The libertarian philosophy has a strong appeal, especially to intelligent young people, and has had a powerful impact on American life through such public figures as Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.

There is a lot to be said in favor of philosophy whose supreme value is the right of individual human beings to make choices and live as they wish, provided they do not infringe on the freedom of others. If you have to have one supreme principle that outweighs all the others, that is not a bad one.

I was much interested in libertarian philosophy during the Reagan era, and I still think that deregulation and cuts in marginal tax rates were a good idea up to a point.

I don’t agree with Libertarians that governmental activity is by definition an infringement on freedom, and private business activity never is. And I don’t agree that governmental activity is by definition unproductive, and that private business activity never is. These things are sometimes true, but not always true.

When I covered business for the Democrat and Chronicle in the 1980s and 1990s, I never found anybody afraid to criticize the government, but I did find many people fearful of criticizing business, particularly major employers in Rochester. When I talked to employees of big companies such as Eastman Kodak Co., it was like what I imagined interviewing people in an Iron Curtain country would be like. Nor were people merely fearful of criticizing their own employers. In an era of downsizing, they did not want to say anything on the record that would brand them as malcontents.

Libertarians don’t all think alike, but a typical libertarian answer would be that there is no problem. People are free to say what they think; employers are free to hire whom they choose. So long as there is no government coercion, nobody’s freedom is infringed.

The United States has a problem with deteriorating water and sewer mains, dams and levees, bridges and other infrastructure. Paying taxes to the government to maintain and upgrade these systems would, in my opinion, do more to improve the nation’s productivity than investing in the stock market and just bidding up the price of existing stocks.

A typical libertarian answer would be taxation is coercion, for whatever purpose the money is spent, and that as many government activities as possible should be privatized and opened up to competition so I would have a choice.

One of the big libertarian dilemmas was the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Most libertarians were willing to agree that segregation laws were wrong, but they could not accept “forced integration.” If a white department store owner didn’t want to serve black customers or hire black employees, that supposedly was his right; if all the department stores in town were owned by white and wanted to bar blacks, that supposedly was his right. So long as black people were not being coerced by government, their rights supposedly were not being infringed.

The libertarian solution to racial discrimination is the free market. A business that is willing to serve any customer will have a competitive advantage over one that restricts itself to just one race, the argument goes; a business that is willing to hire any qualified applicant will have a competitive advantage over one that restricts itself to just one race. Economics supposedly will end racial discrimination without the need for laws.

I lived in the border state of Maryland during the civil rights era, and I knew several business owners, including the owner of the diner where I had lunch every day, who told me that they personally had nothing against serving black people, but they were afraid of the reaction of their white customers. Civil rights legislation gave them an excuse to do what they said they wanted to do.

Blake McKelvey, in his four volume history of Rochester, said Rochester’s largest employers did not drop restrictions on hiring black people until the labor shortage created by World War Two. Some of them did not hire Italian-Americans; that is said to be the reason so many Italian-American families in Rochester have Angl0-Saxon names.

It really boils down to a question of values. Which is more important, the right of the individual to be free of government coercion, or the right of the individual to be treated impartially regardless of race or ethnicity? My answer is, it all depends, but I don’t think the first right always outweighs the second.

Click on this for the web site of the Libertarian Party. Its motto is “the party of principle.”

Click on this for the web site of the Cato Institute, the leading libertarian think tank.

Click on this for the web site of Reason, the leading libertarian magazine. Its motto is “free minds and free markets.”

Click on this for a libertarian argument against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Click on this for Unqualified Offerings, a web log by a libertarian physics professor. I read it almost every day.

Later (6/3/10)

The Unqualified Offerings web log is written by a couple of people, not just one.

Click on this for an interesting view of Ron Paul, the small-l libertarian Republican congressman who is the father of senatorial candidate Rand Paul.

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Tags: Libertarianism