When Libertarians Attack Free Software

binarybits writes 'I've got a new article analyzing the unfortunate tendency of libertarian and free-market organizations to attack free software. The latest example is a policy analyst at the Heartland Institute who attacks network neutrality regulations by arguing that advocates have 'unwittingly bought into' the 'radical agenda' of the free software movement. I argue that in reality, the free market and free software are entirely compatible, and libertarians are shooting themselves in the foot by antagonizing the free software movement.'

Comments

Explained by a Simple Formula

[eldavojohn]

I posit that one of the most prized products of Capitalism and the free market is to reduce the cost for the end consumer and raise the quality of the products and services. Now, the scientific formula for deciding the positive effectiveness of this is: (customer's percieved value)/(actual retail cost)

So you can see that as the actual retail cost approaches zero, the positive effects of capitalism approach infinity! Unfortunately when the actual cost is zero, it's undefined and your interpretation may vary.

Basically I suggest open source software people instruct these complaining parties to donate a penny or fraction of a penny to once again make them look like the epitome of our capitalistic system at work. Anyone else (who isn't stupid) may continue to use it for free and -- at least in the case of open source software -- enjoy unparalleled benefits like being able to modify and redistribute the source let alone view it. Problem solved.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually a pretty accurate post when considered from the point of view of capitalism's proponents. They bypass the moral discussion (with respect to individual freedom, personal autonomy, mutual voluntary association, etc) and go straight for the purely utilitarian side-effects (the efficiency of the market with respect to the quality of goods and prices). It seems as though they have conceded the battle where it should have been won, and so whenever perceived downsides to the free market arise (i.e. places where the free markets do not produce a good that collectively is felt as "necessary"), it becomes merely a matter of utilitarian convenience to abandon those principles for a more collectivist approach.

Another effect is that things like free software, communes, etc. are often considered socialistic or communistic in nature when they exist only as a result of mutual voluntary consent, the epitome of free market capitalism.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Mr. Slippery]

I posit that one of the most prized products of Capitalism and the free market is to reduce the cost for the end consumer and raise the quality of the products and services.

Do not confuse capitalism with the free market.

The "most prized product" -- the goal -- of capitalism is greater wealth for the aristocrats who control the capital.

The free market doesn't have a goal; the whole idea is that it's a decentralized system of actors each pursuing their own goals. Under certain circumstances -- when buyers and sellers meet with equal power, full knowledge, and no externalization of costs -- it can produce reduced costs and better goods and services for the consumer.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Red Flayer]

Now, the scientific formula for deciding the positive effectiveness of this is: (customer's percieved value)/(actual retail cost)

Your formula is missing a term.

The formula should be: [(customer's actual value received) + (customer's bad information value)] / [(price paid by customer) + (other transaction costs)]

For the numerator addition: I could value something at $1000, but if it only really benefits me $500, that's important in terms of systemic effects. This is where marketing, branding, incomplete information, TCO, FUD, etc all come into play.

For the denominator, this is the one that helps your point. The other transaction costs prevent your ratio from ever being undefined, so you can go ahead and remove that clause from your analysis.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[abigor]

Adam Smith was a proponent of a regulated free market, precisely the opposite of what you stated.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[vertinox]

Do not confuse capitalism with the free market.

I concur. After all Thomas Jefferson wrote many scathing letters against corporations and even proposed that laws be used to limit them.

After all... Corporations like the British East India Company were the ones that caused the revolutionaries to rise up in the first place.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[sarhjinian]

Do not confuse capitalism with the free market.

You cannot have a free market once economic power starts to accumulate, as it will in the absence of regulation; nor you have a free market with regulation.

The "free market", thusly, cannot really exist, except for a very brief period at the beginning before clout accumulates and capitalism takes hold. It's a philosophical fiction; a Utopia by definition. Marxism is more realistic.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[mdarksbane]

Yes, one can't place any of the blame for our current society, where one of the biggest problems facing the lower class is an overabundance of cheap food, complex electrical equipment made from components brought from all corners of the earth is available for a few minute's work, and loudmouths who are not of the aristocracy have enough economic stability to sit on their butts and debate these things, on capitalism and free markets at all. Surely all of these innovations occur daily in those socialist utopias the world has produced year in and year out.

Corporations may exist for profit, but their ability to extract profit from the underclass is the only reason that technology is available to you and me, and not just some hobbyhorse for the rich.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Abreu]

However, please remember that a completely unfettered free market tends irremediably to end up in an oligarchy

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[That's Unpossible!]

Funny how most of the time, an unregulated market increases the cost of items taht should be dirt-cheap, until they're an unaffordable luxury to most people.

This is demonstrably ludicrous. A free market necessarily pushes the prices of abundant items lower and lower through competition. One example, check the price of hard drive storage now. Compare it through the years.

And how the quality of the products and services doesn't matter, so long as you can dupe or force people into buying it.

Well, it's a free market. If you're stupid enough to be duped, yeah that'll happen. It also provides you the opportunity for a smart shopper to get a great value.

In fact, non-free software (e.g., Windows and other Microsoft wares) is a great example of this. Is Office 7 worth $400? Nope, but because it's a free market, the price gets inflated to this point.

Just because YOU don't value an office suite at this price doesn't mean the price is inflated. People are buying it at this price at a level Microsoft is comfortable with. You also have the choice of several free office suites, and a cheaper office suite from Apple. So why do you care that office is expensive? Is it because you find that it really is better than the other office suites I mentioned? If so, perhaps this is why it's cost is higher?

If people stopped buying it at that price, Microsoft would lower the price.

Is Vista a good product? Nope, but because the industry is regulated only by those in control of it (i.e. Microsoft) hundreds of thousands of people were essentially forced to buy it anyway.

Forced to buy it? Ha. I bought Snow Leopard for $29. Many people bought Linux for $0.

Remember, the "free market" is not free. It is manipulated like a puppet by those who hold the reins, those who do not care about your wellbeing or options in life.

Ahh, really. So I must be mistaken when I see Google in control of search on the internet, having only been around a decade or so. They came out of nowhere with great technology, and through capitalism, were able to best giants at the time like Microsoft, Yahoo, AltaVista, et. al.

Apple was started out of a garage. HP was started out of a garage. YOU can start your own company today, and build it up to greatness, if you can execute well and have something people want. That is the power of capitalism.

