He lists the top ten ways that he tries to explain it.
the number 1 way to talk about libertarianism — or at least a sentence I found effective when I was talking about Libertarianism: A Primer on talk shows: “Libertarianism is the idea that adult individuals have the right and the responsibility to make the important decisions about their lives.” Every word is important there: We’re talking about individuals. We’re talking about adults; the question of children’s rights is far more complex. Responsibility is just as important as rights.
The objection from progressives is that this ignores a lot of harm in the world–the harm that people do to themselves, the harm of market failures, and the harm of oppression. To meet this objection, I would say that I believe that humans make mistakes in the context of government that do more harm than the mistakes that they make when pursuing their individual interests in the context of the market.
The objection from conservatives is that this ignores the need for collective action to suppress barbarism, both as an external threat and as an individual tendency. To meet this objection, I would say that I believe that government enforcement of civilized values is more often than not an oxymoron.
“I would say that I believe that government enforcement of civilized values is more often than not an oxymoron”
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.
Sorry, BTW, if my analogy is to far adrift. I try to stay on topic but fall short sometimes.
I would say people make mistakes and cause harm both ways, but inaction doesn’t prevent them anymore than action causes them but both can prevent and cause so it is too easy a task to claim nothing is better than anything rather than considering the facts, situation, and effects, and this dichotomy is false as these can complement as much as conflict and preserve and extend as much as confine and destroy.
I don’t like David’s explanation, because whether a decision is “important” or “unimportant” is not the heuristic that libertarians actually use to decide whether government or individuals should make that decision.
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 🙂 )
“Libertarianism” as they descriptive term has been expanded far beyond the normative functions of responses to involuntary collectivism. There are all kinds of conceptual “variations on the theme.”
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 believe that humans make mistakes in the context of government that do more harm than the mistakes that they make when pursuing their individual interests in the context of the market.”
This is an empirical claim and needs an empirical defense. It implicitly states that the decision rule is “do less harm”. Are you comfortable with where that takes you? If government reduced its mistakes sufficiently, would you be ok with giving it more control? Where does that leave us in the era of Watson and her successors?
I think that progressives would say that the oppressed don’t get the choices that others get. They’re not going to get a chance to make mistakes in the context of the market because the market won’t cater to them if they are poor or an oppressed minority. Historically this has happened with the Jim Crow laws, and there are claims that discrimination still happens with some minorities steered to subprime loans when they could have qualified for non subprime loans. If large corporations can make a large profit by promoting unhealthy food choices then there has to be government action to counteract the problem.