The main difference between the two that I can think of is that oil involves international trade. My instinct is that more trade is typically a good thing, even for oil. As bad as people of different countries can be when they are squabbling over a resource, I think it is even worse when people don’t need each other at all.

It’s the difference between Saudi Arabia and Chad. A horror everyone knows, and a horror nobody cares about.

In its most simplified application in the field of voluntary collectivism, which results in constitutional governments:

“Normative Libertarianism is framed by the impacts of the functions of governments on Liberty and thus to limit those impacts by limiting those functions.”

If the focus could be kept on that, socially and politically, there could be more progress in civil Association through voluntary cooperation.

Those who would ascribe to normative libertarianism recognize the function of obligations in human relationships. This is most often reflected in the reference to one of the forms of obligation – responsibility. There are other forms, determined by other circumstances of relationships.

There are no “children’s rights.” What does exist are the obligations of adults in their relationships with children at various stages of childhood and under varying circumstances.

There are no “animal rights” (ask any animal) there are only the obligations of humans in their relationships with animals.

In fact if an examination of all the so-called “rights” claimed by any of us, will reveal that they are dependent upon obligations of others, often to exercise constraints in their conduct or in their abilities to use the instrumentalities of government or other forces in our relationships.

That limitation on the nature of “rights” is particularly trenchant in the case of so-called “positive” rights, such as the right to education, the right to health care, the right to decent living conditions – all require the obligations of others to provide. When those provisions are made through governments (or any other form of involuntary collectivism) they result in the imposition of obligations. The imposition of obligations, under involuntary circumstances, impact personal liberty. Most who are concerned with the principal elements of libertarianism are concerned with the voluntary determination of obligations to be undertaken, and not imposed.

I would add a Marxist axis, bump the outlooks back to their proper labels (conservative to progressive, progressive to Marxist), and change the axis for conservatives to order on one end and chaos or anarchy at the other.

If libertarianism WERE “the idea that adult individuals have the right and the responsibility to make the important decisions about their lives,” then libertarians would look at decisions and say, “hm, is this idea important?” and if it’s important, they’d say “then the individual should do it,” and if it’s not important, then they’d say “OK, government can do it.”

That is not how any libertarian I know understands his or her own ideology. The decision of a shoe factory owner to pollute a stream for example is extremely important, but that doesn’t mean it’s up to the individual factory-owner, or the individual consumers, to produce and consume those shoes. The decision to eat Cheerios or Apple Jacks in the morning is a rather unimportant decision, yet most libertarians I know would say that it is unambiguously a decision that individuals, not the government, should make, and they would consider it a good application of their own ideology for someone to say so!

Here is how I would amend David’s explanation:

“Libertarianism is the idea that adult individuals, not the government, BY DEFAULT, have the right and the responsibility to make decisions about their lives.”

There is no mention of “important” or not, that doesn’t matter, and the key phrase is “by default.”

In other words, it’s an ideology premised on the idea the liberty should be our default position, and so the burden of proof should be on he who would have the government make a decision to show that he is correct, NOT he who would prefer the individual make that decision.

You will notice that this is the bottom line of J.S. Mill’s “On Liberty.” I am sure Mill put this better than I can, but I’m too lazy right now to dig up a quote.

I think that his is both a more accurate and more convincing way of explaining it.

PS David doesn’t have that explanation in his top 10; I would have put it in the top 3.

PPS David’s piece doesn’t have a comments section, perhaps because it’s a “Policy Brief.” I wish it were a blog post, with a comments section, because it’s, um, basically a blog post, and it has little to do with policy, and this comment really belongs over at Cato (and here too )

I agree. Just like, more often than not, your insurance premium is wasted money. But if the severity of the event is large enough (invasion, crime waves, barbarism) then it may be worth paying the premium.

What you dont want to do is pay a premium to prevent high frequency, low severity events. Espescially if doing so increases the odds of the high severity stuff. I would argue progressivism, unintentionally, does just that.

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