On one hand, this could be argued to be a serious human rights violation, on the other hand, prisoners don't have the same rights as non-prisoners, and if somoene violated anothers' rights or property, they should be locked up right?

What suprises me about this is only Florida and California's supreme courts have set precedents that prisoners cannot be forcedfed under normal conditions. The only time they can be is if there is reason to believe the prisoners were forced into a hunger strike. But cases like Andrew vs Thor set precedent that Quadriplegic Prisoners could refuse food until they die.

What's the overall Libertarian position on this? Say I end up in prison for life and become a Quadriplegic, would I be allowed to stop eating?

1. If you are victim of aggressions, you are partially, mainly, if not wholly responsible for your situation. Your bitcoin wallet got hacked? It's your fault. You are taxed heavily, it's your responsibility to dodge, avoid, bribe, evade, or whatever to avoid paying taxes. You lock your doors right? Do you lock your door or just let it open and say whenever someone steal it's his moral short coming?
2. Large territories can be privately owned. The owners, ideally are joint stock businesses, DAO, or corporations. Can it has borders? Yes it can. Private properties can have borders. Can it tax people within territories? It's like rental. Can it seize others' home? Well, the property right within the territories is an agreement between the territory owners and the normal property right is like usul fructus. Can the agreement change? That's up to agreement.
3. Violating NAP are not necessarily wrong when we are not fully capitalistic. Can you vote? If people can vote against you, yes you can vote against them. Can you kill people? If people are shooting at you yes you can shoot back. Can we embrace collectivism? If it's impossible or too impractical to separate innocents from the guilty yes we can. Israel did it. I am not saying Israel should or right. I am saying that we should avoid breaking NAP. But push come to shove let's play. It doesn't make sense to me to be economically productive capitalists if the mere acts of making honest money is punishable by taxes. In fact, being a welfare recipients seem like a good strategy if you live under government that heavily taxes productivity only to give it to parasites. Most importantly? Can you bribe? I like voting with my wallet and foot way more than with ballots. As libertarians we use less violence and aggressions than our enemies. We don't do riots. But I do not think clinging to absolute libertarianism principle is warranted if it's expedient to avoid greater NAP violation. At the end, all firms want money and all carbon based organism wants more copies of their genes. We are greedy and selfish above all else. Humans are often bigots, envious and hypocritical too. You can't be perfect. We just have to win in the world filled with greedy selfish envious hypocritical bigots. Winning is more important than being right. If we don't think that way, someone else win.
4. Effective rulers like Dubai's, Liechestens's, and Monaco's prince deserves great wealth for being able to bring their territory to prosperity peacefully just like Elon Musk deserves great wealth for leading Tesla well. Think about it. We need great leaders to get shit done. We need proper incentives. We got cars, TVs, computers from for profit organization led by great leaders. Why save secure places to live should come from something else but for profit organization led by great leaders?

2 often makes Libertarians unhappy. It gives justification for statism. But think about it. Private cities like Prospera at Honduras are already very libertarian and polycentrist. Monaco, Liechesten, Dubai, and Singapore are relatively free compared to the rest of the world, including free from high taxes. And they do so by violating some libertarian principle. Namely it's not open border and it taxes or even draft people. Without those violation more sever NAP violation could occur. On the other hand Europe is swimming in shit rapefugees due to open border. In South Africa, some neighborhood would put fences around their neighborhood only for the government to put it down. The fences would benefit 99% of people living in the neighborhood. But purist libertarian would argue that your property right stops on only your house. Wouldn't stop Hamas, etc.

I think the problem of democracy is not so much that other people can vote on how to run your life. That sucks but sometimes requiring 100% agreement on everything is even worse. The problem with democracy is that neither voters nor presidents have proper incentive to do what it takes to make their country prosper. Hamas profit is not properly aligned with Gazans' profit. Gazan keep voting for Hamas because they don't have clear interests in economic development.

If everyone has clear profit incentives like CEO and shareholders, things will be better. Then we see what we can do from there.

Saying that rulers own territories are also well known concept. It's the essence of both feudalism and georgism. In British commonwealth, the crown own the land. Even the word Real Estate comes from Royal Estate. The problems of feudalism is the feudal lords maybe crazy. The problem of georgism is it rewards people to produce children they can't afford. But otherwise it's fine.

