Libertarianism is the philosophy that is associated with people like Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell and many others. Libertarianism may seem like a good philosophy at first. The basic idea is that all individuals should have the fullest extent of both personal and economic liberty possible. The role of the government should be limited to ensuring the freedom of all of its citizens is adequately protected.

I quote as following:

The core idea is simply stated, but profound and far-reaching in its implications. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life – as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.

Another way of saying this is that libertarians believe you should be free to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don't harm the person and property of others.[Link]

Libertarians are highly critical of socialist policies. For example, they seek to abolish the minimum wage[Link], progressive income tax[Link], universal healthcare, social security and just about every other government program.

This leads us to the first critique on libertarianism. This is essentially a socialist critique, but the point is completely accurate. If you introduce economic freedom to the extent proposed by libertarians, this will always be at the cost of personal freedom of everyone but the richest amongst us.

After all, it may sound nice to be able to do whatever you want with your body and your property, but how is that relevant to me, if I don't have property to begin with? The only way for me to gain any form of freedom at all, is by infringing on the supposed property rights (we'll get to that later) of others.

An example. Imagine I want to send my children to Med school. That's going to cost me a lot of money which I don't have. Thus our personal freedom is limited by the amount of money we have. We could saddle our children with loans that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Alternatively the government could step in, and enforce regulations that both limit the amount of money colleges can ask, and give my children the money they need to study at an affordable price. This money will have to come from someone. It will mostly come from the rich.

Which brings us to the core of the socialist critique on libertarianism. Taking money from the rich may be interpreted as a limit to their freedom. However, because they have such a high amount of money, the benefit the money will provide to the rest of society exceeds the amount of infringement the rich suffer from. If one person has 10.000 dollar and the other 5 have a thousand dollar each, taking 5000 dollar from the first person and distributing them over the other 5 will increase the total number of options in their life for these 6 people taken together.

Another example. In our current world and especially a libertarian future, I could be unable to afford a car. I could even be unable to afford a bicycle. My neighbor may have enough money on the other hand to afford a Lamborghini. My freedom is strongly impacted by my inability to move around. If we were to buy a bicycle for me from an increase in tax on my neighbor, my freedom would be increased by a tremendous amount. It's not some government that's infringing on my freedom, it's my current poverty that is. But would my neighbor miss the money? He would have to wait another month to buy the same car.

If I am poor, do you think some hypothetical libertarian concept of property rights has any relevance to my freedom at all? No, the only threat to my freedom I experience is my poverty. And poverty exists all around us unfortunately. Food stamps exist for a reason. Without this big-government socialist infringement on our freedom, people would be hungry.

Now my most important critique on libertarianism is in relation to their absolute concept of property rights. As written by Glenn Jacobs:

Libertarian philosophy is based on the concept of self-ownership. Human beings own themselves. When we rightfully acquire property, either by making first claim to that property (homesteading) or through voluntary transfer with another person or persons, that property becomes part of our lives, and thus we lay claim to ownership of that property as we would our own bodies.[Link]

By being the first to claim a certain property as yours, it becomes rightfully yours. If it is voluntary transferred to another person, the property becomes his. I suggest to Mr. Jacobs that he packs his bags and leaves the American continent, since everything he sees around him was initially "owned" by native Americans. It was taken from them through warfare, playing them off against each other, outright genocide and many other methods.

"But we shouldn't go back that far." Fine, we can ignore centuries of injustice and begin anew. Just put a big red line through the native American property rights, they lost, we won, now it's time for our libertar(d)ian paradise.

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