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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:22
Libertarianism: An Introduction
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Hi everybody, my name is Stephen Molyneux.
I'm the host of Free Domain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web.
And I would like to talk to you for just a few minutes, with your kind indulgence, about libertarianism and why it's important, what it's all about, and what its real purpose is in society.
You've probably heard libertarianism bandied around on the web and in the media and so on, but it's worth understanding in my opinion.
So I would argue that really the best function of human thought is to take principles that we learn locally and keep extending them and applying them to see how far they hold.
Right?
So gravity is something we all learn locally.
You know, we throw balls, frisbees, jump off low walls and so on.
And so the purpose of human thought in physics, for instance, would be to continue to extend the principle of gravity and see how far it holds.
Turns out it holds all throughout the universe and all throughout time, producing some really freaky phenomenon like black holes and so on.
And a lot of these truths that we discover through taking local experiences and extrapolating them to universal principles, a lot of these truths are really, really freaky.
Originally, of course, it was thought, or believed, that the Earth was the center of the universe, and all the sun and the moon and the stars and the planets spun around the Earth.
Turns out, if you'd put money on that bet, you would have lost, because, of course, as we know, the sun is the center of the solar system, we're basically falling around the sun, the sun is falling around the center of the galaxy, and we're traveling at unbelievable speeds at all times, but it kind of really doesn't feel that way, you know, unless you stick your head out of a pickup truck window.
So there are these truths that are just kind of freaky, which is what happens when you take principles and extend them.
If you take a principle called the speed of light is constant and you extend it throughout physics as Einstein did, you end up with this crazy stuff where the faster you go, the slower time goes.
You get Queen songs and additional matter that grabs onto you as you go faster and faster and faster.
It's very, very strange stuff.
But it's what happens when you take principles and you extend them to see how far they can go.
Now, libertarianism is one of those experiments, one of those thought experiments.
So basically, libertarianism is founded on kind of two things, and they're two sides of the same coin.
Number one, the non-aggression principle.
You are not morally allowed to initiate the use of force against others.
You can, in self-defense, use your nunchucks or whatever, but you can't initiate the use of force against others.
And alongside that is a respect for property rights, that you own the effects of your actions.
Whether that is a sonnet, or a poem, or a song, or a house, or a tree that you've planted, or the effects of your actions such as an argument on the internet.
You type something on the internet, that's yours, you have created it, you own it.
And morally, we own the effects of our negative actions.
You know, like if I go and steal someone's iPod, I've actually owned that theft.
I've created it.
It's my theft.
That's why I would get sanctioned or punished for that.
So...
Non-aggression principle which is called the NAP and a respect for property rights is really the foundation of Libertarianism and it's really not that freaky a philosophy when you think about it I mean I have a daughter and like all parents.
I tell my daughter don't hit and don't take stuff You know this is kindergarten ethics 101 on the walls of all the brightly colored classrooms throughout the planet So this is what?
We say, we say don't, don't hit, use your words, don't hit, and don't, don't take stuff.
And these are kind of the local ethics that we are very comfortable with, that we live our lives by, almost all of us, that we instruct our children about, and that we expect in the workplace, and we expect in the schools, and so on.
Don't initiate the use of force, and respect other people's property.
Now, where libertarianism is, I think, very interesting, and worth understanding, is like a physicist or like any other scientist, you take these local principles and you keep extending them, keep extending them.
Like in the field of medicine, one of the principles is that anecdotes aren't proof, right?
So what you need to do, you get double-blind experiments and all these kinds of cool things to find out what actually works and what doesn't in the field of medicine.
You know, what's the placebo effect?
What is just spontaneous remission of various illnesses?
What if somebody who wasn't sick thought they were, turned out they felt better?
So the double-blind experience is a way of trying to find out what's true and what's not.
And it separates the quackery from the actual useful medical cures.
So libertarianism just takes these principles.
Non-aggression principle, respect for property rights, keep pushing them out, pushing them out, pushing them out.
Can they go?
Well, if they're true and valid principles, then there should be no limit as to how far they can go.