Grow up.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[kwiqsilver]

True libertarians do not believe in Adam Smith's philosophy. At most it's a baby step in the right direction.

We follow the philosophy of people like von Mises or Murray Rothbard: every individual has a right to his life, liberty, and everything derived from it (e.g. his income and property) and as long as he does not interfere with the rights of others, he should be free to act in his own self interest.

The modern corporate state is anathema to this view. We are Jeffersonians, and the ruling elite (of both major parties--which most libertarians don't consider to be any different) are Hamiltonians. We have these mega-corps, because the politicians and bureaucrats are in the pockets of big business, and no matter how campaign financing gets reformed, they always will be, as long as they have the power to write and enforce laws. The regulations in place to "protect the consumers" are designed by the big companies to eliminate the competition. Why does Wal-Mart want to increase minimum wage? Because they believe in a glorious society where everyone is wealthy? Or because they can afford it, while the mom-n-pops that they haven't yet killed off, who are barely scraping by, can't afford it?

Big, bloated, inefficient government leads to big, bloated, inefficient corps, with no real innovation or market competition.

I don't know a single true libertarian who has any issue with open source; ESR is well known as a libertarian. Many of us do have issues with RMS and his line of thinking. In addition to being an admitted socialist, he has implied, if not outright stated, that he would like to use force to make all software free as in speech. Libertarianism says that the owners of software should decide how to release it, and the market (i.e. we, the customers) should decide with our dollars whether to support them or not.

Libertarians oppose "net neutrality" because there's nothing neutral about it. It's some group forcing what it thinks is right onto others. If Commcast wants to start charging you more every time you request a page from Google, let them. Do you think people will be more loyal to Commcast and stop using Google, or more loyal to Google and ditch Commcast? If you live someplace where you're stuck with a single cable company or phone company due to a government granted monopoly (more regulation screwing the customers for the benefit of a corp) or a very rural residence, then you might get screwed. But as technology advances (and regulations disappear), we'll have dozens of choices for net access, and the marketplace will act to reduce prices, as it does in all other fields.

The other, and more insidious, downside to "net neutrality" is where it will lead. Governments never shrink willingly, they only grow. The income tax, which was never supposed to exceed 1% or affect anyone other than a few hundred super-rich, now takes a third of the average American's earnings. Interstate commerce, which at one point meant goods shipped across state lines for sale in another state, now includes customers at a restaurant (they could be from out of state, after all), ducks (the do migrate across state lines), and even marijuana grown in California and sold in California to residents of California (the sale of local grown goods reduces the need for imports, affecting interstate commerce). Does anyone honestly expect the Feds not to follow up net neutrality with a powergrab for more? Federal online sales tax anyone? Federal licensing for "broadcasting" a website or blog? Federal control of what you can say on a blog about politics? Federal regulations on encryption, requiring a backdoor, so they can monitor everything? And how about, complete government control over the entire internet? It is an "essential service" like roads, or health care, much too important to be left to the whim of the free market. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

Most so called libertarian think tanks, like Cato, have been corrupted by the corporatists (i.e. Republi-crats) and shill for big business. Even the Libertarian Party (capital-L is the party, lowercase-l is the philosophy) has started to turn into a beltway insider group.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Toonol]

Marxism is more realistic.

Despite evidence?

The free market is a simple consequence of individual freedom. Just as free speech is good and right, but there may need to be some regulation on edge cases, the free market is good and right, with regulation needed only on extremes. In both cases, the less regulation the better. Capitalism generally leads to a better standard of living than other economic system, but that's not why I support it; I support it because it's the only ethical economic system. The only economic system based on freedom and personal choice.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[gbarules2999]

Groucho Marx is a fine man; Slashdot should leave him alone.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[betterunixthanunix]

Irrelevant. In a truly free market -- one that is free of regulation -- there will eventually a single winner for every segment of the market, and that winner will follow its best interests and prevent anyone from ever becoming a serious competitor. That is why the government must occasionally break up monopolies -- effectively resetting the market so that competition can continue.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[sarhjinian]

The only economic system based on freedom and personal choice.

It's not based on freedom and personal choice, it's based on a lack of restrictions. Similar concepts, but there's an important semantic difference: the first implies regulation to make sure that choice and freedom an ensured(and is thusly self-compromising); the second just crosses it's metaphorical fingers and hopes that things stay unrestricted. They don't and can't, of course.

"Good and right" or "ethical" has nothing to do with it, especially since "good and right" are highly subjective terms and certainly when dealing with government or the lack thereof. What's good and right and ethical to you can very easily seem selfish and uncaring and highly unethical to someone else because they're suffering for the lack of regulation. A lack of restrictions on you can, and does, incur restrictions upon others. That's not very ethical (by your definition), is it?

What you're advocating, more or less, is a degree of socialism, except that you don't want to call it that. There must be some kind of regulation to ensure a functioning social contract, otherwise ad-hoc regulation happens as soon as power starts to accumulate, and those ad-hoc structures can very easily be bad and wrong and unethical.

The original point though, is that an unregulated, completely free market has a lifespan that makes mayflies look like Methusela. It can't exist because the accumulation of power, which happens no matter what, negates it's existence. Marxism, at least, doesn't completely self-contradict itself, despite being almost as ignorant of the reality of human society.

Calling it "good and right" or "ethical" is disingenuous.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[amoeba1911]

Can you imagine what would happen if other markets went the way of OSS and FSF ideals? You'd get a few finished products and a lot of half-baked, half-finished products. You'll have to supply your own containers when shopping for soup at the market, and provide your botulism test because the kitchen hadn't gotten around to it yet. You go to buy a car, but someone decided to break with convention and try a new brake design. He's delivered the car in a .5 Alpha and makes a small note that the brake fluid/master cylinder/wheel interface isn't ready yet.

Yeah... I'm so glad everything in today's world is all finished products. The version of Windows is final, never needs patches or fixes. Since everything is so nicely tested cars never have recalls for things like spontaneous fires or fuel leaking. I am so glad when you go shopping you can be 100% confident that the meat you just bought has no harmful gut bacteria since the slaughterhouse would surely not chop open the intestines of the animal while butchering it. The industry does such a good of regulating itself behind closed doors that if we saw how well they operate internally we couldn't possibly find a single way of improving it, because the system that a dozen infallible geniuses think up is a billion times better than what you and I and a billion other people could ever devise.

