Ten Reasons Why Libertarianism Is the Way of the Future

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Column by Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski.

Exclusive to STR

1. It is the only social philosophy that places the highest value on the only common characteristic of all thinking beings--individual liberty.

2. It is the only social philosophy that takes individual rights seriously, consistently refusing to sacrifice them in the name of collective moral and legal fictions.

3. It is the only social philosophy that consistently refuses to glorify the allegedly "necessary" evils of institutionalized violence, aggression and coercion, while not ignoring the problem of organizing effective protection and defense against these evils.

4. It does not see anyone as an inherent enemy, deemed unsuitable to participate in voluntary social cooperation due to his class, race, gender, or culture.

5. It exposes the alleged tension between spontaneity and orderliness as fundamentally false, and explains the essential complementarity between the two.

6. It explodes the myth that there is a tradeoff between efficiency and equity.

7. It is inclusive of all social philosophies in their peaceful varieties.

8. It can never be justifiably accused of having been tried and failed, since it does not propose any overarching grand scheme, its successes being as numerous as individual attempts of independent thinking beings to make the best of their natural liberty, and its failures as numerous as independent thinking beings who refuse to make such attempts.

9. It embodies the most mundane and platitudinous common sense, consistent with our most ordinary notions of interpersonal decency, known to most of us since our sandbox days--keep your mitts to yourself, don't punch others, don't grab other people's stuff, live and let live--thus being as non-ideological as any social philosophy can be.

10. It will never get old, since voluntary cooperation is endlessly creative and can assume an infinity of forms.

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Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski's picture
Columns on STR: 12

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski is a libertarian theorist and a researcher in the tradition of the Austrian School of Economics. He has been a fellow at the Institute for Humane Studies and at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He has published peer-reviewed articles in philosophy, economics, and political economy in, among others, "Independent Review", "Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics", "New Perspectives on Political Economy", "Journal of Prices & Markets", "Libertarian Papers", and "Reason Papers". Visit his blog at jakubw.com

Comments

sovereign1's picture

Concise and precise; great post.
We learn all this from day 1. Yet, somewhere along our journey we dismiss some or all of this simple philosophy.

Thunderbolt's picture

I agree with Sovereign1. The simple basics are beautiful. Thanks.

Jim Davies's picture

Fully endorse the comments of S1 and T-Bolt, but will add this: to be the "way of the future", Libertarianism will not happen by itself. For it to be realized in practice, rational action is required.

Glock27's picture

Ah! If it could only be practiced here.