Coase theorem says that as long as property right are assigned reasonably and can be agreed upon firmly by most, the outcome won't change much after. Resources will be allocated if and only if it's cost effective. All we need to care is that negotiation and transactions have low complexity.

If you disagree which one you disagree most

which one turn you off the most.

I am describing something like Prospera

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera

Which is while not fully libertarian is far more libertarian than most regions.

Also Monaco, Dubai, Liechesten, and Singapore are very libertarian.

Even Israel is pretty libertarian if the alternative is jewish genocide.

I think 1 is just personal responsibility. 2 doesn't violate libertarian principles. 3 is practical. What you don't bribe cops when it's profitable to do so? You don't hire lawyers to win in court? If some thieves enter your house and you kill him, and it's illegal to do so, should you hide the bodies? I would. 4 is just reality. All those rulers are well paid but they do a great job. I see no problem with that.

They’ve become my go-to source for libertarian economic and political theory and understanding. The sheer amount of educational material they provide for free is astounding and admirable. So, I was just wondering if there are any criticisms of the institute, beyond disagreements with the puristic ideology they espouse?

The last couple episodes of my podcast have been on Ben Burgis' book - Give Them An Argument, Logic For The Left - where Burgis tries to go through a series of logical fallacies in common conservative and libertarian arguments.

After looking more into Burgis, I found a podcast with Walter Block and Burgis debating libertarian ideas. Block stated that his goal was to persuade Burgis, while Burgis claimed his goal was to persuade the audience.

The more I think about it, I agree with Block. It seems to me the most good-faith and ethical way to have a debate is to try to challenge and persuade your opponent individually without regard for the audience - since you aren't actually talking to them.

What do you think?

Link to the Burgis/Block episode - https://youtu.be/S4O0WvGSZN0?si=jkLshiWr3hA_Gopm

Also, if you're interested, here is a link to my podcast episode on the topic
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-23-1-libertarian-boyz/id1691736489?i=1000660975883

Youtube - https://youtu.be/BpgNZzcN8aI

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/4jnp0iKusN7rJkbd7M7FVK?si=cb16af0b82c14982

I’ve always been of interest of the libertarian party & agree with some of the core beliefs.

I was hoping to get some feedback on where the LP stands with some topics:

-Immigration/US borders -Abortion -Retirement & Income security -Free markets -Free market healthcare -Taxes

The rationale I was given (by PhD Libertarian writer and speaker) was that labor markets should not be restricted by government. This lowers prices and boosts profits. The caveat was that non citizens should not be given anything from the American tax payer.

My impression is that Libertarians went silent on this perspective since Trump vilified immigrants. But what’s your take today?

Another post on my podcast discussing Hoppe's Democracy: The God That Failed

A point that Hoppe makes that I think gets at a deep division in thinking (usually along a 'left' 'right' spectrum) that I think ultimately boils down to a belief in objective truth (or god as Rose Wilder Lane describes it) or a belief in subjective truth.

As an example, Hoppe give an a priori truth that "taxes are an imposition on producers and/or wealth owners and reduce production and/or wealth below what it otherwise would have been..."
He goes on to give an example about higher standards of living over time and creates a statement based on the previous axiom - "based on theoretical insights it must be considered impossible that higher taxes and regulations can be the cause of higher living standard. Living standards can be higher only despite higher taxes and regulations."

What do you think?

In case you are interested, here are links to the second episode in the Hoppe series.
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-22-1-2-papa-hoppe/id1691736489?i=1000658971066

Youtube - https://youtu.be/5_q9wRzkSmw?si=z4RHJ3BhGFblxTZo

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/7JC0weEKS3wh8VlnRX9bZC?si=53d491973af24cf9

(Disclaimer, I am aware that this is promotional - but I would prefer interaction with the question to just listening to the podcast)

Nations such as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland,

Worst thing- high taxation, hate speech laws, national systems, gave this idea to people that raising taxes is somehow the solution to poverty

Best things-Very free market, high P rivate property, low regulations, small government polices, and multiple other laws which I very much support and I think people here would also love

These nations are very strange as they have both of what I love most about nations… but also what I hate the very most about nations.

