38 quotes
Libertarians don’t want to do away with force, just ‘first-strike’ force. If neither of us strike first, no fight is possible. If you are behaving peacefully, and I assault, defraud, or steal from you, then defensive force is permissible in a libertarian society.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
[M]ost poverty in the world today is caused by aggression, not ignorance. The illusion that aggression-through-government benefits the poor at the expensive of the rich is just that, an illusion.
Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression (2003)
In a libertarian society, big business wouldn’t be so big, since they couldn’t destroy their competition through government regulation. Without government control of the airways, more radio and television stations would be available and could not be shut down on political whim.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
As long as we employ the guns of government to force our neighbors to our will, aggression will be the instrument by which we enslave ourselves. This is as true of global government as it is of our local and national ones.
Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle (1993)
Libertarians are the ultimate decentralists: libertarians want to take government from the nation, state, and community down to the level of the individual. The closer to this ideal that we come, the more libertarian our society should be.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
Libertarians believe that no one should be forced to support another. If a woman has chosen to gift a fetus with life, it does not necessarily follow that she is obligated to continue to support it with her body, especially if that support threatens the woman’s life. A woman’s body is her property, to do with as she wishes.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
Of course, in a libertarian society, laws discriminating against gay people would not exist. For instance, same-sex couples find themselves facing the same laws against intermarriage as blacks and whites once did. In a libertarian society, marriage would be a private contract between two willing individuals who could set the terms to suit themselves.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it's distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions (1998)
Because selfish owners want to profit as much as possible from their land, they have incentive to treat their property in a way that increases its value to others. The price that owners can get for the land depends on how other members of society value the care given to it
Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle (1993)
Aggression hides in our culture under many names. Taxation is only an example, but one of the most widespread and uneconomical. If this concept seems incredible to you, consider the shift in awareness that it implies. Are we like children, accepting five pennies for our dime?
Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression (2003)
Most non-Western governments make it difficult to get clear land titles. Approximately 60-80% of such property is ‘extralegal,’ making it difficult to borrow against or transfer. As a result, while the poor in these countries ‘hold’ a great deal of land, they cannot easily use its full potential.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
One way to eliminate the Federal Communications Commission would be to auction off all of the frequencies and allow them to be bought and sold like other property. Trespass by other stations would be handled just like trespass on land. Bandwidths useful for new applications could be ‘homesteaded’ just as land once was.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
How many innovative, potentially lifesaving drugs never make it to the marketplace because of the added costs in time and money imposed by the [Kefauver-Harris] Amendments? No one knows for sure, but the studies that have been done imply that we’ve lost about 80% of the innovations that we would have had in the absence of he Amendments.
Death by Regulation: How We Were Robbed of a Golden Age of Health and How We Can Reclaim It (2018)
A free-market is the only way to control corporations! As long as government has the power to regulate business, business will control government by funding the candidate that legislates in their favor. A free-market thwarts lobbying by taking the power that corporations seek away from government!
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
When courts found the military liable for illness and death after careless nuclear testing in Utah, the government claimed sovereign immunity and refused to pay damages. In a libertarian society, no one would be immune from the consequences of their actions, especially not a government charged with protecting us.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
Most economists believe that the Great Depression was primarily a result of the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the national currency. Had the government not interfered with the banking industry by giving the Fed a monopoly on money, the Depression might have never occurred. Too much government, not too little, was the culprit.
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to Answer the Questions Libertarians Are Often Asked (2012)
When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all.
Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression (2003)
We defer to authority figures because they are supposed to know more than we do. If a mistake is made, it's easy to lay the blame at their feet. Ultimately, however, we are responsible for choosing the authority figure we defer to. Choosing to defer to one who urges aggression against others still puts the responsibility on us.”
Healing Our World: In An Age of Aggression (2003)