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99-538: AIM proposed that all Crown land on Abaco should be placed in a land trust. Each citizen would receive a one-acre home lot from the trust and a share of revenue from land sales and leases. The land trust would enter into a joint venture to develop a 60 sq mile free trade zone. When AIM was formed by Chuck Hall and Bert Williams, they contacted an American financier named Michael Oliver, who through his libertarian Phoenix Foundation agreed to support AIM financially. The Phoenix Foundation had previously sought to establish

198-626: A bundle of rights in the United States: Economists such as Adam Smith stress that the expectation of profit from "improving one's stock of capital" rests on the concept of private property rights. The fields of economics and law do not have a general consensus on conceptions of property rights. Various property types are used in law but the terminology can be seen in economic reports. Sometimes in economics, property types are simply described as private or public/common in reference to private goods (excludable and rivalrous goods like

297-499: A minimal state on the grounds that it was an inevitable phenomenon which could arise without violating individual rights . According to common United States meanings of conservative and liberal , libertarianism in the United States has been described as conservative on economic issues ( economic liberalism and fiscal conservatism ) and liberal on personal freedom ( civil libertarianism and cultural liberalism ). It

396-448: A conception of personal autonomy from which they argue in favor of civil liberties and a reduction or elimination of the state. People described as being left-libertarian or right-libertarian generally tend to call themselves simply libertarians and refer to their philosophy as libertarianism. As a result, some political scientists and writers classify the forms of libertarianism into two or more groups to distinguish libertarian views on

495-539: A draft constitution for a proposed Abaco Commonwealth, based on libertarian principles. The results of the 1977 general election , in which the Progressive Liberal Party won 30 seats of 38 seats in Parliament including Abaco-Coopers Town, was a major disappointment for AHRM and effectively marked the end of the movement. The AIM newspaper, The Abaco Independent ceased publication in 1977. The AIM flag showed

594-456: A drive, as there is no real repercussions for doing so. Property rights are also believed to lower transaction costs by providing an efficient resolution for conflicts over scarce resources. Empirically, using historical data of former European colonies, Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson find substantial evidence that good economic institutions – those that provide secure property rights and equality of opportunity – lead to economic prosperity. As

693-567: A fair hearing". Neo-libertarianism has its roots at least as far back as 1980 when it was first described by the American philosopher James Sterba of the University of Notre Dame . Sterba observed that libertarianism advocates for a government that does no more than protection against force, fraud, theft, enforcement of contracts and other so-called negative liberties as contrasted with positive liberties by Isaiah Berlin . Sterba contrasted this with

792-443: A given environment. For specificity in the case of economic property rights, this is a system or structure that has value and stability. Transaction costs are the costs of defining, monitoring, and enforcing property rights. Ronald Coase proposed that clearly defining and assigning property rights would resolve environmental problems by internalizing externalities and rely on incentives of private owners to conserve resources for

891-778: A libertarian enclave in the South Pacific, the Republic of Minerva . AIM's first convention, held on February 23, 1974, was addressed by John Hospers , the Libertarian Party 's 1972 US presidential candidate. Hospers was later refused entry to the Bahamas. British MP Colin Campbell Mitchell also visited Abaco to offer support. Around May 1974, reports emerged of a group called 20th Century Revolutionaries whose appeared intent on overthrowing Abaco's central government. AIM denounced

990-562: A libertarian philosophical treatise titled Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness which criticized ideas of human rights and of society by contract based on vague promises. He took liberalism to its logical anarchic conclusion by rejecting all political institutions, law, government and apparatus of coercion as well as all political protest and insurrection. Instead of institutionalized justice, Godwin proposed that people influence one another to moral goodness through informal reasoned persuasion, including in

1089-535: A lighthouse (presumably the lighthouse at Hopetown) amidst a sunburst. Libertarianism Libertarianism (from French : libertaire , itself from the Latin : libertas , lit.   'freedom') is a political philosophy that holds freedom as its primary value. Many libertarians conceive of freedom in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle , according to which each individual has

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1188-611: A modern economy. In 2013, researchers produced an annotated bibliography on the property rights literature concerned with two principal outcomes: (a) reduction in investors risk and increase in incentives to invest, and (b) improvements in household welfare; the researchers explored the channels through which property rights affect growth and household welfare in developing countries. They found that better protection of property rights can affect several development outcomes, including better management of natural resources. Incomplete property rights allow agents with valuation lower than that of