</sarcasm>

Wake up! THE MAN is as fallible as anybody else. Just because it's open doesn't mean it's unfinished or half-baked.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Mprx]

Sharing of both Free and proprietary software is already restricted by force (copyright law). RMS approves of this use of force only for the purposes of preserving the four freedoms of Free software. The true libertarian solution would be to abolish copyright altogether.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[bennomatic]

Despite evidence?

What evidence? Despite many claims by governments over the last century that they are based on Marxist tenets, that they are socialist, that they are the people's democracies, they have typically, in fact been dictatorships or oligarchies.

Unfortunately, as lofty as Marx's own goals might have been, the people who have walked the path that he paved--or who claim to have tried to walk that path--typically get distracted by their own greed and power, and end up no better than the robber barons who run much of industry in the capitalist world.

Looking back, I realize that you weren't claiming that Marxism wouldn't be better, but rather challenging the assertion that it is more realistic. Maybe I've just added fuel to that argument.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[t0y]

(sigh)
And when all the ISPs "independently" decide to start charging every time you access google? Will you move to another country?
I'm in a similar situation: my ISP has defined some policies that I don't agree with but all the available "alternatives" do exactly the same thing!
What would a libertarian do?

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[ultranova]

Name one case where this happened without the assistance of the government. And by the "assistance" of the government I mean subsidies (railroads, ISPs), physical force (historical: using the government to put down unions), copyrights (RIAA), patents (Intel/AMD) and monopolies directly created by government policies (cell phone companies -- because of how the wireless spectrum is sold).

Since "free market" cannot exist without a government to enforce property rights, or to simply keep the population density required to have an economy specialized enough to qualify as a market without people killing each other, any and all market failures have government involvment, as do market successes.

And don't take this to mean that some of these might be useful, some of them might be. My point is just that the monopoly-creating tendency isn't the free market.

Actually, it is. The more money you have, the easier it is to make more, since you can expand your business, hire more people, open side stores, etc. This means that free market - indeed, any unregulated economy - is inherently unstable, since success breeds success and any small initial differences are magnified exponentially as time passes. This is true of markets of any scale, up to and including the whole world.

Think about it: why do large companies get more subsidies than small ones? Because they can afford to give more bribes than smaller ones. They have more money, thus wield more power, and consequently can use that power to get more. It's exactly like landed aristocracy, by the virtue of owning land and thus being able to afford a private army, could then use that army to tax the people working that land and get an even bigger army.

It's not the government that's the problem, but rather any large concentration of power. Once a company or a private individual has that, it can bribe the government to bust an union, or it can hire thugs of its own to do it. Either way, it's anyone having that kind of power that's the source of hte problem.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[coaxial]

In a free market you'd simply have a cartel freeze out the new would-be competitors through anti-competitive actions, including pressuring common suppliers to not sell to the competitor. That's why we have regulation. It corrects problems in the market.

If you want to know what an unregulated free market looks like, you just have to look at the 19th century America, or modern China. (Spoiler Alert! It sucks for everyone except for the hyperwealthy.)

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[node 3]

The problem is capitalism encourages the "sheer profit only (and screw everything else)" mindset, and discourages any actual caring about the effects of their actions on others, sometimes even outright *punishing* people who do the right thing.

You're right that there are good capitalists (good people who are capitalists, not people who are good at being capitalists) out there. But they can only be good capitalists by being bad capitalists (by *not* being good at being a capitalist). They have to give up some potential profit for the benefit of others.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[commodore64_love]

Net neutrality is needed because Comcast/Verizon/et al operate monopolies, and take away choice.

The solution is to remove the perversion of the market - revoke the exclusive licenses that state/local governments granted to Comcast/Verizon/et al. Restore the free/liberated market so people have power to choose.

BTW, per usual, the Slashdot summary is poor. If you read the frakking article it says clear as day,

The free software movement is textbook example of the libertarian thesis: its a private, voluntary community producing public goods without a dime of taxpayer support. Some leaders of the free software movement dont realize theyre walking libertarian case studies, and some have an unfortunate tendency to employ left-wing rhetoric to describe what theyre doing. But if you look at the substance of their views, and even more if you look at their actions, its hard to find anything for libertarians to object to. ..... The libertarian quarrel with socialism isnt with their egalitarianism, but with their willingness to impose that egalitarianism by force of law. Libertarians argue that free markets and robust civil society are good for the poor precisely because they are bottom-up, participatory structures that give every individual the opportunity to make the most of their own lives.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[commodore64_love]

>>>Libertarians oppose "net neutrality" because there's nothing neutral about it. It's some group forcing what it thinks is right onto others. If Commcast wants to start charging you more every time you request a page from Google, let them.
>>>

I would support this view *if and only if* Comcast's government-granted exclusive license (monopoly) was revoked, and a free/liberated market restored. Until that happens Comcast needs to be restrained by the government from abusing its monopoly, just the same way the Power and Telephone monopolies are restrained/regulated.

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[Chris Burke]

Oh yeah, it's only regulations that make costs high. You could start an ISP out of pocket if not for those horrible regulations. All you have to do is set up some equipment and then politely ask Comcast if you can use their cable... wait... Okay, you have to lay your own cable, and politely ask everyone in the city if you can dig up their yards to lay a redundant cable line. That will be nice and cheap, and efficient too! Free market at work!

Re:Explained by a Simple Formula

[toadlife]

-The Great Depression lasted from Oct. 24, 1929 until about 1940.

The depression lasted until 1940 only if you redefine what an economic depression is. Before the 'the new deal failed' crowd started trying to rewrite history, a depression was defined as a period of very rapid economic contraction. By the classic definition the great depression ended in 1933.

You do realize many people believe that the Fed actually created the Depression to consolidate power for themselves right?

Lots of people believe stupid things. For example, people today think that our economic collapse of 2008 was caused by poor people buying houses they could not afford. The fact that some (or a bunch) of people believe something doesn't automatically lend credence to it.

who's freedom?

[X10]

Liberarians tend to focus on "my freedom" more than on "your freedom".

Re:who's freedom?

[Murpster]

Stop getting your definition of libertarian from Glenn Beck. Those people aren't libertarians, they're just Republicans who don't want to pay taxes.

Re:who's freedom?

[MikeRT]

That's because most libertarians are selfish bastards at heart. They are not concerned with such collectivist notions as creating a sustainable free society. Rather, it's all about maximizing their ability to put any chemical or object in their body they want, keep all of their money and hire the cheapest labor they can get.

