Bishop Hill linked to an article by Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK. In it, he accuses libertarians of being callous, violent and being the enemies of civilised society. He seems to think that because libertarians don’t want the government to steal money from people and use it to help people, they don’t want people to be helped. I wrote this comment, which has not been published (he did say “Comments from known libertarian abusers will not be allowed on this blog entry, or any other on this site.”):
I am a libertarian. I don’t know if my comment will be welcome here; but it is your blog and you are free to delete it.
You’re mostly right about how I would structure society. But I’m not callous. Believe it or not, I think that all people would be better off in a libertarian society: there would be fewer poor people and more *willing* charity for the remaining few in need.
There are a couple of timely articles over at Counting Cats. Cats talks about defining libertarianism from first principles (don’t initiate force; obviously not a principle Richard Murphy is familiar with); Nick M weighs in about how libertarians are misunderstood and want everyone to get richer which is the reason they argue against things like minimum wage, not because they are callous.
And all this just coincidentally, because later Nick M spots the Richard Murphy article and responds to it directly:
We are open and honest because we are right. We do not need to finish posts by threatening to shut down the debate because we know we can win the debate. We believe in society. We believe though that is something which emerges from the free interaction of individuals and not something defined from the great, the “good†or the unsufferably smug.
We have won the intellectual debate. All they have left is force but the use of that is what they do best.
I have in me a post about libertarianism and why it is best — I think it is important to make the case concisely so that people on the fence can compare what we have to say to the kind of arguments in Richard Murphy’s article.
Ah yes. If the state does not attempt to provide something, it will not be provided. Yawn.
The alternative position, which is that if you want something done well you should do everything n your power to prevent the state from being involved, seems incomplrehensible to them despite all evidence
I do think there’s a case for improving our “presentation” though; emphasising positive libertarianism (a better world to live in) rather than “negative libertarianism” which tends to come across as selfish to non-libertarians (“Keep your hands off my stuff or I’ll shoot you”).
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