Preface

What sticks out at me is that libertarianism is a three-legged stool. It consists of foreign policy, economic policy, and policy concerning personal liberties. Wait. No. That is not quite right. Yes, libertarianism does indeed consist of these three “legs” but so does every other political philosophy — Marxism, Conservatism, Left Liberalism, Progressivism, communism, Nazism, feminism — without exception. That is, every political philosophy, if it is to be a complete one, must address these three issues, wrestle with them, come to grips with them.

The topics I address in this book consist of a quintessentially libertarian answer to these challenges. And, if this material is to be consistent with that philosophy, it must adhere, strictly, to the two elements, the only two elements, of libertarianism: the non-aggression principle and private property rights based upon homesteading.

Does this book succeed in accomplishing that task? That is for others to determine. As for me, all I can say is that certainly I intend that it do so. For example, in the realm of foreign policy, the non-aggression principle would imply a policy of strict non-interventionism. This is not isolationism. The latter means that the U.S. pulls up its drawbridges, so to speak, and Americans have nothing to do with anyone in the rest of the world. That is not at all what the non-aggression principle requires. Citizens of our country should be free to visit, trade with, buy from, sell to, invest in, and allow investments from, people from all corners of the globe. It merely implies that the U.S. withdraw its hundreds of military bases from scores of other countries. Is this pacifism? Of course not. The proper role for the government of the U.S., to the extent that it has any proper role at all, is to engage in defense, not offense. Every basketball fan knows the difference. It is when the other team has the ball that they yell “Defense!” It is too bad that the average American cannot be relied upon to make this distinction consistently. What would a proper foreign policy require? Something of the sort of a very powerful Coast Guard, ready to kick the butt of anyone who would dare attack us (and shorn of its responsibilities to interdict illegal drugs, etc.).

This is why, in section I of this book, dedicated to foreign policy, I have attempted, in my own weird way, to make the case that the U.S. is at present, not a country that implements a libertarian stance, but rather one of imperialism. It swaggers its way around the planet, launching drones at people, drowning people, and using other ways to kill people, virtually none of them who have ever attacked America. And in the cases they have done so, as Ron Paul correctly insists, it was due to blowback. They are over here, he avers, because we were over there first. The solution of course is to adopt the policy laid out by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, no “entangling alliances” and of John Quincy Adams, not going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. MYOB, mind your own business, is a far better policy than anything employed by the U.S. for most of its history. Emulating the foreign policy of Switzerland might be a good beginning.

In section II of this book, devoted to economic liberties, I try to make the case that a free enterprise system is self-sustaining, maximizes wealth, and can do better, far better, without any “help” from the state. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” would be the diametric opposite of the viewpoint offered here. For the so-called public sector is based upon initiatory violence, at least insofar as its compulsory taxation is concerned. And in the Rothbardian analysis, its triangular intervention, forbidding or compelling commercial interaction on the part of the residents of the country, hurts, does not help, economic well-being. My favorite chapter title in the microeconomics section is: “Want To Help the Poor and Oppressed? Encourage Laissez-faire Capitalism, You Bleeding-heart Liberal, You.” Come to think of it, this applies as well to bleeding heart so-called libertarians. And this applies, in spades, to the macroeconomic sphere. Say what you will about microeconomic interventionism, it is by its very nature somewhat limited in scope. Not so the macroeconomic sphere, where the statists can do far more harm, in that their policies have an impact on every corner of the economy. It is important, too, to make the case for free market environmentalism, which is far from a contradiction in terms, no matter how our friends on the left wish it were. No, in the environmental field also, private property rights, the profit and loss system, are the last best hope for mankind, and the animal kingdom, too. As a graduate student of Gary Becker’s at Columbia University, I have a great interest in labor economics, and the proportion of chapters on this topic bears this out. Unions, minimum wages, violation of “scabs” rights are all part and parcel of an Austro-libertarian analysis of this sector of the economy. I write at a time when there is a push to increase the severity of the minimum wage law. I hope that the chapters in this section of the book will play some role in heading off this evil initiative.

Section III of the book focuses on personal liberties. Libertarians need make no apologies in terms of their analysis of feminism, drug legalization, charity, or health care. Again and again, the libertarian policies, based on personal rights, are both more effective and in greater congruence with morality.

So much for the libertarian outlook on the three legs of the three-legged stool of political economy. What about libertarian theory itself? This is the subject of the concluding section IV of the book. Here, I attempt to set up the basic premises and apply them to secession, punishment theory, and politics.

I hope this book causes you to think, and question how society can function successfully without a monolithic state riding roughshod over us. It would give me great pleasure if this helped in some small way to promote our beloved philosophy, libertarianism.