I say this as a political libertarian with social conservative sensibilities. The single biggest reason why libertarianism is going nowhere is because it's such an unfocused movement that grabs whatever liberty it can and that doesn't even pretend to have a higher vision than "I'll get mine." That turns off most voters. Even though under a libertarian system there'd be no corporate welfare at all (since there'd be a simple tax code and subsidizes would be outlawed in the constitution), their behavior gives normal, non-ideological people good reason to believe that a libertarian government would look like a plutocratic-kleptocratic oligarchy of rich people burdening the poor while enriching themselves, and vice totally out of control because libertarians never talk about the practical matter of **regulating vice** so it's like buying beer, not a free-for-all where any store can legally sell your kid crack.

Re:who's freedom?

[jimbolauski]

Here are a few things most libertarians favor, legalized drugs, ending of the licensing of barbers, doctors, lawyers, ... , no public schools, a Federal Government who's only job is have a military to protect it's citizens, maintain roads, and settle disputes between states. It is not so much greed as it is minimizing government and having personal responsibility for one's own welfare. Libertarians do not care about giving away software for free they just have a problem with the ideologies of many of the people in the open source community, who tend to favor a cradle to grave from of government.

Re:who's freedom?

[ChrisMaple]

That is because most Libertarians association freedom with greed rather than freedom with responsibility.

That's one of the most misleading, ungrammatical, and silly sentences I've ever read. There is no direct association between freedom and responsibility, any more than between slavery and responsibility, freedom and irresponsibilty, etc.. Freedom allows a person to follow his best interests, and to use the word "greed" for that is to use a loaded term that not libertarians, but the opponents of libertarians, would use.

Although the world includes masochists, for sane people the idea that the purpose of freedom is to give you more opportunities to hurt yourself is wrong. The purpose of freedom is to give individuals the opportunity to better themselves, and to say "Libertarians association freedom with greed" is to attempt to slur both libertarians and freedom.

Re:who's freedom?

[Rob Riggs]

The market has proven itself wholly incapable of regulating itself. What now?

Re:who's freedom?

[FlyingSquidStudios]

ending of the licensing of barbers, doctors, lawyers

Damn you government, making sure doctors aren't practicing medicine without knowing what they're doing! If I want to be able to offer people neurosurgery or transplant one person's head onto another person's ass in my unclean apartment, never having been to medical school, that should be my right!

Re:who's freedom?

[alvinrod]

I'd certainly be fine with allowing you to offer that service, but you'd be hard-pressed to find many customers if you didn't have any training or experience. If you were to misrepresent your medical training or experience, that would fall under existing fraud laws. Even if you were certified by some government body, does that necessarily ensure that you won't screw up? If it did there wouldn't be any need for malpractice insurance or lawsuits.

If you feel it is important for the Federal government to certify doctors (or other professions) I suggest amending the Constitution to afford it that power. Otherwise leave it to the state governments or the people. It's very likely that doing so would result in a similar outcome in terms of doctor certification by a state body or an independent organization that exists to perform this function. It's also likely that such an system would not result in any organization that is better or worse that the current system.

Re:who's freedom?

[the bear troll]

you'd be hard-pressed to find many customers if you didn't have any training or experience

You greatly overestimate human rationality. Just look at the insanely profitable New Age "movement" and holistic medicine industry, snake oil sells. Imagine if those people could call themselves medical doctors.

Re:"Heartland Institute"?

[eldavojohn]

Where did you get the idea that these guys are libertatians?

From their about page:

Heartland has been endorsed by some of the country's leading scholars, public policy experts, and elected officials. Dr. Milton Friedman calls Heartland "a highly effective libertarian institute."

Basically they don't want to label themselves as Libertarian because that would foolishly scare away potential non-Libertarians from reading their work. Instead they rely on their publications to speak for their views instead of a label with baggage. If you're an economist, however, you recognize them for what they are: predominantly libertarian with hints of conservatism. Popular knowledge agrees.

Where have you been?

[lyinhart]

A better op-ed on this very subject was published by libertarian think thank The Cato Institute over two years ago: http://www.cato.org/tech/tk/070622-tk.html

Libertarians calling others a 'radical agenda'?

[cshbell]

I wrote this here years ago, but it bears repeating: Libertarianism is the carrying out of fascism by other means. The one thing it precisely does not guarantee is liberty.

Re:Libertarians calling others a 'radical agenda'?

[Chris Burke]

I wrote this here years ago, but it bears repeating: Libertarianism is the carrying out of fascism by other means. The one thing it precisely does not guarantee is liberty.

Ah, but those ten seconds of pure unadulterated anarcho-capitalism, before someone with power and money realizes that no rules means they get to make the rules, would be fucking sweet. =)

Not all Libertarians are Free Market

[WinterSolstice]

That particular variety of Libertarian is more what people in the US think of, but they tend to really be more like republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Sort of like not all democrats want abortions and the destruction of the military, not all republicans want freedom and religious facism, and not all greens walk to work :)
Not all libertarians are facists, or communists, or free-market/anti-market - take your pick.
Most just want maximal individual freedoms with minimal government.

I'd say the F/OSS market is the BEST expression of Libertarian though, especially the Limited BSD/MIT style licenses. The GPL, well, that's another debate ;)

Copyright

[Hatta]

The GPL requires copyright to be enforced. You can't place terms (such as releasing the source code) on distribution if distribution is already completely legal. Copyright is a government interference in the market, using force to set up temporary monopolies. If I understand libertarianism, that's a bad thing. So under the libertarian ideal, there would be no copyright, and so no GNU software.

Re:Copyright

[Abcd1234]

whenever an RIAA story comes out, that the artists (read: Labels) have a right to their property, both real and intellectual

Again, you're presupposing that "intellectual property" is actually property. A true libertarian would acknowledge that this isn't the case, as intellectual property is purely a government contrivance. ie, without the government, the idea of IP simply doesn't work in practice, as you need the government to enforce artificial scarcity in order for that "property" to be of any true value.

Libertarian that likes free software

[OrangeTide]

It serves my own purposes. As a developer I am not interested in licensing and IP. That kind of crap is for big corporations. My interests lie in being a paid expert where I go from one company to another and get paid to integrate or fix their free software based products. For small indepedent businesspeople, free software is a major asset. We can share the non-competitive aspects of the software. Operating systems, webservers, etc are all commodities. The important bits are where they are configured and customized for a businesses' needs, rather than licensing the software itself.