1287-465: A nation grows the necessity for well-defined property rights grows as well. This is due to the underlying assumption that within property rights other people must be present in order to have the rights over somebody else. Additionally, property rights are foundational for a capitalist system, allowing for growth and wealth creation. North, Wallis and Weingast argue that property rights originate to facilitate elites' rent-seeking activities. Particularly,

1386-424: A night-watchman state, but instead requires sufficient government to provide each person in society with the relatively high minimum of liberty that persons using Rawls ' decision procedure would select. The political program actually justified by an ideal of negative liberty I shall call Neo-Libertarianism ." Libertarian populism combines libertarian and populist politics. According to Jesse Walker , writing in

1485-413: A particular country, or because no effective controls are in place, or feasible, i.e., the cost of exclusivity outweighs the benefits. Property rights theory is an exploration of how providing stakeholders with ownership of any factors of production or goods, not just land , will increase the efficiency of an economy as the gains from providing the rights exceed the costs. A widely accepted explanation

1584-472: A phone), as well as public goods (non-excludable and non-rivalrous goods, like air), respectively. Below is a list of the several property types defined and their relation to the economic concepts of excludability (the ability to limit the consumption of the good) and rivalry (a person's consumption of the good reduces the ability of another to consume it). Open-access property may exist because ownership has never been established, granted, by laws within

1683-448: A recognition. Locke supposed that one's labour was their own property and, consequently, property was any land maintained and sustained through one's own labour as long as there was sufficient and similar quality land to meet the needs of everyone's labour. Using this ideology, property in a broader sense would be taken as any good a person produced or maintains with their own labour. This was later elaborated on by Smith, who believed that

1782-453: A republican sense in 1802 in a short piece critiquing a poem by " the author of Gebir " and has since been used politically. The use of the term libertarian to describe a new set of political positions has been traced to the French cognate libertaire , coined in a letter French libertarian communist Joseph Déjacque wrote to mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1857. Déjacque also used

1881-416: A sudden rise in land price in the 12th century. In contrast, the modern "open access order", which consists of a democratic political system and a free- market economy, usually features widespread, secure and impersonal property rights. Universal property rights, along with impersonal economic and political competition, downplay the role of rent-seeking and instead favor innovations and productive activities in

1980-576: A term, libertarian or economic libertarian has the most everyday acceptance to describe a member of the movement, with the latter term being based on both the ideology's importance of economics and its distinction from libertarians of the New Left. While both historical and contemporary libertarianism share general antipathy towards power by government authority, the latter exempts power wielded through free-market capitalism . Historically, libertarians, including Herbert Spencer and Max Stirner , supported

2079-430: A vast legal scholarship, originated from the seminal contribution by Guido Calabresi and Douglas Melamed . Calabresi and Melamed argue that in the face of transaction costs sufficiently sizeable to prevent consensual trade, legalized private expropriation in the form of, for instance, liability rules can be welfare-increasing. To elaborate, when property is fully protected, some agents with valuation higher than that of

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2178-594: Is also often associated with a foreign policy of non-interventionism . Although libertarianism originated as a form of anarchist or left-wing politics , the development in the mid-20th century of modern libertarianism in the United States resulted in libertarianism's being commonly associated with right-wing politics , as well as viewed by many as neither left- nor right-wing, but an independent pro-freedom and anti-authoritarian philosophy. It also resulted in several authors and political scientists using two or more categorizations to distinguish libertarian views on

2277-437: Is closely associated with, to "safeguard" and maintain individualism. Libertarians argue that some forms of order within society emerge spontaneously from the actions of many different individuals acting independently from one another without any central planning . Proposed examples of systems that evolved through spontaneous order or self-organization include the evolution of life on Earth , language , crystal structure ,

2376-454: Is consistent with a novel dataset on the rules on the acquisition of ownership through adverse possession and on the use of government takings to transfer real property from a private party to another private party prevailing in 126 jurisdictions. These data measure "horizontal property rights" and thus the extent of protection of property from "direct and indirect private takings", which are ubiquitous forms of expropriation that occur daily within

