal state libertarians, though, as we shall see, the stability of the latter position is especially threatened by the anarchist challenge. Anarcho-capitalism can be defended on either consequentialist or deontological grounds, though usually a mix of both arguments is proffered.
On the consequentialist side, it is argued that police protection, court systems, and even law itself can be provided voluntarily for a price like any other market good Friedman ; Rothbard ; Barnett ; Hasnas ; Hasnas Deontologically, anarcho-capitalists argue that the minimal state necessarily violates individual rights insofar as it 1 claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and thereby prohibits other individuals from exercising force in accordance with their natural rights, and 2 funds its protective services with coercively obtained tax revenue that it sometimes 3 uses redistributively to pay for protection for those who are unable to pay for themselves Rothbard ; Childs Robert Nozick was one of the first academic philosophers to take the anarchist challenge seriously.
Competitive pressures and violent conflict, he argued, will provide incentives for competing defensive agencies to merge or collude so that, effectively, monopolies will emerge over certain geographical areas Nozick Since these monopolies are merely de facto , however, the dominant protection agency does not yet constitute a state. Essentially, he argues that individuals have rights not to be subject to the risk of rights-violation, and that the dominant protection agency may legitimately prohibit the protective activities of its competitors on grounds that their procedures involve the imposition of risk.
The transition from the ultraminimal state to the minimal one occurs when the dominant protection agency now state provides protective services to all individuals within its territory, and Nozick argues that the state is morally obligated to do this in order to provide compensation to the individuals who have been disadvantaged by its seizure of monopoly power.
First, the justification for the state it provides is entirely hypothetical—the most he attempts to claim is that a state could arise legitimately from the state of nature, not that any actual state has Rothbard Second, it is questionable whether prohibiting activities that run the risk of violating rights, but do not actually violate any, is compatible with fundamental liberal principles Rothbard Until decisively rebutted, then, the anarchist position remains a serious challenge for libertarians, especially of the minimal state variety.
This is true regardless of whether their libertarianism is defended on consequentialist or natural rights grounds. For the consequentialist libertarian, the challenge is to explain why law and protective services are the only goods that require state provision in order to maximize utility or whatever the maximandum may be.
If, for instance, the consequentialist justification for the state provision of law is that law is a public good, then the question is: Why should other public goods not also be provided? The claim that only police, courts, and military fit the bill appears to be more an a priori article of faith than a consequence of empirical analysis. This consideration might explain why so many consequentialist libertarians are in fact classical liberals who are willing to grant legitimacy to a larger than minimal state Friedman ; Hayek ; Epstein For deontological libertarians, on the other hand, the challenge is to show why the state is justified in a prohibiting individuals from exercising or purchasing protective activities on their own and b financing protective services through coercive and redistributive taxation.
If this sort of prohibition, and this sort of coercion and redistribution is justified, why not others? Once the bright line of non-aggression has been crossed, it is difficult to find a compelling substitute.
This is not to say that anarcho-capitalists do not face challenges of their own. First, many have pointed out that there is a paucity of empirical evidence to support the claim that anarcho-capitalism could function in a modern post-industrial society. Pointing to quasi-examples from Medieval Iceland Friedman does little to alleviate this concern Epstein Second, even if a plausible case could be made for the market provision of law and private defense, the market provision of national defense, which fits the characteristics of a public good almost perfectly, remains a far more difficult challenge Friedman If respect for robust rights of self-ownership and property in external goods, as libertarians understand them, entail anarcho-capitalism, why not then reject these rights rather than embrace anarcho-capitalism?
Rothbard, Nozick and other natural rights libertarians are notoriously lacking in foundational arguments to support their strong belief in these rights. In the absence of strong countervailing reasons to accept these rights and the libertarian interpretation of them, the fact that they lead to what might seem to be absurd conclusions could be a decisive reason to reject them.
This entry has focused on the main approaches to libertarianism popular among academic philosophers. But it has not been exhaustive.
There are other philosophical defenses of libertarianism that space prevents exploring in detail, but deserve mention nevertheless. These include defenses of libertarianism that proceed from teleological and contractual considerations. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.
Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes.
Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own.
The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.
Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.
Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity.
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