Introduction To Libertarianism

The FAQ has long served as my introduction to libertarianism, but I've long wanted something more direct and punchier.  Here are my first few scribblings on the subject, the start of a new page.  I will keep this page rather short, because I do not want to lose readers.

Let me know if you have ideas to add to this.  It's not complete yet.

Libertarianism can be divided into three major realms. (There might be unimportant others.)

Political Libertarianism

Political libertarianism is the libertarianism that we are exposed to through the media, the mass market libertarianism.

Political libertarianism, like the media, is controlled by plutocrats and operated for the benefit of plutocrats. It is not about "liberty" or "freedom": it is about ownership. The plutocrats want to convince the populace that their ownership of the vast majority of the world's wealth is legitimate and untouchable. Their objective is to get more wealth and prevent losing any wealth to taxation or other liabilities.

Political libertarianism is dominated by public relations programs that have been around since at least the 1930's, reacting to Progressivism. They took off with the Mount Pelerin Society in the 1950's. The Koch brothers have largely organized or controlled these public relations programs, and they scored their first big successes in the 1980's under Reagan.

This is also called vulgar libertarianism by Kevin Carson. The message really is: “Them pore ole bosses need all the help they can get.”

(Short list of plutocratic funded libertarian-oriented organizations needed here.)

Individualistic Libertarianism

Individualistic libertarianism is what the targets of political libertarianism believe. This is a huge morass of conflicting ideas with only one constant: the political libertarian idea that ownership should be sacred. Ask a libertarian what part of ownership they would give up to achieve any other social end, and they will say no part. It doesn't matter if some socialistic government (such as roads or defense) would benefit the lives of everybody; they despise it because it conflicts with their property, no matter how meager.

Libertarian Philosophy

Libertarian philosophy is mostly corrupt: much of it is funded by plutocrats to provide ideas and materials for their public relations campaigns.

Common failures of libertarian philosophy include:

• apriori reasoning
• natural rights
• self-ownership
• individualism
• the assumption of property
• single value reasoning
• misframings
• ignoring anthropology

These are all erroneous assumptions or fallacies of argument.

(This is not the ancient nondeterministic philosophical libertarianism concept that means free will.)