Good news for these nations is that they have been cutting down on taxation for a while now

This is probably my worst question yet but again curiosity got the better of me to ask my libertarian buddies on this sub what they thought.

What are your thoughts on project 2025?

Personally, I think it’s awful- especially the taxes. As a libertarian, I do not support high taxes at all. I think the taxes we pay should go more towards education than the military. I only make 56k a year, and it’s hard enough living in this country on that measly salary- if I get taxed 30 percent, it will be even worse.

As an educator, it is scary that they want to defund education because I can lose my job. They want to get rid of Pre-K altogether. I’m a Pre-K teacher and I love my job. Although, I can teach other grades, I love teaching pre k the most over other grades I’ve taught. With the defunding of public education, children will not receive a high quality education. The only ones who will afford to get a high quality education will be wealthy children. This will cause an even further class divide than we already have. A good Education is the highest indicator of success.

I also think that it’s good that we have child labor protections- I would never want any child to be in danger. I do not want us to get rid of that.

I also don’t think people should be discriminated against based on religion or sexual identity,etc. I respect others beliefs unless they are harmful to society.

Altogether, I think this idea goes against so many of my personal views, especially as a libertarian. It gives the government control over everything- this goes against everything libertarians stand for. This makes me frightened for our country.

In the linked article, across various consumer products, just 2-3 companies hold 80-90% market shares, and have been using that to increase prices to drive record profit growth.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2024/02/07/why-your-groceries-are-still-so-expensive/

Kraft Heinz dominates the packaged cheese category at 65% market share. Category unit volumes are up just 6%, while prices are up 21%. That is exactly the intention. "We are not going to be chasing volume," according to the Kraft Heinz CEO, "We're going to be looking to drive profitable volume." In 2022-2023 Kraft Heinz profits skyrocketed from $225 million to $887 million, an increase of 448%. Gross profit margins reached 34%, up 400BP over Q3 2022.

Groundwork Collaborative recently found that corporate profits accounted for 53% of 2023 inflation. EPI likewise concluded that over 51% of the drastically higher inflationary pressures of 2020 and 2021 were also direct results of profits. The Kansas City Federal Reserve even pegged this around 40%, indicating that sellers’ inflation is now a pretty mainstream idea.

Given the market dominance of these brands consumers don't have much option to vote with their wallet.

While de-regulation to increase competition is usually the standard answer, it seems idealistic to implement at this stage. What other policies could a newly elected Libertarian government enact that could fix the situation and protect consumers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel

Thoughts on the Trump v. United States presidential immunity case?

Do you agree or disagree with the ruling and why? What do you think about the people who have the opposite opinion about the ruling?

I suspect for you guys this was a “pick your poison” type of situation, as you guys hate the far right, but I know you hate the idea of a left-wing collation with socialists and communists.

So what were your opinions on this whole situation?

For me? It’s honestly disgusting that the French government failed to stop the spread of left wing and right wing extremism and this is a big sign for something terrible coming around the world.

I don’t like them as the pros outweigh the cons indefinitely. But was interested in what you had to say and anymore information you guys will give on these laws.

So by 2030 the U.S. Federal Government is going to be forced into admitting that they can't fund social security, what do you think will happen, raise income taxes by 50%?, I hope not, but in your opinion, what can we do about it?, raising the retirement age?, privatizing social security? or just ending the program all together?

I hate both of these guys, but I’m wondering what you guys thought were the good things they did.

Over the last few weeks, i have been working on a podcast series about Hoppe's - Democracy: The God That Failed.

In it, Hoppe suggests that there is a radically different incentive structure for a monarchic government versus a democratic one, with respect to incentive for power and legacy.
Hoppe conceptualizes a monarchic government as essentially a privately owned government. As such, the owners of that government will be incentivized to bring it as much wealth and success as possible. While a democratic government, being publicly owned, has the exact opposite incentive structure. Since a democracy derives power from the people, it is incentivized to put those people in a position to be fully reliant on the government and the government will seize more and more power from the people over time, becoming ultimately far more totalitarian and brutal than a monarchic government.

What do you think?