2475-434: Is diminished by being automatically enrolled in the plan, when they merely have to check a box to opt out." Nudge is considered an important piece of literature in behavioral economics . Neo-libertarianism combines "the libertarian's moral commitment to negative liberty with a procedure that selects principles for restricting liberty on the basis of a unanimous agreement in which everyone's particular interests receive

2574-433: Is divided over the use of conservatism as an alternative. Those who seek both economic and social liberty would be known as liberals , but that term developed associations opposite of the limited government , low-taxation, minimal state advocated by the movement. Name variants of the free-market revival movement include classical liberalism , economic liberalism , free-market liberalism and neoliberalism . As

2673-403: Is harder to exploit a good protected by enforced property rights. For example, a song can be easily pirated from purchased copies and, with no punishment, this form of the free-rider problem likely occurs. This causes the price mechanism to be less effective at finding the true market equilibrium and hurts the owners of the good who did not get it through opportunism. Another benefit is that

2772-611: Is in terms of the logical implications of these founding axioms". Although several modern American libertarians reject the political spectrum , especially the left–right political spectrum , several strands of libertarianism in the United States and right-libertarianism have been described as being right-wing, New Right or radical right and reactionary . While some American libertarians such as Walter Block , Harry Browne , Tibor Machan , Justin Raimondo , Leonard Read and Murray Rothbard deny any association with either

2871-554: Is now the most popular conception of libertarianism. Commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism , the most important of these early philosophers and economists was Robert Nozick . While left-libertarians advocate for social freedom, right-libertarians also value social institutions that support capitalist conditions. They reject institutions that oppose this framework, arguing that such interventions unnecessarily coerce individuals and violate their economic freedom. Anarcho-capitalists seek

2970-436: Is possible to internalize all environmental benefits, that owners will have perfect information, that scale economies are manageable, transaction costs are bearable, and that legal frameworks operate efficiently. John Locke , Adam Smith , and Karl Marx are classical economists that generally recognize the importance of property rights in the process of economic development, and modern mainstream economics agree with such

3069-651: Is that well-enforced property rights provide incentives for individuals to participate in economic activities, such as investment, innovation and trade, which lead to a more efficient market. Implicit or explicit property rights can be created through government regulation in the market, either through prescriptive command and control approaches (e.g. limits on input/output/discharge quantities, specified processes/equipment, audits) or by market-based instruments (e.g. taxes, transferable permits or quotas), and more recently through cooperative, self-regulatory, post-regulatory and reflexive law approaches. In economics, depending on

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3168-583: Is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." According to American historian Bernard Bailyn , during and after the American Revolution , "the major themes of eighteenth-century libertarianism were brought to realization" in constitutions , bills of rights , and limits on legislative and executive powers, including limits on starting wars. According to Murray Rothbard , the libertarian creed emerged from

3267-528: Is the common meaning of the word libertarianism in the U.S. This form is often named liberalism elsewhere such as in Europe, where liberalism has a different common meaning than in the United States. In some academic circles, this form is called right-libertarianism as a complement to left-libertarianism , with acceptance of capitalism or the private ownership of land as being the distinguishing feature. Elements of libertarianism can be traced back to

3366-464: Is to protect personal and property rights; that people may dissolve governments that do not do so; and that representative government is the best form to protect rights. The United States Declaration of Independence was inspired by Locke in its statement: "[T]o secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it

3465-413: Is true that the word "liberal" once described persons who respected the individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify themselves and their program of more government ownership of property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in

3564-480: Is used and owned , which have developed over ancient and modern history, from Abrahamic law to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . Resources can be owned by (and hence be the property of) individuals, associations, collectives , or governments. Property rights can be viewed as an attribute of an economic good. This attribute has three broad components, and is often referred to as

3663-458: The 2021 Chilean presidential election with the Apruebo Dignidad coalition. In November 2023, economist and television commentator Javier Milei was elected as the world's first self-identified anarcho-capitalist head of state after winning an upset landslide in that year's general election as the leader of the libertarian La Libertad Avanza coalition. The first recorded use of

3762-739: The Bolsheviks in both the February and October 1917 revolutions. However, Bolsheviks in central Russia quickly began to imprison or drive underground the libertarian anarchists. Many fled to Ukraine. After the anarchist Makhnovshchina helped stave off the White movement during the Russian Civil War , the Bolsheviks turned on the Makkhnovists and contributed to the schism between the anarcho-syndicalists and