Free software isn't socialism, it's the new capitalism. It's the small guy capitalism.

Please Read My Blog

[ddillman]

Is it just me, or is anyone else put off by people tooting their own horn by submitting their blog postings as stories? I mean, the guy seems to have something serious to say and seems readable, but geez, let someone else submit it to Slashdot, it doesn't look so much like self-serving aggrandizement or driving your page views up by slashdot effect...

Re:"Heartland Institute"?

[megamerican]

Not all self-described libertarians agree or use the same arguments on every subject.

The Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell style libertarians oppose net neutrality because they oppose the government regulating the internet in any fashion. They view it as a slippery slope which will lead to many draconian regulations and eventual loss of many freedoms now enjoyed.

The Cato Institute, which is considered a libertarian think tank is often made fun of by the LRC and Paul supporters, usually for good reasons.

Libertarianism, like most isms have a large umbrella to hide under.

I'd just like to point out...

[Thalaric]

Speaking as a registered libertarian, not everything in a capitalist system is done for profit (just ask the NRA or the EFF). And sometimes even innovation is done for innovation's sake.

Of course, that software is inherently "information" is what makes this work (avoiding the economic problem of scarcity). "Knowledge" doesn't cost anything to pass on. I think where those right(er) wing libertarians get their signals crossed. They assume that because we currently have an idea of "Intellectual Property" that it is in some way a fundamental freedom. Or that because we currently have corporations that can exist as entities they fundamentally are. These are just assumptions built into our system, not facts. I don't remember reading anything in Locke about intelectual property rights. And I don't see how giving software away for free is anti-capitalist.

An old Ronald Reagan quote is still true...

[MetricT]

"An economist is someone who sees something that works in practice and wonders if it would work in theory."

I like libertarian philiosophy myself, but the nuts in the crowd can't understand that markets/politics is a synthesis of human psychology and behaviors perturbed by random events, and doesn't have some underlying grand unified theory like physics. Real life has, and always will be, a muddle.

Re:Why do Librarians hate America?

[TimeElf1]

I would suppose it is because of all the kids that come to the library with questions they want to axe.

Not terribly surprising...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While "Libertarian", in principle, comes down to a fairly tight set of notions about state noninterference, there are in practice a large number of ostensible "libertarians" that are pretty much strictly anti-regulation and pro-(specific)business, rather than libertarian as such.

Anyone who is against the activities of a group of volunteers, doing as they wish with the fruits of their labor, and offering goods under their chosen terms(Yes Virginia, the GPL is simply a voluntary private contract, not some conspiracy to oppress you) just because there isn't enough money and market-rhetoric involved is a damn shoddy libertarian. Of course, anyone who argues against the environmental regulations that prevent people from unilaterally poisoning my person and property is also a damn shoddy libertarian, and we have masses of those.

While certain flavors of market capitalism(and potentially even limited liability corporations) can be libertarian arrangements, anybody who mistakes supporting those for being a libertarian is, as they say, Doin' it Wrong.

Net neutrality is NOT FOSS!

[digsbo]

Net neutrality uses government regulations to enforce policy on a network which is privately owned and leased. It is a violation of the property rights of the network owner. This is unrelated to, and separate from, FOSS, in which the ownership is provided freely (which has some different meanings given the particular license/copyright). Two different issues philosophically, and poorly understood in TFA.

Re:"Heartland Institute"?

[tverbeek]

The self-described libertarians who oppose free software and other radically egalitarian concepts aren't really libertarians in the sense of Ron Paul or the Libertarian Party. They're Capitalists or Plutocratics who simply want to be free of external restrictions on their ability to make money. But in our society's not-terribly-nuanced way of speaking about politics, anybody who is opposed to the State but isn't trying to replace it with the Church, gets labeled "libertarian".

Any true...

[Darkness404]

Any true libertarian recognizes that copyright is an artificial regulation produced by the government and therefore should be reduced to a minimum length (think 5-20 years or so), or abolished and the DMCA further reduces a free economy. If we have sane copyright, reduced patents (Again is government regulation of an economy), and less government involvement (so governments can't mandate closed standards) we essentially have the perfect system for free software. Propriatary software can still exist but it is checked by the fact that people can legally use it after a certain sane amount of time, little to no patents, the ability to decompile and redistribute modified sources would make it be a free economy for both authors of software and consumers. Think of it this way, we might have Windows 9X in the public domain by now, we can decompile it and use it as more or less of a backend for WINE to emulate Windows, while NT might not yet be in the public domain, a lot of legacy programs are still used, this would get us one step closer to a perfect Linux system.

Any libertarian who is against government intervention should be against copyright, and even though RMS might be against a state in which there is no or a very weak copyright, it is a plus for both free software and consumers.

Exploitation is the most prized product

[spun]

This just shows the utter hypocrisy of the libertarians. I've said all along that libertarians really want corporate feudalism, or at least they have been completely co-opted by corporate feudalists. Libertarians, in general, feel they are superior to everyone else. They also feel that it is a natural right for the elite to profit from the plebeians. When anything threatens their real agenda, they will set aside their supposed ideals to destroy it. Free software reduces the ability of the elite to profit off of the 'inferior people' of the world, and therefore it must be destroyed. Unions, even though they are a product of free association, also threaten libertarians ability to exploit others, and so you will never find a libertarian who is pro union, even though, according to their ideals, they should be.

The thing is, Libertarians always have such high levels of cognitive dissonance, they do not realize this is what they are doing. They firmly believe they are 'good' people, because being a 'good' person goes along with their image of themselves as vastly superior beings, so they will never look at all the ways their ideals and actions work to oppress the less fortunate. In their minds, they are helping the less fortunate by exploiting them.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[interkin3tic]

Libertarians, in general, feel they are superior to everyone else.

I dislike libertarianism as much as the next non-libertarian, but I do have to say that's not quite fair. EVERYONE feels superior to everyone else if they're being honest. Except me, I don't think I'm superior to everyone else, I alone am not deluded like everyone else, because I'm smarter. My unparalleled sexiness probably doesn't hurt my lack of self delusions either.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[feepness]

and so you will never find a libertarian who is pro union, even though, according to their ideals, they should be.