In case you are interested, here are links to the first episode in the Hoppe series.
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pdamx-22-1-1-monarchy-bad-democracy-worse/id1691736489?i=1000658849069

Youtube - https://youtu.be/w7_Wyp6KsIY

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/2rMRYe8nbaIJQzgK06o6NU?si=fae99375a21c414c

(Disclaimer, I am aware that this is promotional - but I would prefer interaction with the question to just listening to the podcast)

I used to be a conservative but then I stopped begin dumb.

https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffraikes/2024/07/01/project-2025-is-a-blueprint-for-business-disaster/

I can get behind a lot of libertarian principles. Some policies I tend to favor, however, are mask and vaccine mandates and I understand that most libertarians oppose these. How would libertarians respond to pandemics, public health crises, and disasters in general?

I was watching a video on banana republics. That’s kinda the entire backstory of this question.

Do you think the Patriot Act goes against libertarian principles or is it okay to have it?

They are only selling these journals for expensive prices or you can have each articles separately on Mises dot org but I prefer having PDFs with all the articles (and I realized some articles were not free)

I hope you can help me

I don’t know enough about American politics to say and also yes, it’s me AGAIN

I am basically a libertarian. I like small government low tax and so on. I also like Coase theorem. The idea is that for things to work, everything must be owned, transactional complexity should be minimized, and let people negotiate. Whatever is economically optimum will be chosen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

It's used to settle disputes where property rights are not well defined. For example, some guy is polluting a river. Should he be allowed? What about if the river has owner. Let the owner decides if the pollution is too much or not and ask money from the polluters. If it's too much then he shouldn't be allowed. If it's enough then he should be allowed after paying some compensation.

Tragedy of commons can be fixed. Too many ships overfish a lake? What about if the lakes have owners. Let the lake owners negotiate with the ships. The lake owners then charge money for right to fish. Then optimum number of fish will be fished.

Some people are communists.

Some people are fascists wanting to abolish porn and stuffs.

Some people, like me are libertarians. I think drugs, porn, and stuffs must be legal perhaps with mandatory labelling. We need ways to exile cradle to grave welfare recipients.

And under democracy, we tend to argue what is right or wrong? Never ending arguments.

And while I like libertarianism, I tend to think you know what, there should be a better way to handle this.

Like all libertarians, I believe the free market should handle everything. Basically any market mechanism or effectively market mechanism is fine.

Instead of arguing whether porn or drugs or welfare should be a right or not, why not let the market decides that.

What about if every cities have owners. The owners can initially be the initial population of the city after certain cut off date. Or perhaps the initial voters. Then let the owners decide.

People that think porn and drug should be legal can go to libertarian city as "customers" or "dwellers". People that think porn and drug are great for economy should buy shares in libertarian cities.

Again, a non libertarian city isn't necessarily "wrong". Dubai for example, is not libertarian. It's muslim. But it's prosperous. Sure drugs are illegal. So? I don't like drugs, I don't go to Dubai.

It's a bit like feudalism. The territories themselves have owners. You can own a land in a territory but the territory belong to feudal lord. Unlike feudalism, for the sake of stability, the owners of the territory should either people be living there, so it's still democratic. However, it's not necessary.

Prospera works fine even though the owners of the territory aren't people living there.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera

And the issue I addressed is also addressed

Charter cities fall into an awkward crack in libertarian ideology. Almost every libertarian agrees that you can make rules (even arbitrary rules) about what people can do on your own property, and anyone who wants to stay on your property has to follow your rules. But what’s the difference between that, versus a government “owning” its territory and making rules for its citizens? In practice the difference is that going in someone’s house - or even their golf course - is a choice you made, and they have clear title of ownership. But being in a country happens involuntarily, and the President doesn’t “own” America in the same way an ordinary person might own a house.

But if someone did own an entire city, and you chose to be in that city, theoretically they should be able to make whatever laws they wanted, and not even the most zealous libertarian could protest. The issue hadn’t really come up before. But here we are.

So basically network of private cities, each with clear ownership, competing to get the best and brightest to move there.

Now what would be a good name or closest ideology for this.