So, if you take something like personhood, the moral history of personhood is kinda dicey and a little embarrassing for the species and for philosophers.
Because, you know, personhood was, you know, rich white guys or whoever, but for the most part it wasn't including minorities, certainly didn't include slaves, for a lot of history it didn't include women.
So just this concept of personhood, how far can we push it out?
Well, We found, over the last couple hundred years, we can push it out pretty far.
And that's, I think, a very good thing.
So what if?
This is the question libertarians ask themselves.
And it's a very interesting question.
I mean, like it or not, it's really, really worth pursuing.
How far can we take the non-aggression principle and a respect for property rights?
How far can we take these principles?
A very interesting question.
Now when you push principles out, some really freaky stuff occurs.
The planet that you think of as flat is actually round or a sphere.
Although the sun and the moon look the same size, what is it, about a dime at arm's length or something?
And they eclipse, they seem to fit together quite well.
Turns out that the sun is hundreds of thousands of times bigger than the moon and so on.
So it really messes with your perspective when you take principles and continue to extend them, right?
For thousands and thousands of years, human beings have been breeding animals and crops to further their utility for agriculture or pleasure.
You extend that principle and say, well, selection for the benefit of, right?
And you end up with evolution or something like it.
And so just keep extending principles.
That's really the very important aspect, I think, of philosophy, of science, of medicine, and so on.
But it messes with your perspective.
It's confusing and it blows your mind.
At least it blows my mind on a fairly regular basis.
And so libertarians, when you look at the world through the non-aggression principle of respect for property rights, you immediately come up with some significant problems in the way society is currently organized.
It's a very nice way of putting it.
The way that society currently manifests is probably a better way of putting it.
And what you find, of course, is that something like taxation.
Taxation is the initiation of the use of force.
It is a violation of personal property on the part of other people who call themselves a government and so on, right?
It is a violation of the libertarian ethic.
And it's not like the taxation is done in self-defense.
There is a national defense component to it, which tons of libertarian literature will talk about that.
But it's a problem.
The state itself, right, which is a small group of individuals who have the moral right and obligation to initiate the use of force against citizens.
In a given geographical area, that's really what the government is.
It is compulsion, as has been noted by Barack Obama, Chairman Mao, George Washington, and all of the people who have correctly understood that the government is the initiation of force.
And therefore, it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
Now, what you can do is you can say, well, the non-aggression principle is really good for my kids, it's really good for my workplace, it's really good for my marriage, it's really good for my friendships, it's really good for them all, but it's just not good for government.
Well, see, that's a problem.
That's a big problem.
The moment you have to start creating enormous exceptions to a principle, well, then it's no longer a principle and you have significant problems.
You can no longer say to your kids or to your coworkers or to your spouse or to your friends that this is a principle, that it's a moral principle because you've created a massive exception.
So, a long time ago, before the Copernican and Ptolemaic revolution of the sort of 15th and 16th centuries, they believed, astronomers believed that the circle was like the perfect, that God would never have an ellipsis.
Crazy, it's not round, it's not perfect.
And so everything had to be circles.
And this is called the Ptolemaic, after an ancient Greek astronomer, the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
And the problem was, is that of course as we go around the Sun, Mars goes around the Sun slower, so at some point Mars, it's called the retrograde motion, Mars seems to be going backwards and then it starts going forward again.
So people started inventing all these crazy circles within circles within circles, and it ended up being hundreds of pages of calculations just to figure out where Mars was in the night sky or where it was going to be a week from now because they had the principles fundamentally wrong.
The Earth was at the center and everything was considered to be circular, where, of course, the reality is on the heliocentric model of the solar system – The sun is at the center and everything's an ellipsis.
And once you did that, bingo, bango, bongo, you've got very easy to calculate Martian positions, no problem.
So you can't just create an exception and have it be productive.
And so with libertarians, the argument is, well, we have this non-aggression principle.
We have a respect for property rights that's enshrined in the law.
You can't assault, rape, kill, steal.
You can't do those things.