3861-743: The Cato Institute 's David Boaz includes passages from the Tao Te Ching in his 1997 book The Libertarian Reader and noted in an article for the Encyclopædia Britannica that Laozi advocated for rulers to "do nothing" because "without law or compulsion, men would dwell in harmony". Libertarianism was influenced by debates within Scholasticism regarding private property and slavery . Scholastic thinkers, including Thomas Aquinas , Francisco de Vitoria , and Bartolomé de Las Casas , argued for

3960-450: The Internet , Misplaced Pages , workers' councils , Horizontalidad , and a free market economy . What some academics call right-libertarianism is more often simply called "libertarianism" by its adherents. Based on the works of European writers like John Locke , Frederic Bastiat , Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises , it developed in the United States in the mid-20th century, and

4059-500: The Libertarian Party , of the United States, libertarianism is the advocacy of either anarchy, or government that is funded voluntarily and limited to protecting individuals from coercion and violence. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), "What it means to be a 'libertarian' in a political sense is a contentious issue, especially among libertarians themselves." Nevertheless, all libertarians begin with

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4158-543: The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Gruppo Comunista Anarchico di Firenze held that during the early twentieth century, the terms libertarian communism and anarchist communism became synonymous within the international anarchist movement as a result of the close connection they had in Spain ( anarchism in Spain ), with libertarian communism becoming the prevalent term. Libertarian socialism reached its apex of popularity with

4257-517: The Spanish Revolution of 1936 , during which libertarian socialists led "the largest and most successful revolution against capitalism to ever take place in any industrial economy". During the revolution, the means of production were brought under workers' control and worker cooperatives formed the basis for the new economy. According to Gaston Leval , the CNT established an agrarian federation in

4356-614: The Steiner–Vallentyne school . Some variants of libertarianism, such as anarcho-capitalism, have been labeled as far-right or radical right by some scholars. Those sometimes called "right-libertarians", usually by leftists or by other libertarians with more left-leaning ideologies, often reject the label due to its association with conservatism and right-wing politics and simply describe themselves as libertarians . However, some, particularly those who describe themselves as paleo-libertarians , agree with their placement on

4455-612: The means of production , or else to restrict their purview or effects to usufruct property norms, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management , viewing private property in the means of production as a barrier to freedom and liberty. In the mid-20th century, American proponents of anarcho-capitalism and minarchism began using the term libertarian . Minarchists advocate for night-watchman states which maintain only those functions of government necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood in terms of self-ownership or autonomy, while anarcho-capitalists advocate for

4554-447: The moral hazard is less likely to influence the actions of consumers, meaning they will be less likely to exploit resources unsustainably or inefficiently as property is protected. This will lead to a lower group cost overall as people will not be able to exploit these resources as easily, causing less inefficiency issues. For example, if a person's car doesn't have property rights, people will be more likely to mistreat it or steal it for

4653-407: The theory of the firm based on the paradigm of incomplete contracts . These authors argue that in the real world, contracts are incomplete and hence it is impossible to contractually specify what decisions will have to be taken in any conceivable state of the world. There will be renegotiations in the future, so parties have insufficient investment incentives (since they will only get a fraction of

4752-509: The " sectarian " libertarian socialists for the defeat of the Republic in the Spanish Civil War . These charges have been disputed by contemporary libertarian socialists, such as Robin Hahnel and Noam Chomsky, who have accused such claims of lacking substantial evidence. Property rights (economics) Property rights are constructs in economics for determining how a resource or economic good

4851-576: The 18th century and Age of Enlightenment , liberal ideas flourished in Europe and North America. Libertarians of various schools were influenced by liberal ideas. For philosopher Roderick T. Long, libertarians "share a common—or at least an overlapping—intellectual ancestry. [Libertarians] [...] claim the seventeenth century English Levellers and the eighteenth century French Encyclopedists among their ideological forebears; and [...] usually share an admiration for Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine ." John Locke greatly influenced both libertarianism and

4950-405: The 19th century and to a liberal version that developed in the United States that is avowedly pro- capitalist . According to polls, approximately one in four Americans self-identify as libertarian . While most members of this group are not necessarily ideologically driven, the term libertarian is commonly used to describe the form of libertarianism widely practiced in the United States and