1. Neoliberalism? My idea is not woke or at least not necessarily woke. If people want to build woke private cities they are welcome.
2. Libertarianism? The cities do not all have to be small (though I have reasons to believe that most will lead to small governments).
3. AnarchoCapitalism? I used to think we're close. The main difference is that Ancap believe that government must be eliminated. I believe that government need to be governed by the market. Make governments the market's bitch. Some government is fine. After that we gonna run into word games. Who build the road? The owners of the city. So the owners are the government. Some ancap will say it's bad and so on. Basically, private cities will not be open border. However borders will most likely be meritocratic. Anyone with money or sponsor can come in for example. Ancaps favor totally open border and we have many differences. I think it's interchangeable to ancap. Pure ancap regions will have some people group up agreeing to create private cities. Perhaps buying up land and stuffs. Of course, any owners of a private city can declare their cities ancap any time. So one is convertible to another without aggressions or conflicts. Many ancaps like my idea. But the most hardcore ancaps will say fuck it. Ancaps want 0 taxes. I think maximizing tax revenue while minimizing costs should be a reasonable goal of private cities. I expect tax rate should be lower because most tax happen due to inefficiency, corruption, and envy. This is something properly run business tend not to have.

As a businessman, the most important question will be will this work? Will this make us free? Will this give options for people to be free? Will this make the world prosperous.

The most important aspects of this private cities is that private cities don't attack each other. That is I am not looking for VOC, EIC, that end up conquering Indonesia and India. Also we want to avoid situation like free republic of Congo where people are enslaved and hands are cut.

And that important aspect is already happening.

Countries in the world are not fighting each other anymore except in Ukraine and Palestine.

And what happened?

With very imperfect implementation of this idea, so instead of competing private cities we have competing nations, our prosperity have skyrocketed.

Imagine if those nations start having private cities too. With low taxes. With relatively open borders? Let the owners of the private cities decide.

I need a good name.

What would it be?

Pro private cities?

Ancap?

Neoliberal?

Meitococracy? Government by shareholders, just like corporations

What?

Peace and prosperity should be a business and whoever can make that happen deserve money. I would say to a lesser extend, Dubai's prince is justified to have his billions as much as Elon deserves his billions.

Yes, me again. And for me I wasn’t taught enough on exactly the actions of Canadian prime minsters so I cannot say (As a Canadian libertarian)

Yes, me again. And for me. I honestly don’t know enough of libertarianism to fully say. And btw in this question you’re not allowed to say stuff like “How some libertarians are just cuckservatives” it has to be a problem with the ideology.

Help! I haven't been following US National politics closely in the last few years in order to shield myself from the seemingly endless psychological manipulation employed by all types of media. I find the news to be generally anxiety triggering and feel powerless to change anything on a macro level.

I am liberal and previously refrained from talking about political issues with my BF of 10 months who only recently confirmed that he is a Libertarian (not a Republican). He told me that he is not a "Trump supporter", but would vote for Trump because "he's a Biden hater" instead of a third party or Libertarian candidate if given the chance. We started talking about this in a limited amount of time and his understanding of modern politics/history/power structures is a lot more advanced than mine.

His reason for not voting for Biden has some unexpected nuance, part of it being Biden's age and general ineffectiveness. BF has a wide range of friends from all cultures, political ideologies and is generally positive and popular (he's a businessman). Upon learning this, two of my friends became immediately hostile towards him and told me that I should dump him immediately based on his confirmation of this. I was just trying to talk to my friend about this and she got so angry, she hung up on me.

I don't understand how/why people are Trump supporters, especially after his convictions, general air of disrepute. But, I do believe people are entitled to their beliefs and I don't take issue with people's believe systems as a general rule. I don't think it's reasonable to police the correctness of every single person's personal political/social beliefs. I do believe in intellectual freedom as a general principle.

1. Can someone provide a brief definition of Libertarianism in terms of it practical application in modern politics? (I'm not aware of any major libertarian candidates or why this is an appealing philosophy).

2.(Edited) Is it reasonable (for your friends) to reject my romantic partner based on their political beliefs if they are otherwise a kind, just, honorable, good, popular person?

I'm totally confused at the moment because he has a lot of great qualities, is generous to everyone around him, treats me great. He is also the first conservative (his description) I have ever interacted with on a personal basis.