But then the question becomes, if these are moral principles, then they have to apply to everyone.
If they don't apply to everyone, then they're like aesthetic principles or preferences or something like that, you know, I like the Red Sox and jazz or whatever.
If they do apply to everyone, well, people in the government are people, right?
I mean, it's not space aliens, it's not lizard men.
So if the non-aggression principle applies to everyone, and If people in the government are people, then the non-aggression principle must apply to people in government.
And this is why, in the libertarian position, things like the war on drugs are considered to be wrong, immoral.
Somebody who goes and smokes marijuana or something else is not initiating the use of force, assuming they didn't sort of steal to go buy it, which they really wouldn't have to do if it wasn't for the war on drugs.
So, they're not initiating the use of force against anyone.
By having a voluntary trade, they are not violating property rights, they don't steal the drugs, they buy it for whatever amount of money.
And so the government then by, you know, grabbing that person with armed guys and throwing them into a cage and trying them and locking them up and so on, preventing them from leaving and shooting them if they try to escape.
Well, that is the initiation of the use of force against peaceful people.
It's not like this hedonism thing where it's like, oh, I can't wait to get crack into the hands of toddlers.
It's nothing to do with that.
It really is just when you look at something like the war on drugs, from the libertarian standpoint and say, well, is somebody peacefully buying drugs initiating the use of force against anyone?
Well, no.
Are they violating property rights?
Well, no.
Then if you use force against somebody who's not using aggression or violating property rights, then you are now the aggressor.
And that's immoral because you are now initiating the use of force against a peaceful person.
And whether you're in a blue costume or a green costume or a polka dot costume or dressed like Ronald McDonald, it doesn't really matter.
You're still a person.
And that's subject to these universal principles.
So I don't want to get into a lot of detail here, because it's just kind of like an introductory, very introductory thing.
But I really would encourage you to explore this way of thinking.
The libertarian position is that most of the immorality within society, most of the evils that are occurring within society, most of the disasters that are occurring within society, are occurring because of A violation of the non-aggression principle, or of property rights, or both.
And so national debts are a violation of property rights, in that you are selling off the future productivity of people who aren't even born yet and can't defend themselves.
You and I could never do that in a contract, but the government can.
The monopoly that the government has on money, on the issuance of currency, is a violation of The non-aggression principle, because if somebody else wants to create some currency and we agree to use it, you and I or, you know, you and I and some other guy, then we're peacefully deciding to trade based upon, you know, Raggedy Ann dolls or whatever it's going to be.
We're not initiating force against anyone.
We are simply using a different medium for trade.
And if we want to use gold, if we want to use diamonds, if we want to use anything.
Conch shells!
We can do anything we want as long as we're not initiating force.
The government forces you to use its currency, which gives it an immoral monopoly, and it initiates the use of force against people who would rather use something else.
And so the monopoly on currency and national debts, just some examples, for instance, that's important.
A war, of course, unless it's a purely defensive war against an imminent invasion, a war is a violation of the non-aggression principle in that you are going to attack another country, first and foremost.
You are initiating the use of force against your own citizens to extract money from them through taxation to pay for the war that you are prosecuting.
And so I just really wanted this to be kind of an introduction.
I certainly don't expect this to be like, ah, I completely agree.
But what I would encourage you to do is to look at society and where you see significant problems, look for Violations of the non-aggression principle.
Violations of the respect for property rights.
And I would bet you pretty significant odds that where you see the greatest problems in society and the least sustainable catastrophes within society, you will find these violations at the root.
And I think it's well worth looking at society and the world around you through this lens.
Does this proposed action or this existing action or policy violate The non-aggression principle doesn't violate property rights.
If it does, we'll look deeper.
And I think you'll find that libertarianism has some very interesting things to say.
And I think we are a long way, as a species, from finding the end of where we can apply the non-aggression principle and property rights.
For more, of course, you can go to a variety of places.
My website has more information about this, freedomainradio.com.
But you can go to a lot of other places on the web for this.
And I really, really encourage you to look at this.
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