I consider myself a libertarian, though I don't always espouse the exact party line of the big 'L' Libertarians.

I fully support unions as a group of freely associating group of people.

Also, I don't consider myself better than others, even those who would tell me that I think I am.

I do believe that the freest market possible provides the greatest benefit to the most individuals, though many people who also believe this are unclear that unfettered capitalism will lead to capital concentration and a non-free market. Therefore regulation is required to approximate one. A true free market is simply a thought experiment and target, it can never be achieved anymore than a marxist economy could.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[spun]

See, if all libertarians were as reasonable as you I wouldn't diss on you guys so much. :)

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[feepness]

You can believe in 'l'iberatianism without being a 'L'ibertarian. It's unfortunate that party chose that name. The Democrats aren't the 'P'rogressives so you can remain progressive even when the Democrats start shoveling more troops into Afghanistan and raining money on Wall Street. Similarly the Republicans aren't the 'C'onservatives so you can remain conservative even when Republicans are blowing up the size of Federal Government and borrowing every cent they can.

The 'L'ibertarian party lost me several years ago. I still believe social and economic freedom of libertarianism are good goals to pursue. Unfortunately, like most conservatives, I don't have a party. Even worse, the party that has abandoned my beliefs stole the name.

I can't mention believing in 'l'ibertarianism without being directed to lp.org which I pretty much disagree with at least half their platform.

So I pretty much just nod my head and smile when politics comes up these days. Surprisingly people seem to really like that.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[bhima]

My feeling is that after the disaster that was the Bush Administration the brand name of " Libertarianism" came into vogue... so there are a lot of folks running around calling themselves Libertarians when they actually are not.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[tcrown007]

You're completely out of sync with what most libertarians believe. Many libertarians would abolish corporations completely, as the government does not have the power to grant any "rights" to a non person entity. Given that a libertarian would likely take the argument that far, the idea that they *want* corporate feudalism is just absurd on its face. Please stop espousing ideas that are so far from the truth.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[QuantumRiff]

nd so you will never find a libertarian who is pro union, even though, according to their ideals, they should be.

I am a registered Libertarian, and am very pro Union. I am not a fan of "union shops" where just to get employment, you are forced to be in a union. For me, that is a little to close to "you have to be $Religion to work here". I am a firm believer that people can choose to join, or choose not to (and choose to leave) if they wish.

I'm also very much against anything done at the federal level, and handing things like Medicare and such to the states (including healthcare reform.) But yes, I do believe in universal healthcare, but it should be an option, and done by the states, (or groups of states, if they decide to band together).

Many, many people don't toe their parties lines.. Dear god, look at the log cabin republicans. Gay people in the republican party!

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't see all libertarians support unions, precisely because we believe in free association. Any philosophy taken too far is destructive--and we often believe government intervention has gone too far--which tends to make unions a good alternative.

I'm fairly young--I can't really remember a time when unions appeared to do something beneficial in my life. Teachers unions have prevented me from getting tenured university faculty fired or even meaningfully reprimanded despite clear evidence of academic misconduct and blatant plagiarism.

Teachers unions have prevented my father from investigating outright financial fraud in school districts.

Steel mill unions have prevented friends of mine who graduated from getting meaningful employment without joining them.

Now--I did have *a* friend who worked summers at a steel mill, and because of union regs--when he opted for working double shifts on holiday weekends after a long week, and there was nobody more senior who wanted it--he could get something like 4x pay. He was able to cover two years tuition by working 60 hour weeks each summer. But he also had weird crap he had to do. He *had* to take certain breaks, *had* to take a lunch, couldn't sit down alone with a supervisor to ask questions. Couldn't get training from some individuals. It reminded me of an episode of Futurama where Hermes got a fishing license "Great Scott--it's not a birth certificate--it's a fishing license, and it's Mandatory!" (or something like that)

Unions did a lot of good when they broke the bastards running coal mines, auto plants, and probably some other places. But--they went too far and now interfere with free association to further the unbounded greed of their own members. Sorry...just like the unions broke big industry...it's time to break the unions until they can stop behaving like little children.

Bottom Line/Core Premise:
      When a faculty member who had six students expelled in one semester for plagiarism for offense that were mostly really issues of improper citation (not doing it correctly, doing it in the wrong place, putting a footnote on the last paragraph instead of the first in one case...), commits the same offense but far more egregiously--not only ripping off other schools in their course content without attribution, but publishing material from other universities under their own name. They need to be fired. No hearings, no "tenure"--just fire them. Teachers unions need to be broken.

So yes--you won't see libertarians support unions just because we're pro choice. People should be able to think for themselves, act responsibly for themselves, and not be forced to toe some line with bullshit "solidarity" where nobody can be reprimanded because of some sort of mythical status symbol. Unions centralize power--they just do it away from the nominal government of "the state".

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[Hobophile]

I think we can all agree that what we need is a new federal agency to identify the true Libertarians.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[Chris Burke]

Maybe if you didn't get your libertarian news/opinion pieces from places that are anti-libertarian, you might realize that most of us are reasonable.

Sadly enough, my first impressions of Libertarianism came not from anti-libertarian sources, but from listening to Libertarians themselves and in the vast majority of cases they were anything but reasonable. It started off nice-sounding -- "less government, more freedom" -- which is why I kept listening, but given enough time they always ended up essentially espousing anarcho-capitalism (even if they didn't call it that, though some did). At which point I can't help but laugh, as I would to anyone saying they were going to guarantee my freedom with "anarcho-" anything, because anarchy lasts exactly long enough for someone strong enough to impose their own rules which will always be in their own favor.

It also didn't help when they started talking about Ayn Rand, since I hadn't realized at the time that she was such an inspiration for certain branches of Libertarianism, but did think that The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were two of the most hateful books I'd ever had the displeasure of reading.

Anyway, since then, I've had discussions with reasonable libertarians, and I realize that my initial impression was in a way a stereotype, but that association has still lingered. Sadly the reasonable libertarians I've known haven't included any of the candidates for office that I've been aware of.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[ducomputergeek]

More accurately, there are a large number of old Goldwater Conservatives who have stopped identifying themselves as Republicans after the Bush years and are currently lacking another label other than Independents. Generally we're the small federal government, lower federal taxes, pro-individual freedom types who think the religious right can go F-themselves.

