As promised, I want to return to the “10 Things Leftists Should Know about Libertarians,” and offer 6-10. (1-5 is here.)
6. Libertarians want to “go local.”
Most libertarians believe in a principle of subsidiarity—government decisions and activities should be carried out at the most local feasible level. We’ve all heard of federalism. But it’s not just about states rights. Subsidiarity is a more robust idea: if a lower stratum of government can handle it, it should have to--as a matter of law (constitutional law, preferably). So while the left often focuses on economic decisions “going local” - which libertarians see as a) limiting one’s range of available choices, b) bad economics, and c) harmful to the world’s poor as they try to integrate into the global economy) – libertarians want to break power up and, at minimum, disperse it (otherwise get rid of it altogether). That way people can at least vote with their feet if they don’t like the policies of some geographic monopoly on power. We also see decentralized power as being stronger for the emergence of community. Government power and community are not to be conflated in our view, and the closer the power is, the more communities can both keep an eye on it and participate in it. (Read: there’s nothing “communitarian” about Washington.)
7. Libertarians can be environmentalists.
Fundamental to the libertarian worldview is the idea that people should not harm each other. Of course, environmental harms can be a form of harm. We very often disagree about the methods of addressing such harms (e.g. we see the Common Law as a much better tool than the regulatory state), but we don’t think that big corporations should dump gunk in rivers either, property, or air, either, as long as you can identify and prove harm (where the standards of proof are determined by the Common Law, not by the whims of activists or special interests injecting their preferences into statute). In any case, libertarians look for market mechanisms to mitigate environmental harm. Regulatory means are subject to capture by special interests, limited by a lack of bureaucrat knowledge, and result in unintended consequences—economic and otherwise (witness the genocidal effect of global DDT bans on the population of Africa, a continent that struggles with malaria. But I digress.)
8. Libertarians are radical crowdsourcers.
Ever heard of the “wisdom of crowds”? Libertarians believe that the decisions and choices of millions of people are almost always superior to the decisions and choices of a single person or bureaucratic elite. I’ve spent a lot of pixel-space relating the idea of dispersed knowledge and complex systems, so I won’t expand on this too much here. Suffice it to say that humility requires us to accept that there are limits to human organization and we overcome those limits through self-organization and crowdsourcing, not top-down directives from a bureaucracy whose greatest incentive is to perpetuate its own existence.
9. Libertarians are anti-elitist.
Due to 8, you can see why libertarians are anti-elitists to some degree. We don’t have a strong guilt/envy instinct when it comes to wealth, of course. And as I mentioned in Part I, we think voluntarism trumps force when it comes to solving social problems. We see “elites” as either being people who have political power, or power due to political connections (rent-seekers). Wealthy business people have very little power by comparison, because they have to maintain their wealth by creating value and serving customers. Government power is not the same, as it requires force rather than value creation. That’s why elite to us is more about government power than prosperity, which we believe, ceteris paribus, illustrates that people are offering a good or service that people want.
10. Libertarians are pro-human.
Libertarians’ belief in the sacredness of persons makes us a human-centered group. One might not understand this given the way we’re often caricatured. “Just leave me alone!” is part of our sensibilities to be sure. But we think that voluntary cooperation can move mountains, whether that be in the marketplace or in the philanthropic sector. The instrument of government power, which requires so much compulsion, is an instrument to be feared and checked. Voluntary association and the emergence of winning ideas that flow from a creative people is the best way to solve social problems, not to mention the best way to achieve eudaimonia. Voluntary action is the means. Toleration is the prime virtue. Individual happiness is the goal (and that happiness may very well concern the problems and conditions of fellow human beings—and usually does. But neither social equality nor compulsive means of achieve it factor into our worldview.)
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