5049-627: The Communists. With the rise of fascism in Europe between the 1920s and the 1930s, anarchists began to fight fascists in Italy, in France during the February 1934 riots and in Spain where the CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) boycott of elections led to a right-wing victory and its later participation in voting in 1936 helped bring the popular front back to power. This led to a ruling class attempted coup and

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5148-574: The Levante that encompassed 78% of Spain's most arable land . The regional federation was populated by 1,650,000 people, 40% of whom lived on the region's 900 agrarian collectives, which were self-organised by peasant unions. Although industrial and agricultural production was at its highest in the anarchist-controlled areas of the Spanish Republic, and the anarchist militias displayed the strongest military discipline, liberals and communists alike blamed

5247-580: The Levellers, who held similar views. Also influential were the English Cato's Letters during the early 1700s, reprinted eagerly by American colonists who already were free of European aristocracy and feudal land monopolies. In January 1776, only two years after coming to America from England, Thomas Paine published his pamphlet Common Sense calling for independence for the colonies. Paine promoted liberal ideas in clear and concise language that allowed

5346-403: The United States , and increasingly worldwide, libertarian is a typology used to describe a political position that advocates small government and is culturally liberal and fiscally conservative in a two-dimensional political spectrum such as the libertarian-inspired Nolan Chart , where the other major typologies are conservative , liberal and populist . Libertarians support

5445-509: The United States, the term libertarian was popularized by the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker around the late 1870s and early 1880s. Libertarianism as a synonym for liberalism was popularized in May 1955 by writer Dean Russell, a colleague of Leonard Read and a classical liberal himself. Russell justified the choice of the term as follows: Many of us call ourselves "liberals." And it

5544-421: The amount of labour it takes to produce a good does not provide its value but instead the labour the good commands or the value of goods people will be willing to trade for the good. He felt the division of labour to produce products for others was better for the whole of society. This was later critiqued by Marx. Sanford Grossman, Oliver Hart , and John Hardman Moore developed the property rights approach to

5643-458: The appropriation of land must leave " enough and as good " for others or be taxed by society to compensate for the exclusionary effects of private property. Socialist libertarians such as social and individualist anarchists , libertarian Marxists , council communists , Luxemburgists and De Leonists promote usufruct and socialist economic theories, including communism , collectivism , syndicalism and mutualism . They criticize

5742-479: The associations they joined as this would facilitate happiness. Anarchist communist philosopher Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as a libertarian in an 1857 letter. Unlike mutualist anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , he argued that "it is not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature". According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau ,

5841-419: The book Thinking, Fast and Slow , Daniel Kahneman provides the brief summary: "Thaler and Sunstein advocate a position of libertarian paternalism, in which the state and other institutions are allowed to nudge people to make decisions that serve their own long-term interests. The designation of joining a pension plan as the default option is an example of a nudge. It is difficult to argue that anyone's freedom

5940-407: The communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over". In the 1970s, Robert Nozick was responsible for popularizing this usage of the term in academic and philosophical circles outside the United States, especially with the publication of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), a response to social liberal John Rawls 's A Theory of Justice (1971). In the book, Nozick proposed

6039-567: The concept of "self-mastery" as the foundation of a system supporting individual rights. Early Christian sects such as the Waldensians displayed libertarian attitudes. In 17th-century England, libertarian ideas began to take modern form in the writings of the Levellers and John Locke . In the middle of that century, opponents of royal power began to be called Whigs , or sometimes simply Opposition or Country, as opposed to Court writers. During

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6138-975: The early 20th century after the Great Depression and with the New Deal . Since the 1970s, this classical liberal form of libertarianism has spread beyond the United States, with libertarian or right-libertarian parties being established in the United Kingdom , Israel , South Africa , Argentina , and many other countries. After the fall of the Soviet Union , which caused many people to give up on Marxism or state socialism , libertarian socialism also grew in popularity and influence, alongside left-wing anti-war , anti-capitalist and anti- and alter-globalisation movements. In 2022, former student activist and self-described libertarian socialist Gabriel Boric became head of state of Chile after winning