Re:Exploitation is the most prized product

[coaxial]

You're completely out of sync with what most libertarians believe. Many libertarians would abolish corporations completely, as the government does not have the power to grant any "rights" to a non person entity. Given that a libertarian would likely take the argument that far, the idea that they *want* corporate feudalism is just absurd on its face. Please stop espousing ideas that are so far from the truth.

Fine. They want Feudalism.

Or as Kim Stanley Robinson put it, "That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. "

Simple test

[fahrvergnugen]

A simple test that I ask big-L Libertarians to engage in before I will discuss anything political with them on the internet:

Explain, in your own words, how the internet as it is presently could possibly have come to exist under a Libertarian political structure. In order to be taken seriously, Be sure to account for how we would have moved beyond the walled-garden networks of the late 80's early 90's, cite ARPAnet, and reference current backbone peering economics, including the recent maneuvering by Google which prompted the whole network neutrality debate in the first place.

Nobody's passed it yet.

Re:Simple test

[Thalaric]

Before I can take your question seriously you have to define "Libertarian political structure".

How about, how could a limited government with the help of academia and/or independant business interests create a network? For example, take 18th century new england turnpike construction or 19th century railroad networks and accompanying telegraph networks. I choose such an early example because you have to go that far back to find a small government.

Regarding the walled-garden, it's inevitable since the worth of the network is proportional to the number of people on it. Unless there's a monopoly force at work, at some stage all networks must to interconnect.

Re:Simple test

[TheSync]

Explain, in your own words, how the internet as it is presently could possibly have come to exist under a Libertarian political structure

You ever hear of FIDO Net? Or UUCP? Or for that matter Telenet?

Here is the story: there were plenty of network efforts both by volunteers over modems and corporations largely over X.25. When I was in college, we had a Telenet connection to many other schools and a new-fanged "Internet" connection. The idea of hooking up networks was not a unique concept, but it is true that TCP/IP protocol (largely government funded) was in the right place at the right time (although we almost went ATM). There were several government-funded higher speed networks that took off at the same time that FIDO Net was linking the BBS world and UUCP was linking Unix boxes over modems. But it took privately built networks (UUNET, DIGEX, PSI) to bring the Internet to commercial businesses and non-university/non-military users. Commercial traffic was actually banned from the government-funded networks at first.

I was an early employee of one of the first major nationwide DS-3 speed ISPs. We never worried much about government regulation, because government had no real clue what we were doing. We had porn servers. We peered with whom we wanted to and under what circumstances we wanted to. No "net neutrality". And there were instances of peering conflict between networks, but eventually calm heads prevailed and the Internet survived intact.

I'll also give props to government-funded CERN for coming up with HTTP, and more importantly NCSA for coming up with the Mosaic web browser, but there was plenty of Internet going on (email, Usenet, Gopher, ftp, etc.) before the WWW.

John Galt complex

[ex-geek]

Liberarians tend to focus on "my freedom" more than on "your freedom".

Actually, a lot of them focus on the freedoms of their imaginary future selves and on the vast fortunes they are surely going to amass. See Joe the Plumber. So they end up defending big corporations and rich people, even if those pollute and exploit. The free market rhetoric is just a facade to sound somewhat reasonable.

Libertarianism itself has valuable insights and should be taken seriously. It is spoiled by those who read Ayn Rand as teenagers and took up a professional career in corporate sponsored think tank libertarianism.

Par for the course

[alanmusician]

While I tend toward moderate libertarian ideals myself, this is a great example of why I always end up feeling alienated from the party itself. They always end up harping on legalizing hard drugs, having your own private tank, or some other extremist nonsense, and when they're not doing that they're pulling stuff like this that isn't even in line with their supposed values. There are some brilliant men in the party, but they usually end up taking a back seat to the louder-speaking loonies.

old customs die hard

[grrrgrrr]

I thought libertarian and free-market organizations would have disbanded by now because of the bank deregulation and economic catastrophe. These opinions seem a bit dated and a bit out of touch today. But I guess there are all kinds of old fashioned ideologies still around like religions but do we really care about what they think of free software? So why do we care here?

Re: old customs die hard

[2obvious4u]

I probably even agree with you that regulation is needed to avoid large boom and bust cycles at the cost of overall efficiency.

Before the Fed there were no "large" boom and bust cycles, there were much smaller "corrections" of the market. The Fed then started attempting to fix "corrections" which would allow the market to over inflate and then burst causing a larger correction than would naturally occur. The large boom bust cycles are a byproduct of market manipulation by the Fed.

I'm not in the abolish the fed camp or in the gold standard camp, but having the Fed maintain a fixed interest rate and a fixed money supply (i.e. no printing extra money) regardless of emergencies in the market would do wonders for the economy.

Re:"Heartland Institute"?

[Wonko the Sane]

I would agree with the anti-net neutrality people if the network had been built without resorting to eminent domain and artificial monolopies.

You can't ask for special government favors to get your infrastructure built and then all of a sudden "come to libertarian Jesus" and demand to be free of government regulation.

Libertarian / Laissez Faire / Free Market

[Bob9113]

Everybody wants to wrap themselves in the flag of the free market, and claim that their view is the definition of free market. Let me take a quick moment to define a few terms:

Free Market: Objective is to maximize the efficiency of allocation of resources by maximizing the ability of people to make rational, informed, free decisions on how to transact liquid wealth.

Laissez Faire: Believes that the objective of the free market can best be achieved by minimizing government involvement in corporate decision making (typically except those decisions regarding contracts, copyright, trademark, patents, and trade dress).

Libertarian: Believes that the objective of the free market can best be achieved by minimizing government involvement in all decision making (typically except those decisions regarding contracts, copyright, trademark, patents, and trade dress).

Capitalism: Believes that the objective of the free market can best be achieved by maximizing return on capital.

The proponents of each of the latter three beliefs above profess that their belief system is synonymous with the free market. However, since they are all explicitly maximizing or minimizing different things than what the free market maximizes, it is not by definition that they are synonymous. Hence their hypothesis of synonymity is subject to analysis and disproof -- even if you fully accept the primacy of the free market.

Without Copyright the GPL woudn't be necessary.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The GPL requires copyright to be enforced. You can't place terms (such as releasing the source code) on distribution if distribution is already completely legal.

The GPL exists to fix a problem with Copyright law: If you release a work in the public domain, somebody can make a modified version, copyright THAT, and enforce it against YOU. They can also create a compilation of a number of public domain works and copyright the compilation.

