This is the basic libertarian idea: that people should be free to do ‘‘anything that’s peaceful,’’ as libertarian thinker Leonard E. Read put it. That means, in the words of libertarian theorist and economist Murray Rothbard, that ‘‘no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else.’’ Or, to rephrase it one more time, anyone should be free to do anything he or she wants, as long as he or she does not commit acts of force or fraud against any other peaceful person. Libertarians call this the ‘‘non-aggression principle.’’

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Jacob H. Huebert (via laliberty)

from joinakibbutz:

that’s actually quite aggressive. ‘acts of force or fraud against any other peaceful person’ is terribly vague. anytime you have a philosophy which gives a kind of ambiguous kind and amount of power to reprimand and discipline you will have the complete opposite of freedom. authority is fundamentally oppressive. one person’s definition of being wronged (especially when your beloved private property is involved) you will have layers of wasteful ambiguous regulations.

I’m not sure where you can cull aggression from such a basic principle of non-aggression.

‘Acts of force or fraud’ is not vague. Certainly, there will forever be challenges in interpretation, much like today (though likely less so). But as Thomas Paine said, “[T]he more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be disordered, and the easier repaired when disordered."

'Force’ is primarily physical harm to person or property, or threat of physical harm. 'Fraud’ is harming person or property by the use of intended deception. That’s where Read’s quote of "anything that’s peaceful” as well as Rothbard’s simple clarification are so constructive: outside of violence or coercion, anything goes. Conversely, where you do find ambiguity is in a large overbearing state with hundreds of thousands of laws that limit liberty, favor some over others, and put the populace in the precarious situation of not knowing, by any reasonable measure, the nearly limitless ways they could be breaking the state’s laws and putting themselves in a position to be aggressed against by the state.

(And of course authority is fundamentally oppressive. This is a root understanding in a free and just society, and at no point have I described or advocated for the creation of a compulsory authority. Each individual has absolute sovereignty over his life.)

capitalists talk about freedom. they talk about protecting their fellow citizen’s freedom right up to the point when their fellow citizen somehow wrongs them or their property.

Well, yes. That is definitionally freedom. Someone’s freedom to their life, what to do with their life (liberty), and the product of their life (property), ends where another person’s same freedoms begin. Not to acknowledge this is to create a disequilibrium that would not recognize freedom at all. After all, a society is usually only as free as the least free among us.

i’m noticing that ‘libertarians’ mention democratic methods much less than anarchists. interesting.

I am unclear as to the point you are attempting to make. The form of libertarianism I adhere to is of the anarchist style (Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism). But what does that have to do with democracy? What democratic values are necessary? Among others, Jefferson, echoing de Tocqueville, often spoke against the Tyranny of the Majority. As a fellow admirer of Nietzsche, you should recognize the implicit immorality of majority rule. After all, a lynch mob is democratic. Should society be run like a lynch mob? So I’m not sure if you mean that this is what you think my position is, or that you think this is what my position should be; either way, ochlocracy is not always compatible with liberty.

and why is it that, while all ‘libertarians’ are obsessed with capitalism, none of the definitions of this ‘libertarianism’ which are ever given have anything to do with the markets?

That’s only because of your perception of what markets are; they are not this non-societal device or construct that exists independently of people or freedom. Markets are people. Markets are the exchange of ideas, of goods, of services, of mutual benefit. Markets are free people making free choices on how to live their lives.

Further, markets are a by-product of liberty. You can’t have a free market without liberty any more than you can have chocolate milk without a cow. So it’s important to start with the source of and reason why free markets are so valuable in flowering prosperity in all of society: liberty.

(via joinakibbutz-blog-blog)