6237-479: The economy. According to Sheldon Richman of the Independent Institute , other left-libertarians "prefer that corporate privileges be repealed before the regulatory restrictions on how those privileges may be exercised". Libertarian paternalism is a position advocated in the international bestseller Nudge by two American scholars, namely the economist Richard Thaler and the jurist Cass Sunstein . In

6336-653: The elimination of the state in favor of privately funded security services while minarchists defend night-watchman states which maintain only those functions of government necessary to safeguard natural rights, understood in terms of self-ownership or autonomy. Left-libertarianism encompasses those libertarian beliefs that claim the Earth's natural resources belong to everyone in an egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Contemporary left-libertarians such as Hillel Steiner , Peter Vallentyne , Philippe Van Parijs , Michael Otsuka and David Ellerman believe

6435-525: The first use of the term libertarian communism was in November 1880, when a French anarchist congress employed it to identify its doctrines more clearly. The French anarchist journalist Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper Le Libertaire ( The Libertarian ) in 1895. The revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 saw the active participation of anarchists in Russia and Europe. Russian anarchists participated alongside

6534-418: The future. He asserts transaction costs are ideally zero because they cause inefficiencies; due to those who would be allocatively efficient with the ownership being unable to afford or receiving less private benefit than they gain from it, as the transaction costs on top of the cost of purchasing and maintaining the property. This is known as Coase theorem . Critics of this view argue that this assumes that it

6633-557: The general public to understand the debates among the political elites. Common Sense was immensely popular in disseminating these ideas, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Paine would later write the Rights of Man and The Age of Reason and participate in the French Revolution . Paine's theory of property showed a "libertarian concern" with the unequal distribution of resources under statism. In 1793, William Godwin wrote

6732-763: The group. In February 1975, an article appeared in Esquire magazine claiming that plans for an insurrection in Abaco were underway. Mitchell WerBell , an American arms-dealer and mercenary, claimed that Abaco would declare unilateral independence. It was claimed that WerBell was managing and financing AIM and had been recruiting mercenaries to go to Abaco. Although no arrests or charges relating to an insurrection were made, AIM's involvement with WerBell (which included visits to his Georgia estate) greatly discredited AIM. In March 1975, AIM changed its name. The new Abaco Home Rule Movement denied any military objectives and published

6831-609: The higher-law concepts of the Greeks and the Israelites , and Christian theologians who argued for the moral worth of the individual and the division of the world into two realms, one of which is the province of God and thus beyond the power of states to control it. The right-libertarian economist Murray Rothbard suggested that Chinese Taoist philosopher Laozi was the first libertarian, likening Laozi's ideas on government to Friedrich Hayek 's theory of spontaneous order . Similarly,

6930-406: The investment's return in future negotiations); i.e., there is a hold-up problem . Hence, they argue property rights matter because they determine who has control over future decisions if no agreement will be reached. In other words, property rights determine the parties' future bargaining positions (while their bargaining powers, i.e. their fractions of the renegotiation surplus, are independent of

7029-631: The left or right, other American libertarians such as Kevin Carson , Karl Hess , and Roderick T. Long have written about libertarianism's left-wing opposition to authoritarian rule and argued that libertarianism is fundamentally a left-wing position. Rothbard himself previously made the same point. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines libertarianism as the moral view that agents initially fully own themselves and have certain moral powers to acquire property rights in external things. Libertarian historian George Woodcock defines libertarianism as

7128-450: The legal and political systems that protect elites' claims on rent revenues form the basis of the so-called "limited access order", in which non-elites are denied access to political power and economic privileges. In a historical study of medieval England, for instance, North and Thomas find that the dramatic development of English land laws in the 13th century resulted from elites' interests in exploiting rent revenues from land ownership after

7227-480: The legalization of victimless crimes such as the use of marijuana while opposing high levels of taxation and government spending on health, welfare, and education. Libertarians also support a foreign policy of non-interventionism . Libertarian was adopted in the United States, where liberal had become associated with a version that supports extensive government spending on social policies. Libertarian may also refer to an anarchist ideology that developed in

7326-459: The level of transaction costs , various forms of property rights institutions will develop. In economics, an institution is defined thusly: a complex of positions, roles, norms and values lodged in particular types of social structures and organising relatively stable patterns of human activity with respect to fundamental problems in producing life-sustaining resources, in reproducing individuals, and in sustaining viable societal structures within

