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I'm not sure the author actually understands what libertarianism is. What is un-libertarian about open and free software? The whole ethos of libertarianism is a

• tzs 11y ago
  > I'm not sure the author actually understands what libertarianism is. I'm almost convinced that nobody understands what libertarianism is, including libertarians. Almost invariably if libertarian X explains libertarianism to me, and after thinking about it I come up with some objections or questions and X is not available, so I find some other libertarian, Y, and bring up my questions, I find that Y is a different kind of libertarian and his flavor of libertarianism doesn't include the features I objected to. Just look at the sidebar of /r/libertarian on Reddit. It contains a "Types of Libertarianism" section which contains links to sub-reddits for various libertarian types. It has agorism, anarcho-capitalism, christian-ancaps, geolibertarianism, libertarian left, mutualism, market anarchism, minarchy, objectivism, and voluntarism. (I realize this is not necessarily fully accurate...objectivists do not consider themselves libertarians). I'm pretty sure that on almost every issue I've found some type of libertarianism that fits very well with my views (much better than the Republican or Democrat party platforms do), but is way off of my views on several other issues I find important. I think this happens because I think libertarians (at least many flavors) construct their rules backwards from the way I think they should be constructed. They take an axiomatic approach, coming up with some general principles that they feel are self-evidently correct. Then they deduce the rules of society that follow from those axioms. A good example of this is Rothbard. His "The Ethics of Liberty" is a wonderful examination of the consequences of a small number of general principles. He follows those principles wherever they lead, and gets to some points where he admits the outcomes can be terrible. For example, parents not legally required to care for their children--they cannot actively kill them, but if parents decide they don't want their newborn baby they can just ignore it until it dies. He thinks that this would not happen too often, because instead of letting the baby die, the parents could sell it on the free market to someone who wants to raise a child. (Children are a theoretical pain in the ass for many flavors of libertarianism, not just Rothbard libertarianism). I take terrible outcomes as a sign that we didn't get the axioms right. We should be starting with the kind of society we want to have, and then pick our axioms to be a minimal set of general principles that generate that kind of society, rather than picking the axioms and then accepting whatever society arises from them.
  • c2the3rd 11y ago
    This is true of any "-ism", especially ideologies. Every person will give a slightly different answer as to what it is.