This means, for instance, that some commercial entity could fix a bug in or add a feature to your public-domain software product and you couldn't make the equivalent fix or add the equivalent feature. Or they could construct a distribution (ala Red Had or Debian) and copyright it, and no equivalent could be made - first Linux distribution gets a monopoly on Linux distributions.

GPL and most other FOSS licenses head this off by maintaining the copyright and using the licensing terms on the underlying work to deny adding such restrictions to derived works and compilations.

But without copyright the restrictions couldn't be added. Sure, something like the GPL would be unenforceable. But if someone were to release a bug fix or upgrade, anyone could reverse-engineer it and include the fix/upgrade in another version of the public-domain work. If someone made a compilation, anyone else could make a similar or identical compilation. Or they could just copy the fixed/upgraded version or compilation. So the GPL's purpose - allowing software set free to STAY free - would be realized and the GPL would be unnecessary.

Re:Without Copyright the GPL woudn't be necessary.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I've reverse-engineered a lot of code from stripped object back to source. It got more difficult to do manually with some of the odd flows that RISC processors do and progressively more optimizing compilers, but it's hardly impossible. And there are fine tools to support it now.

Once you get to uncommented source for something where you roughly understand the program's function it's usually pretty easy to figure out what the author intended. Then you can comment it.

The fun part is finding errors. (I recall one where I was reverse-engineering a Unix driver and identified a place where the programmer had written (approximately) "if (a=b)" when he meant "if (a==b)". It was doubly fun to feed this back to a guy in the OS group - especially when I walked him through the code to the statement and he asked about a nearby assertion which had been conditionally not-compiled into the object that I was working from. He hadn't really internalized that I'd decompiled to source until I pointed out that I couldn't see the assertion. B-) )

Re:Not a universal libertarian belief

[bnenning]

I don't see why libertarians object to this?

Most don't. The ones who do are either confused by the occasional Marxist-sounding rhetoric used by some free software advocates, or are actually corporate shills pretending to be libertarians. The Cato Institute has some excellent papers on the topic: they support free software in general, and oppose software patents and the DMCA because they stifle innovation and competition.

Not all libertarians are the same

[roc97007]

I'd like to point out that Libertarians do not all have the same beliefs. We tend not to blindly adhere to every plank of some party platform.

This particular libertarian thinks that if you create a product, you have the right to charge whatever you want for it, including nothing. I personally don't see how a free market proponent can argue differently. Sometimes it takes a free or extremely cheap product to bust up a monopoly, when legal and market maneuvers continue to force a price that the product is no longer worth. I think any real Libertarian would argue against government intervention, but there's something extremely satisfying in watching regular people successfully compete against software giants in their spare time. I would argue strongly that this is how the free market is supposed to work. If you're trying to charge a high price for something that another person is giving away for free, chances are there's something wrong with your business model.

I thought government FOSS is about cost and access

[Ungrounded Lightning]

[Argument that pushing FOSS mandates for government operations is an interference in the free market - consisting of government purchasing agents "expertly" and "freely" choosing proprietary software.]

I was under the impression that the pushing of FOSS in government was about several other things:

  1) Keeping public documents and channels of required communications with government in freely readable formats, rather than locked up in proprietary formats that require those governed to purchase compatible software and/or agree to licensing terms in order to communicate.

  2) Keeping the details of the operation of government open and auditable, rather than exposing it to malware inside of black-box software products.

  3) Cost containment - imposed on the government by its citizens, who are the primary payers of the taxes that pay for the government's IT operation.

1) and 2) are clearly "open information" issues, where it's obvious which choice is "open". Only 3) even touches on either "free market" or "choice in software" ideals that you claim are being violated. And given that governments (in republics at least) are supposed to be agencies of their citizens, this decision is properly the right of those citizens if they chose to issue such policy directives to their hired agents rather than relying solely on the agents' judgement.

can we define libertarian?

[DaveGod]

It's telling that the first line of the Wiki is "Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies". The first line of the second paragraph is "All forms of libertarianism support strong personal rights to life and liberty, but do not agree on the subject of property".

So how can we have a discussion which is fundamentally about questioning the libertarian stance on property when there isn't one?

To me libertarianism derives from liberty and hence the fundamental rule is everybody should be free to do as they please, provided that does not encroach on the equal rights of others, at which point a fair and just balance must be struck. (If you "get it" you'll realise everything past the first comma is redundant.) For what it's worth I certainly do not agree with the elimination of the state because a) the state (or at least judiciary) is necessary to arbitrate and enforce "a fair and just balance" b) there are major practical considerations such as markets not being perfect.

To relate to the OP, I have a suspicion my take fundamentally agrees to that of the author but the article loses itself in the detail while fundamentally the debate is about principle. Talk of a "bottom-up, participatory structure" and so on is not relevant. The question is, does free software impinge on the rights of others? My answer is of course not. It may be difficult for paid-software to compete, but nobody has a right to do well in the market place, they only have the right to try.

Re:These are not libertarians

[AndersOSU]

Try as you might, you'll never separate libertarianism from racism.

Even if a libertarian isn't personally racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, so at the very least a libertarian world view enables racism.

Not speaking for all libertarians

[Digypro]

While this may be the opinion of the small group of libertarians who did this study, I know for a fact that many proponents of the Austrian School of Economics would not agree. The Austrian school forms a basis for libertarian philosophy. There are several Austrians who argue against IP altogether, so I see this as a misrepresentation of the platform. Look up Stephan Kinsella for instance.

Black market as an example

[Xaedalus]

How about the black market and drugs? A "Free" market in the drug trade becomes rapidly overcome by an oligarchy of competing organized criminal interests who, when not taking on each other, will do their best to prevent or co-op upstarts in the name of reducing competition.

Try This

[DesScorp]

"Try as you might, you'll never separate libertarianism from racism.

Even if a libertarian isn't personally racist, they see things like the civil rights act and the fair housing act (and the associated enforcement costs) as the government sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong, so at the very least a libertarian world view enables racism."

Try as you might, you'll never separate liberalism from socialism.

Even if a liberal isn't personally socialist, they see things like property rights and individual achievement (and the lack of government power thereof) as unfairness, so at the very least a liberal world view enables socialism.

Karma Burning Friday

[ssintercept]

Libertarianism is basically the Marxism of the Right. If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.

And to ensure the "-1 Flamebait"...

Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.