7425-513: The liberal challenges to an "absolute central State and a king ruling by divine right on top of an older, restrictive web of feudal land monopolies and urban guild controls and restrictions" as well as the mercantilism of a bureaucratic warfaring state allied with privileged merchants. The object of liberals was individual liberty in the economy, in personal freedoms and civil liberty, separation of state and religion and peace as an alternative to imperial aggrandizement. He cites Locke's contemporaries,

7524-399: The libertarian magazine Reason , libertarian populists oppose "big government" while also opposing "other large, centralized institutions" and advocate "tak[ing] an axe to the thicket of corporate subsidies, favors, and bailouts, clearing our way to an economy where businesses that can't make money serving customers don't have the option of wringing profits from the taxpayers instead". In

7623-489: The mid-19th century, libertarianism originated as a form of anti-authoritarian and anti-state politics usually seen as being on the left (like socialists and anarchists especially social anarchists , but more generally libertarian communists / Marxists and libertarian socialists ). Along with seeking to abolish or reduce the power of the State, these libertarians sought to abolish capitalism and private ownership of

7722-565: The moderate left such as social democracy or authoritarian and statist socialism, its meaning has evolved during the past half century, with broader adoption by ideologically disparate groups, including some viewed as right-wing by older users of the term. As a term, libertarian can include both the New Left Marxists (who do not associate with a vanguard party ) and extreme liberals (primarily concerned with civil liberties ) or civil libertarians . Additionally, some libertarians use

7821-461: The modern world in his writings published before and after the English Revolution of 1688 , especially A Letter Concerning Toleration (1667), Two Treatises of Government (1689) and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). In the text of 1689, he established the basis of liberal political theory, i.e. that people's rights existed before government; that the purpose of government

7920-399: The nature of property and capital . In the United States, proponents of free-market anti-capitalism consciously label themselves as left-libertarians and see themselves as being part of a broad libertarian left. Libertarianism is a "[t]heory upholding...[individual] rights...above all else" and seeks to "reduce" the power of a state or states, especially ones a libertarian lives in or

8019-537: The nature of property and capital, usually along left–right or socialist–capitalist lines. While all libertarians support some level of individual rights , left-libertarians differ by supporting an egalitarian redistribution of natural resources. Left-libertarian ideologies include anarchist schools of thought , alongside many other anti- paternalist and New Left schools of thought centered around economic egalitarianism as well as geolibertarianism , green politics , market-oriented left-libertarianism and

8118-532: The older libertarian ideal of a night watchman state or minarchism. Sterba held that it is "obviously impossible for everyone in society to be guaranteed complete liberty as defined by this ideal: after all, people's actual wants as well as their conceivable wants can come into serious conflict. [...] [I]t is also impossible for everyone in society to be completely free from the interference of other persons." In 2013, Sterba wrote, "I shall show that moral commitment to an ideal of 'negative' liberty, which does not lead to

8217-417: The original owners of economic value to inefficiently expropriate them distorting in this way their investment and effort exertion decisions. When instead, the state is entrusted the power to protect property, it might directly expropriate private parties if not sufficiently constrained by an efficient political process. The necessity of strong protection of property for efficiency has been however criticized by

8316-594: The original owners will be unable to legally acquire value because of sizable transaction costs. When the protection of property is weak instead, low-valuation potential buyers inefficiently expropriate original owners. Hence, a rise in the heterogeneity of the potential buyers' valuations makes inefficient expropriation by low-valuation potential buyers be more important from a social welfare point of view than inefficient exclusion from trade and so induces stronger property rights. Crucially, this prediction survives even after considering production and investment activities and it

8415-433: The philosophy that fundamentally doubts authority and advocates transforming society by reform or revolution. Libertarian philosopher Roderick T. Long defines libertarianism as "any political position that advocates a radical redistribution of power from the coercive state to voluntary associations of free individuals", whether "voluntary association" takes the form of the free market or of communal co-operatives. According to

8514-400: The political right. Meanwhile, some proponents of free-market anti-capitalism in the United States consciously label themselves as left-libertarians and see themselves as part of a broad libertarian left. While the term libertarian had been substantially synonymous with anarchism and seen by many as part of the left, continuing today as part of the libertarian left in opposition to

8613-450: The property rights allocation). The property rights approach to the theory of the firm can thus explain pros and cons of integration in the context of private firms. Yet, it has also been applied in various other frameworks such as public good provision and privatization. The property rights approach has been extended in many directions. For instance, some authors have studied different bargaining solutions, while other authors have studied

8712-587: The protection of an individual's freedom from powers of government and private ownership. In contrast, while condemning governmental encroachment on personal liberties, modern American libertarians support freedoms based on their agreement with private property rights. The abolition or privatization of amenities or entitlements controlled by the government is a common theme in modern American libertarian writings. According to modern American libertarian Walter Block , left-libertarians and right-libertarians agree with certain libertarian premises, but "where [they] differ

8811-516: The replacement of all state institutions with private alternatives. During this time period, the term "libertarian" became used by growing numbers of people to advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights such as in land, infrastructure and natural resources. This libertarianism, a revival of classical liberalism in the United States , occurred due to other American liberals abandoning classical liberalism and embracing progressivism and economic interventionism in

8910-612: The right to live as they choose, so long as it does not involve violating the rights of others by initiating force or fraud against them. Libertarians advocate for the expansion of individual autonomy and political self-determination , emphasizing the principles of equality before the law and the protection of civil rights , including the rights to freedom of association , freedom of speech , freedom of thought and freedom of choice . They generally support individual liberty and oppose authority , state power, warfare , militarism and nationalism , but some libertarians diverge on

9009-400: The role of asymmetric information. Three important criteria for efficiency of property rights are (1) universality—all scarce resources are owned by someone; (2) exclusivity—property rights are exclusive rights; (3) transferability—to ensure that resources can be allocated from low to high yield uses One benefit of implementing property rights is that opportunism is discouraged, as it

9108-478: The rule of law and are thus different from predation by the state and the elites, which is much less common but has been the focus of the economics literature. To capture preference diversity, the author uses the contemporary genetic diversity, which is a primitive metric of the genealogical distance between populations with a common ancestor and so of the differences in characteristics transmitted across generations, such as preferences. Regression analysis reveals that

9207-548: The scope of their opposition to existing economic and political systems . Schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and non-state power . Different categorizations have been used to distinguish these various forms of libertarianism. Scholars have identified distinct libertarian perspectives on the nature of property and capital , typically delineating them along left–right or socialist – capitalist axes. Libertarianism has been broadly shaped by liberal ideas. In

9306-404: The state for being the defender of private property and believe capitalism entails wage slavery and another form of coercion and domination related to that of the state. There are a number of different left-libertarian positions on the state, which can range from advocating for its complete abolition to advocating for a more decentralized and limited government with social ownership of

9405-475: The term libertarian socialist to avoid anarchism's negative connotations and emphasize its connections with socialism. The revival of free-market ideologies during the mid-to-late 20th century came with disagreement over what to call the movement. While many believers in economic freedom prefer the term libertarian , some free-market conservatives reject the term's association with the 1960s New Left and its connotations of libertine hedonism. The movement

9504-577: The term libertarian was in 1789, when William Belsham wrote about libertarianism in the context of metaphysics. As early as 1796, libertarian came to mean an advocate or defender of liberty, in the sense of a supporter of republicanism , when the London Packet printed on 12 February the following: "Lately marched out of the Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians". It was again used in

9603-631: The term for his anarchist publication Le Libertaire, Journal du mouvement social ( Libertarian: Journal of Social Movement ) which was printed from 9 June 1858 to 4 February 1861 in New York City. Sébastien Faure , another French libertarian communist, began publishing a new Le Libertaire in the mid-1890s while France's Third Republic enacted the so-called villainous laws ( lois scélérates ) which banned anarchist publications in France. Libertarianism has frequently been used to refer to anarchism and libertarian socialism since this time. In

9702-403: The uncorrupted classical sense. At best, this is awkward and subject to misunderstanding. Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word "libertarian." Subsequently, many Americans with classical liberal beliefs began to describe themselves as libertarians . One person who popularized the term libertarian in this sense

9801-404: Was Murray Rothbard , who began publishing libertarian works in the 1960s. Rothbard described this modern use of the words overtly as a "capture" from his enemies, writing that "for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of

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